Tempted by Danger (The Danger Family, #1)

by Endiya Carter

While you get changed, I am going to end this party, and we are going to the jet⁠—” “Right now! It’s my birthday.” “You don’t want me to knock you out in front of your friends and drag you out of here on your birthday. You know I will. You have twenty minutes.”

While you get changed, I am going to end this party, and we are going to the jet⁠—” “Right now! It’s my birthday.” “You don’t want me to knock you out in front of your friends and drag you out of here on your birthday. You know I will. You have twenty minutes.”

Declan and Diesel were twins, with Diesel being the oldest by ten minutes. After them was Demetria, Denim and then

Declan and Diesel were twins, with Diesel being the oldest by ten minutes. After them was Demetria, Denim and then me.

“I’m serious. You should take good and free opportunities whenever you are afforded them because you never know when they’ll come

with bullshit neither. When I opened the door to the meeting room, everyone got quiet, while Declan started clapping. “Thank you, Declan. That’s the one time you have clapped

break from my Kog pinging. It was like why did I have a fucking executive team, if they still had to ping

“But—” I slammed the phone down. If it wasn’t one thing,

looked at me. It started when I was younger. I was always the tallest girl and had filled out before my classmates. Eighth grade gym was very traumatic for me. Leaving class, I overheard one of the male teachers telling another male teacher what he’d do to my body, and it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever heard in my life. When I got home, I told my mother what was said, and she told my dad, which I was not expecting her to do, and the very next morning, my father

As he should

I locked eyes with him, he looked back at his screen. I hoped he knew that I wasn’t the girl who he could run over just because I was a little timid a couple hours ago. My mama always taught

Call me or send me a text before you go to sleep. This man needs some medicine.” She winked into the camera. “Oh, God. Mom, bye. That’s why that back won’t heal.”

Before my six months was up—if he didn’t fire me again—he was going to learn to respect me, even if he never respected another woman a day in his life.

“I received a message from Unknown. Not Mr. Dymon Danger. If you wanted me to get you some tea, then you should have texted me from your phone, not some text app or whatever like a child.” I stood up. “Like a child? Your job as my assistant is to assist me, whenever I need you to assist me. Day or night.” She looked taken aback. “Well, Mr. Dymon, if that is the definition of an executive assistant, then that number on the offer sheet I signed yesterday needs to double, and I need a work phone too because I refuse to have you ordering me around on my personal phone. I will turn that phone off with the quickness, and you will instantly disappear. Poof.”

“I like her. She had your ass speechless. Read your ass like a book. And you ain’t do shit but look goofy.”

“I give you four weeks,” he spoke lowly, so she didn’t hear us. “Four weeks for what? Fuck you talkin’ about?” “Before you have her face down, ass up, and she have your ass hypnotized.” My eyebrows furrowed. “What? It ain’t nothing like that. You tripping. I ain’t trying to end up like your dad.”

“Mr. Dymon, one thing you should know by now is that I know you better than you know yourself. Letting her call you Mr. Dymon, knowing no one in the world calls you that shit. Punk.” “Whatever.” I waved him off. “Get out my office.” “I’m just saying. You didn’t see your face when she was berating you. I could tell that by the end of the day, she’ll have the double offer and the work phone. You got it bad. Hasn’t even been forty-eight hours yet. I already got mad respect for her.” “Fuck outta here, Diesel.

“You know Fi is gossipy as hell, so she told me that Derek went home to check on his folks and to tell Quinn about the baby and engagement before she finds out after people start getting the invitations. According to Fi, Derek is still in love with Quinn, and the only reason they ain’t together is because she ain’t want to move here. So…” He pulled on the blunt, inhaled, and exhaled slowly. “Now that she’s here, and he’s there, but he’s about to be back here, and you want to hit, and he’s still in love, and you love a lil’ competition. So, if one plus one equals two, and five plus five equals ten, you gonna hit Quinn, and all you gotta say is when.”

“DPHQ?” Diesel asked. “Danger Prison Headquarters.”

When something didn’t set right with me, I obsessed over it until it did.

If my pussy was going to get wet, I had to at least be physically attracted to a man. I would rather deal with short than ugly.

“You really think you can talk to me any kind of way just because you saved the family business.” “Did I not, though?” She stared at me. “It hurts you, don’t it? To see the son who you just knew you’d be bailing out of jail every other weekend, month, or whatever. It pains you that I actually did better than you thought I’d do because you don’t want to apologize for being a piss-poor mother to me. You want a reason to continue being a piss-poor mother to me.”

“Alright.” I breathed, grabbing her chin. Grinning, she kissed the tip of my dick before standing up. She smacked my ass. “Tighten up.” “Chill out, man.” She walked in the bathroom laughing.

“Okay. Oh, and, Mr. Dymon...” He looked at me. “Don’t ever let a bitch disrespect me again.”

“Quinci, did he get to you? Look at me.” She kept her eyes trained on me. I licked my thumb and swiped a line of makeup from her neck, showing him the purple bruise. “Princess, tell Derek that you don’t have anything to talk to him about… alone or at all for the matter.” “Princess? Quinn.” Derek was getting ready to lose his mind. “Derek, please⁠—” “That’s not what I said, Princess.” “Derek, we don’t have anything to talk about.” He scoffed. “Unbelievable.”

“Dymon,” Denim hissed. “Denim, will you send a ladder down once I hit the bottom?” She rolled her eyes. “Of course. Don’t I always?” I nodded my head. “Good.”

It’s all good, though.” He stared at me. “The fuck does that mean, Quinci?” “It means that if you can do what the fuck you want to do with no consequences, then I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want to do with no consequences.”

“Look, I stayed away from you because you’re annoying. You’re so fucking annoying.” My face dropped. When I opened my mouth to respond, he held his hand up. “And I like it. Too much, Quinci. I could listen to you talk for hours… about anything. I could watch you stare into space while you chewed on the end of a pen cap for hours on end. I don’t like how much control you have over me. This is different for me. You literally live with me. Work with me. And I still don’t feel like that is enough time. There. I said it.”

I learned that her favorite brand of music was dudes begging and girls singing about being in love.

Because hell yeah

She gasped and straightened her shoulders. “Mr. Dymon, I got private jet coochie?” Bernard choked and cleared his throat, while I continued to laugh. “Okay, sorry, Mr. Bernard. That was very out of line, and I wouldn’t have said anything like that in front of my father. I’m going to get out the car now and pray that God guides the pilot’s hands and eyes through the sky on this tiny… little…”

In my head, I was thinking, my mother couldn’t have known her baby daughter would be a freak-bitch like that.

“I’m sorry for getting emotional. It’s just that, this is my first time talking about it in a long ass time.” “Don’t apologize for being emotional. You’re human. It’s okay to cry and be vulnerable.”

“In hindsight, thirty-year-old Dymon thinks I could have showed just a little more compassion than I did, but twenty-six-year-old Dymon didn’t give a damn. I left her ass in LA to protect her, and she repaid me by having me booted from the hospital, never letting me see my child—or a birth certificate or a picture or nothing. I don’t even know what happened. All I know is that she went into labor, and when I got there, there wasn’t a baby. I never thought about her or the situation again after, like, a week, until she’d stepped into DHQ.”

My robe was halfway open, and my hair was all over my head. I still looked and felt halfway malnourished from the marathon this man ran on me last night. “Now, why would you want that memory?” “To show our babies, once they grown, how crazy I had their mom looking after dropping dick in her.” I rolled my eyes. “Disgusting.”

“I’ll say this. I know how I was at twenty-four, and you just seem very mature.” “That wasn’t what you were going to say.” I picked up my mimosa and took a sip. “I was, in a sense.” “Well, un-sense it and ask what you were going to ask. I want to see where your mind went.”

I just try to treat people the way I want to be treated, which is how everyone should operate, but of course, they don’t.”

“Where do we go from here, Mr. Dymon?” “I’ll follow your lead.” “I’ll rephrase. Where do you want to go from here?” He chuckled. “I’ll repeat. I’ll follow you wherever you go.” “Asshole.” “I know.”

“Baby? Can I have a little privacy while I wipe myself, please?” He looked at me, turning his nose up. “Girl, I put my nose in your pussy. Please, but I’ll leave.”

“And this is what I mean when I say you are so calm. So damn understanding. That shit so foreign to me, Quinci, you just don’t know.” “Do you need to see me beat a girl’s ass to know that I can be mean and nasty when I need to be? Jesus Christ, Mr. Dymon. Men get a little peace in their life, and they don’t know what to do with it.” That made him laugh.

“You have some nerve to be talking about disrespect when you’ve disrespected me since the moment I sat down. Although my parents taught me to be respectful of everyone, sometimes, you must meet disrespect with disrespect, especially when one knows better, or should. I told Mr. Dymon…after we consummated our relationship, to never ever let a bitch disrespect me, and I must say bitch, and you could absolutely be mutually inclusive. I’m going to tell you something that no one at this table has the balls to tell you, and that’s to shut the fuck up sometimes before you run into someone just a little more disrespectful than I am being right now. My grandmothers would be livid at the way I talked to someone who’s their ages right now, but you needed to hear it.”

“When I needed both of you, you weren’t there,” he spoke calmly. “And when you were there, you made it about yourself. I couldn’t even have my high school graduation to myself. Everything I’ve done, you made it about yourself. You sent me away because you didn’t want to be a parent anymore, at least to me.” “You recorded an orgy, Dymon. What was I supposed to do?” “You were supposed to be a parent. Parenting doesn’t stop just because your child does something unsavory. You know what I was doing at sixteen? Having sex. And guess what? My mother and father didn’t send me away. They sat me down, talked about the importance of condoms, and not messing around and getting a baby. Even talked about the possibilities of birth control. They didn’t send me to the top of Timbuktu because I was having sex. Mr. Dymon was just a little bit more than you wanted to handle—an embarrassment, your words—and decided that you would let someone else deal with him. Imagine a child—because yes, he was still a child—hearing that his parents called him embarrassing. Embarrassing for whom? Your rich friends?” “Quinci, baby, I got it…Mother. Father. I got over the shit of me not being born out of love because I love Metri to death, and she’s been such a blessing to me and the company. I got over that. What I didn’t get over was the fact that I changed, and you two didn’t. You’re still the same. When you needed me, I came—granted, it was at Diesel’s force, but I was still here. And I still did what yo...

I loved that ever since our trip to Colorado, she’d been talking about ‘we’ this, and ‘we’ that.

“Tell me your thoughts? Do you want to end this?” “What? No, Mr. Dymon. I love you. So much. I’m just upset that he did that to me. To us. To my family. Now, they are going to think that you’re a monster, and you’re not.” “In my own defense, I don’t care what they think of me.” “But I do.” “Okay. The ball is in your court like it’s always been. What do you want to do?” “I’m your girlfriend, Mr. Dymon. That’s not changing. Someone is going to have to pry your cold, dead body from my hands.” “Hopefully when I’m a hundred years old.” “Yes. And I’m going to die, like, twenty-four hours later from a broken heart.” “Good. Even then, I don’t want a man to think he has a chance with you.”

Quinci: Mr. Dymon, your princess is telling you what she needs, and you’re neglecting her. You know she doesn’t like that. Do I neglect you? Me: That’s not fair.

“I know love when I see it, Quinci. You’re smitten over that boy just like he’s smitten over you. I just don’t want you to get hurt, literally… and physically. He’s nice. And even your father laughed at a few of his jokes, but he hated it. He also heard the conversation between you two at the grove. Your father knows that you basically run that man, like I run him. He told me last night that the way he saw Dymon look at you, he knew it would be worthless to tell you or him anything.” She laughed.

“Baby, I just want you to be sure about this. And I don’t want you to resent me if your company closes.” He palmed my face. “Oh, baby. The company is a long, long way from closing down. Years away. Who knows what may happen then? But for now, I would like to enjoy my time here, not talking about my former job.” “Fine. Just know. If years from now, the company closes and you start to resent me, I ain’t going no damn where, and I ain’t letting you leave me for your sexy, little secretary. Because you had your chance to leave me, and you didn’t. So, you’re just gonna be miserable with me.” That made him laugh so hard. “Your mind is ridiculous, but I love it. And besides, aren’t you my fine little secretary?”

“If I had of known that you had that little ass swimsuit on under your clothes, I would’ve made you change it,” he complained while still snapping pictures of me. “It’s literally just a regular two-piece. Keep taking pictures, so you can beat your dick tonight.” “A regular two-piece that’s one string away from being a thong. Run that way. I want to video that ass bouncing, and twirl too. Give me the whole little Baywatch deal.” “You are such a fucking creep, Mr. Dymon. And I love it.”

“Please don’t fight me, Dymon. Just listen to me.” She paused. “Yesterday, I thought I was losing Declan. And it made me think about how I’d lost you already. It made me think about how I haven’t been the best mom to you. How I’d thrown you to the nannies, letting them deal with you. Truth is, Dymon…I didn’t connect with you. You were perfect…literally, perfect. I didn’t know how to be a mom to a perfect child.” “Why does everyone keep saying that? I wasn’t perfect.” “You didn’t cry when you came out. You potty trained yourself. You were reading on a fifth grade level in the third grade. Winning all types of competitions at twelve. Dymon, I still have the freaking computer that you built in the seventh grade. I didn’t know how to parent you because I felt like I didn’t have to. You were always independent. And then you hit puberty and instantly became mean. Resentful toward me and your father. I, well, both me and your father take responsibility for that. We should have been better parents to you.” I was speechless. “Declan laying in that hospital bed slapped me in the face like two bricks. I kept thinking what if something happened to you, and I never got to apologize to you. That guilt would eat at me for the rest of my life. And then it didn’t help when you came in there with a busted eye and a busted lip. You don’t have to accept my apology right now, but at some point, I hope you will. I’m going to do better unless it’s too late.” “It’s never too late, I suppose.”

Why do parents always think they don’t have to be there for the strong kids??

“Well, since we are going to be living in New York, I might have to apologize to…” She sighed in annoyance. “I’m going to have to apologize to Cruella De Vil and Scar for disrespecting them in their home.” I covered my mouth with my fist to hide my smile. My baby didn’t hold back.

“Hey, beautiful.” I waved like a shy schoolgirl, and everybody ‘awed’. Knowing what he was about to do, my eyes started to water. “When I first met you, I already knew that you were going to cause a lot of trouble in my life. I didn’t know that the trouble would be me falling in love with you. So deeply in love with you. In all my thirty years of living, I never knew that I was capable of loving someone or even capable of being loved until you. You’re so patient and kind. And hilarious as hell. Even when you’re not trying to be. Everything that I am not, basically. I never played into the notion that opposites attract because how could people that are so opposite of each other even get on each other’s radar, or even make a relationship work, but here we are. All I thought I was going to do was work and die, never finding a wife. You’ve made my life worth living, Wenci Cleverly. For those of you who don’t know, Quinci was so stunned by my handsomeness that she introduced herself as the wrong name.” Everyone chuckled. “Anyways, like Jazmine Sullivan said, when this love shit comes, you never want to give it up, and I don’t.

“Quinci, will you marry me?” “Yes!” He stood and kissed me deeply while everyone cheered around us.