Willing Sacrifice (Knights of the Board Room) (30 page)

Of course, she suspected he was a very light sleeper, so more likely she’d order him to put his hands above his head and do as she pleased while he watched her with those heavy-lidded gray eyes. His fingers would clench in self-imposed restraint, body bowing up to her mouth.

“In here stealing or snooping?” He spoke behind her.

“I was told I could look around. You didn’t put any limits on it.”

“No, I didn’t.” Two steps to cross the room and he put his arms around her waist. He drew her back against him to nuzzle her throat. He was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of flannel shorts. His skin was still damp from the shower, hair scented with the fragrant shampoo. “Breakfast is ready. You smell like my soap. I like it.”

“You don’t have a picture of your dad?”

“No. He left before Amanda was even in school. Mom did it all, so he didn’t earn a place on my shelf. A guy that cuts out on his family like that isn’t a father. He’s a sperm donor.”

It was a trait she liked about Max, and one they shared. There was no self-pity in the flat statement, nothing to suggest he nursed the specter of an abandoned kid who wished daddy would care more. If the incident defined him at all, it was likely in making sure he was the antithesis of what his father had been.

He also made a good omelet. Returning to his kitchen, she sat at his little table, which she expected had been pulled off someone’s curbside trash and repainted. There was a crack through the middle that had been caulked and sanded before the paint was put down. “You know, I could talk to Matt about your salary. If this is the best you can afford, he deserves to be horsewhipped.”

“I get paid well enough, as I’m sure you already know. This just suits me. I don’t spend much time here.”

“No, you don’t. You’re usually at work, or apparently doing an insane fitness regimen. What demons are chasing you, Max?”

He kept his eyes on his plate, didn’t answer. Reaching across the table, she touched his face. When he caught her wrist, she didn’t withdraw, just met his gaze. “I asked you a question, Max.”

“I don’t have any demons chasing me.”

She studied him. “No. That’s true. You’re the one doing the chasing, aren’t you?”

The dangerous flicker in his gaze confirmed it, but he merely squeezed her wrist and let her go to scrape up another bite. “When you’re done eating, I’ll give you a ride to your place, make sure you get to work on time. Don’t want Matt chewing your ass for being late.”

“He’s not that brave. As many times as I’ve stayed past midnight or worked from home to make sure they have what they need the next day, I’d like to see him try.”

“And I’d like to watch that. Bet it would make a great YouTube video.”

“Max.” She folded her hands in her lap, stared him down. “After what I shared with you four weeks ago, you’re really going to dodge this? Quid pro quo.”

“That’s emotional blackmail. And in all fairness, you put me through hell these past four weeks. So I’d say slate’s balanced.”

“Probably. But you’ve given me a bad feeling, and I don’t like it. You don’t work out like you’re addicted to exercise. You work out like you’re staying ready for something.”

“I don’t want you to be a part of that.” The set to his jaw said the topic wasn’t negotiable. He sat back in the chair, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “When it’s done, it will be done, and I’ll never revisit it again.”

He shook his head at her look. “I’m not shutting you out, Janet. I’m trained in OPSEC, operations security. The demon I’m chasing, I view it the same as I viewed any mission I took with the SEALs. I don’t divulge any information about it, because it’s classified, and it’s going to stay that way, to protect everyone around me as much as the mission. It’s like when a SEAL is married. It’s just separate from what he is with his wife. She has to figure that out and accept that to accept being with him. It’s not an ultimatum or a fucked-up power play, I swear. It’s just the way things in my world work. Understand?”

She pursed her lips. “Not an easy thing for a woman used to control to accept.”

“Not an easy thing for anyone to accept from someone they love,” he said seriously. “That’s part of why SEALs have an eighty percent divorce rate.” Then, as if realizing how the statement might be taken, he shifted in the chair. “Not that I’m saying that you love me, or have given marriage any thought…”

He shook his head as she lifted a brow, her lips quirking. “Yeah, you’re just sitting there holding the shovel, aren’t you?”

“Well, it’s much more fun to watch you dig the hole with your bare hands.”

He snorted, picked up her empty plate and dumped them both in the sink. For the next few moments, she watched him efficiently wash and rinse, stacking their plates and cups neatly in the dish drainer. Then he dried out the sink with a towel, polishing the faucet.

God, she was in trouble if just watching the man do dishes could make something in her stomach yearn, her heart soften. Rising, she slipped her arms around him, pressing herself against his back. She didn’t say anything, just held him, and he put the towel aside, closing his hand over her linked fingers.

“Something is happening with us, Max. Today was a breakthrough moment, and we both see it. If you agree this isn’t a casual thing for either of us, and you believe not only in being prepared, but in preparing those around you, then it needs to be talked about.”

She had him there, because tension thrummed through his muscles. She rose on her toes to put her lips against the back of his neck, then slipped down again, still holding him to her.

“I think there is a difference between chasing a demon ‘down range’ and chasing one in your own backyard. It might require a different level of disclosure at some point. If you get hurt, and I was close enough to stop it from happening, I’m going to be extremely angry with you. I gave you a sign of my trust four weeks ago. I didn’t do it well, but I did it. Can you give me something?”

He sighed, the broad chest lifting and falling beneath her touch. He turned in her arm span, putting his hands on her hips and leaning back against the counter, stretching his legs out on either side of her. “My mother was killed as an example to those in the neighborhood who stood up to the gangs, Janet. She was beaten to death. My sister…they raped and then beat her as well, only she lived. In a way. She had brain damage, part of it psychological, a lot of it physical. All of it apparently permanent. While I was away on a mission to keep our world safe, they weren’t safe. Not even close. If you’ve been doing your SEAL research, you saw the movie where they said that a SEAL is always trying to get home, that home’s the whole point of it. But my home was gone when I came back.”

“And the men who did it?”

“There were three of them. Two are no longer an issue. The ringleader went underground.”

She studied his face, the calm stillness of his gray eyes, the set of his jaw. The same way he’d understood never to use her real name, she knew not to speak aloud the possibility of what had happened to those two.

“I expect the police will eventually find him.”

“He’s a cold file at the bottom of a stack of files, because he left the country. Went underground, lost in the network of Mexican cartels. And even if they do luck out and find him, I know how it works. His mommy won’t have held him enough, he was poor and misunderstood, it’s racial profiling…whatever bullshit they want to concoct to excuse his actions. There’s right and wrong, and there’s the law. Sometimes they agree, but a lot of days they don’t. You know that as well as anyone.”

Yes, she did. She touched his face. “There’s this peculiar thing that happens, Max, when a Domme gets attached to a sub. She considers him hers. Her property, and she expects her property to take very good care of himself.”

His hands slid up her back. He pressed her close as he wound his hand in her hair, clipped back in a tail now so when he caressed the strands, he tilted her head back, his lips coming so close to hers they hovered an inch apart when he finally spoke.

“What about the sub? What if he considers her his as well? Does that happen?”

“All the time. Though some are more blatant about it than others.” She liked the strength of his arms, the determination in his expression. She wanted everything about him, even the things they’d just discussed that disturbed her. They were all part of who he was. “So take me to work, and promise me when I’m not around to do it, you’ll guard that fine ass of yours.”

“Sounds like my fine ass is yours, not mine. Mistress.” He spoke the last word against her lips. The way it vibrated through her body told her, amazingly enough, he was going to prove he was more than capable of taking her once more before they headed to work.

In some ways, the man truly was a god. But in some very harrowing ways, he was all too mortal and fragile.

* * * * *

There were physical repercussions to doing all that on a work day, but she knew adrenaline could carry her through until quitting time. What she hadn’t expected was how thoughts of the past several hours could utterly destroy her focus. Her skin bloomed with heat whenever she thought of him, her heart rate elevating like a tiny mouse scurrying up her chest wall. She’d laugh at herself about it, but there was a poignant ache in that same vicinity. She’d started down a path from which she couldn’t return. She was falling for him, and she was pretty sure he felt the same way.

Her mind kept revisiting the morning in delicious detail. That first touch, curling her fingers in his shirt, moving into his embrace, the two of them simply holding one another. Max’s smile. Him calling her “ma’am” in that slow, sexy way. How he’d lifted her up so effortlessly against the shower wall, his body flexing inside the clamp of her arms and legs, the powerful urgency in his expression. The unsettling issue of him pursuing the last man responsible for his mother’s death.

She’d been in a situation where she couldn’t rely on the police to save her from a violent criminal, and she’d employed macabre measures to handle it. She couldn’t throw stones. Beyond that, she worked for a man who clearly felt the way Max did. If anyone ever harmed Savannah or Angelica, Janet had no doubt the last thought on Matt Kensington’s mind would be calling the police. The perpetrator would die wishing that the police had had time to get to him before Matt had. And every man of his executive team would help him, because they shared that same code.

“Janet, can you read back that last point?”

Speak of the devil. She shook herself out of her thoughts to find Matt gazing at her from the head of the boardroom table. Though his expression was bland, she sensed something quivering beneath the surface. Amusement? Whatever it was, Peter, Jon, Ben and Lucas seemed to have a dose of it as well, because their body language and expressions were almost identical to Matt’s.

She glanced down at her shorthand. “Production in Costa Rica is up fifty percent. Peter anticipates that trend to continue while handling the Porter account, justifying the equipment upgrade—”

“I win,” Ben pronounced. He stretched across the table, collecting the five poker chips that had appeared in the center of the table as if by magic. As he pocketed them, he gave Lucas a grin. “You were close, but I hit it dead on. She tuned us out four bullet points ago.”

The K&A lawyer glanced over at her, his green eyes twinkling. “You completely missed our plans to hire tranny prostitutes for the Johnson reception.”

“And the policy change that requires all female employees to wear string bikinis whenever the predicted high is over eighty,” Peter put in helpfully.

An unprecedented flush climbed up her cheeks. “I apologize,” she said stiffly. “I—” She cleared her throat. “Did I miss any action points?
Real
ones?”

“No. We were generally discussing the direction for South America, but it was more brainstorming than anything.” Jon offered the information kindly, which was almost worse than Ben’s teasing. He studied her with his serious midnight-blue eyes, enhanced by the fall of dark, silken hair around his sculpted face. “Nothing concrete.”

“I apologize, sir,” she repeated to Matt, but she directed her next words to all of them. “It won’t happen again.”

Matt nodded. Straightening, she put her pen to paper. “Now, how many tranny prostitutes will you need?”

The men chuckled, easing her embarrassment, though she felt Matt’s scrutiny lingering. A few minutes later, they concluded the meeting. As the other men rose, heading out of the boardroom to start their respective schedules, she wasn’t surprised to see Matt motion to her to stay.

Ben brought her a napkin that held three mini-muffins and a cup of coffee. Since she never ate during the monthly staff meeting, the men always saved her three of the muffins that Ben baked himself. She saw the chocolate chip, blueberry and raspberry flavors she preferred, while Ben put down a fresh black coffee next to it.

Giving her a nod, he added, “Go with a baker’s dozen on those prostitutes. It’ll take that many to give Johnson’s attorney an apoplexy, and I’m looking for a full-on drop-dead stroke so he’s no longer a thorn in my ass. See if you can get us a group discount.”

“I’ll work on that,” she said dryly.

He gave her a wink. When he left, he closed the door after him, so she and Matt were alone. Rising, she moved to the head of the table, taking a seat at Matt’s right. It wasn’t unusual for him to have her stay behind to dictate additional notes or correspondence, but she knew that wasn’t the case today. She folded her hands in her lap. “I am sorry, Matt. I know I’m distracted today.”