Punishing for Pleasure by Avery Gale Page A

unpleasant awareness. Ash hadn’t ever been one of those Doms that subs cuddled up against. He’d always had a very specific role when he and Dex shared scenes and he’d been completely content with the status quo, until they’d met Meri. Christ, if he wasn’t careful he was going to go soft like Kyle and Micah. He nearly groaned at the thought of becoming less than the Dom he knew Meri needed. He and Dex were the perfect combination for her, and he hoped they hadn’t missed their window of opportunity to convince her of that.

Chapter Seven
     
    Merilee sat between Dex and Ash wondering how the Masters of the Prairie Winds Club had managed to manipulate her into agreeing to let the two Doms flanking her move into her home. The only reasonable excuse she could come up with was she’d been so relieved and grateful when she’d seen for herself Tony was going to be fine, she probably would have agreed to let the devil himself move in. Who are you kidding? For all intents and purposes, that is exactly what you have done — times two. Groaning to herself, Meri had to hold back her urge to smack her palm against her forehead. This is going to be a disaster of biblical proportions. Taking a quick mental inventory of her wing of the house, she worked out which bedrooms she could put both of them in. They would be close, but not too close.
    Tony was going to be spending a day or two at the hospital since they’d needed to pin the breaks in his leg. Meri smiled thinking about her assistant. When he’d been moved back into his room, it had been obvious the lingering effects of the anesthetic had made him a flirty sexpot who had drawn male staff like a magnet. The hospital’s CFO had nearly gone postal and chased away the other would-be suitors, claiming they were a security risk. Tony had batted his long lashes at the man asking, “How can they be a security risk when they already work here?” When the CFO had blushed, Tony had added, “I think you just want me all to yourself, don’t you?” Meri had snorted a laugh before covering it with a cough and turning her face into Dex’s shoulder. Even though Tony was going to make a full recovery, he was going to need some special attention for a couple of weeks and Meri had been pleased to know the CFO had taken a keen interest in helping. Even though she didn’t know Shane Oak personally, all of the business dealings she’d had with him indicated he was competent, honest, and pleasant. It wasn’t a perfect personal recommendation, but it was a good start.
    When Jax had confronted her about the trouble she’d been having, every Dom in the damned waiting room had gone on point. She’d have sworn they were all a bunch of bird dogs the way they’d frozen and turned their noses toward her. Yep , probably better keep that bird dog analogy to myself , pretty sure I’m already in enough trouble … again! Why did it seem the harder she tried the worse her decisions seemed to be when all was said and done? At the time it always seemed like she had perfectly good reasoning for a choice, but then someone else would question her logic and they never seemed to understand how her mind had worked something through. More than once her dad had asked her to walk him through her thought process when she’d been a teenager. And more often than not he’d just sat behind his desk and stared at her looking completely befuddled, much like Jax had done this evening.
    He hadn’t agreed with her assessment of the situation not being a problem until recently and he’d been even less impressed with her observation that hindsight was twenty-twenty. And now that she thought back on it, Meri was relatively certain she’d heard Dex and Ash both growl something about penalties for bratty behavior and insolence, but she’d ignored them. She hadn’t been trying to be disrespectful—well, not particularly—“dissing” them, as the younger aids at the foundation referred to it, was more of a