Read For His Keeping (For His Pleasure, Book 3) for Free Online

all.”
    Red and Nicole exchanged glances. Both of them were embarrassed, and Nicole suddenly felt like a teenager who’d been caught being naughty under the stairwell at school.
    “I’m sorry you heard that,” Nicole said, “but it was an honest mistake—an accident. I don’t think we need to hear a lecture.”
    Erica rolled her eyes. “Oh, no, of course not. Far be it for me—a woman in her fifties—to give advice to her thirty-two year old son and his twenty-two year old girlfriend.”
    “Fiancé,” Red corrected her.
    “I misspoke. I should have said, ‘your twenty-two year old fiancé who seems to be an expert in and out of the bedroom.’ If she’s managed to keep your roving eye still for even a minute, she must have the all the wisdom of an aging prostitute contained in that young body of hers.”
    “Get out,” Red said, his voice almost shaking with rage.
    “What did you say?” his mother asked, her eyes so wide she looked like a cartoon version of herself.
    “Get. Out.” He stared at her with so much controlled hate that for a brief second, Nicole was afraid of what he might do.
    Erica seemed unsure, as if the rules of the game she was winning had suddenly and mysteriously changed. She was playing tennis and now Red had declared it a boxing match.
    “My flight back isn’t until the morning,” she whined.
    “I’m going to have a car come and pick you up,” Red replied, regaining some of his composure. “It will bring you to a beautiful hotel suite near the airport. You can stay there tonight.”
    Erica’s eyes shined brightly, with an insane alertness that turned Nicole’s stomach. “What a lovely way for a son to treat his mother. First, a loud pornographic display of his sex life delivered via echo chamber. And then a swift kick in the rear when she has the nerve to question his hospitality.”
    “You didn’t question my hospitality,” he said. “You called my fiancé a prostitute and that I will never accept. Now get the hell out of my house before I have you thrown out.”
    Erica gave a strange, snakelike grin and then moved out of the room quickly.
    Red stood in the kitchen, not looking after her, his fists clenched at his sides, chest heaving. “That woman is a monster.”
    “I’m sorry,” Nicole whispered. “I shouldn’t have taken the bait.”
    “It’s impossible not to, she makes sure of that. If you turn the other cheek when my mother slaps you, she’ll make sure to pull out a knife for the next assault.”
    “Are you angry with me?” Nicole asked him, afraid that this awful visit might have sent him into a psychological tailspin.
    He looked up at her and now his eyes were soft, concerned. “Angry with you?
    My angel? Never.” He walked to her and took her in his arms, his face pressed to her hair, whispering in her ear. “I love you, Nicole, and I’ll protect you above anyone or anything else in this world. No matter what.”
    A few minutes later, Red was on the phone arranging for car service to drive his mother to the hotel, and Nicole thought she should at least try to make one last effort at smoothing things over. So she decided to see if Erica needed help with her bags.
    But when she went to the guest room where Red’s mother was staying, she found the room empty and the suitcases still lying on the floor, one of them opened with clothes hanging out of it.
    And the door to the bathroom was wide open, so Erica wasn’t in there either.
    Puzzled, but with a slightly uneasy feeling in her gut, Nicole walked out of the guest room and started for the master bedroom upstairs. As she went, it occurred to her that it really would have been nearly impossible for Red’s mother to have overheard their lovemaking unless she’d been in the master bedroom snooping around.
    This mansion was enormous, and despite how loud they’d been, Nicole felt confident that Erica must have already been creeping around the house, listening to them, and eventually even going so