Risqué Business (Club Risqué #8)

Chapter 1

LUANNA AND LOGAN

L ogan Thornton enjoyed a lot of kinks. He liked breaking the pre-conceived mould in most things he did, but as he looked at his pregnant wife, and thought about how much sexier she would look naked and bound by his ropes, he wondered if the scales were starting to tip into the perverted.

His fingers itched to photograph her just like that. Dressed in nothing but his ropes and showing off the baby bump that concealed his child.

It would be for nobody’s enjoyment but his own, but the more he thought about it, the more he wondered how Luanna would react if he told her.

She was different now she was pregnant. Not in a bad way. But it occurred to Logan that maybe this was the first pregnancy she was able to really enjoy. The first time Luanna had fallen pregnant, she’d been just sixteen years old. A scared girl who was little more than a child herself and forced to be a single mother.

Not much time, among all the stresses and strains that came with that, to enjoy her pregnancy. In fact, Logan knew she’d spent most of it feeling ashamed and humiliated.

Now though? She was the wife of a billionaire. No one would ever look down on the love of his life again. And if they did, they’d know about it.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Luanna asked, catching him in his reverie.

He gave her a small smile and shook his head. “Just thinking how beautiful you are,” he murmured, making her blush. Damn he loved her blushes; a curse of her red headed complexion, as she would call it. Maybe he should ask…

He never got the chance as the front door slammed and the clatter and thump that only a confident teenage boy could make resounded around the house.

“God damn it!”

The muffled epithet was a surprise. Danny, Luanna’s son, now seventeen and just short of his eighteenth birthday, was generally mature and laid back, and rarely let anything get to him. Luanna frowned and flicked a worried look his way. Reaching over, he squeezed her hand. “I’m sure it’s nothing, love,” he tried to reassure her. But Logan knew there was only one thing that could have wound Danny up so much. His birth father’s family.

Or to be specific, his grandfather.

Logan stood, his protective instincts going into overdrive at the sight of Luanna's concern. He didn’t want her getting stressed while she was pregnant. The things Joel and Desi had gone through during Desi’s pregnancy were still far too fresh in everyone’s minds. "I'll go talk to him," he offered, squeezing Luanna’s hand gently and leaving before she could object. Danny might not be his son by birth, but the boy was most certainly the child of his heart. If his birth family - who had been absent almost all of his life, leaving Luanna to scrimp on things for herself to ensure her son had everything he needed - hadn’t suddenly decided to take an interest in the child they’d turned their backs on, Logan would have happily adopted him.

The real kicker was, the only reason they were pursuing Danny now was because Danny’s father, James, had failed to provide any male heirs with his wife. And of course, his grandfather was old-fashioned enough to believe only boys had the ability to continue the family line.

He made his way up the staircase, heading for Danny's room. The house was silent except for the muffled sounds of frustration from behind Danny’s closed door. Logan knocked gently and waited for a response.

“Go away!” came the bitter response. It was totally unlike Danny, who was generally very obliging.

“It’s me, Danny,” Logan spoke softly into the wood panelling. “Can I come in?”

The door creaked open, and Logan was met by the stormy eyes of his stepson. Danny hadn’t inherited Luanna's red hair, and although he had her eyes, there was no denying who his father was. From the shape of his jaw to his cheekbones, he was a carbon copy of his biological father.

"What is it?" Danny asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Danny," Logan began cautiously, "I heard you come in... you sounded upset."

Danny dropped himself onto the edge of his bed, exhaustion suddenly written all over his face. "It’s Grandpa again," he admitted reluctantly, his voice barely a whisper.

Logan sighed softly, pulling up a chair and sitting across from him. He knew how much pressure Danny was under from his grandfather, who was a hard man with rigid beliefs. The old man was convinced that Danny should follow in his father's footsteps and join the family business, despite Danny's clear disinterest.

“You know you don’t need to have anything to do with him,’ Logan reminded his stepson.

Danny flopped back on the bed and huffed out a sigh. “I know that. It’s just…”

He rubbed his hands over his young face, looking like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and Logan wished there was something he could do to ease things for him. Well, there was, of course, but he’d promised Luanna he wouldn’t interfere in the company owned by her son’s family. Privately, he didn’t agree. Danny’s grandad, James Fulford II, treated his staff abominably, and it wouldn’t take much for Logan to crush him with the might of Blackwood Universal. But his soft-hearted wife knew that route meant the company would likely be dismantled and sold off, and that company was, and always had been, the single biggest employer in the area. Luanna didn’t want the workers to pay for Fulford’s sins.

That was the only thing holding him back.

And Logan knew what held Danny back from cutting his own ties, too.

“I know you want to maintain your relationship with your sisters, Danny. But do you really think your father would stop you from seeing them?”

Danny pushed himself up on his elbows, his young eyes hardening in a way far too old for his years. “Yeah, he would. He’s completely incapable of standing up to Grandad, and Grandad would do it just to punish me. He knows how I feel about the girls.”

Logan sighed. Goddamn, it was a shit show.