KAGE (KAGE Trilogy #1) (31 page)

Kage left the octagon with no fanfare or theatrics. This was a private show, not one of the pay-per-view extravaganzas I was used to watching. I sat quietly, studying the injured fighter as he got to his feet, sensing the crowd moving out of the seats and away from me. Then Aldo was standing beside me, pulling something from inside his jacket, and handing me a sealed envelope with my name scrawled across the front in a messy hand.

Did Kage write this?
After all we’d done, I still didn’t know what his handwriting looked like.

I tore open the very end, careful not to damage the writing. Inside was a sheet of notebook paper with one sentence written on it.

“That ass is mine.”

With my heart pounding like a war drum, I reached into the envelope and pulled out the key card to Kage’s apartment.

Aldo waited beside me, looking respectfully away as I read my message. When I stood up, he led me back to the Land Rover without a word and drove me home, with Aaron riding shotgun as always. This time I barely noticed the opera music. I was too busy fretting over what was about to happen when Kage came home.

20

I THINK I can safely say I’d never experienced true anticipation before that night. Time was a taunting beast in the room with me as I sat naked on Kage’s sectional.

Had I ever been so naked in my entire life?

My skin was hyper-sensitive to the velvety feel of the sofa’s upholstery. In fact, I was hyper-sensitive to everything. The light, which I’d intentionally kept low, still seemed too bright. The air felt much cooler than normal, causing me to shiver a little. And the subtle sounds of Kage’s empty apartment that normally went undetected were unnaturally loud. In the kitchen, the ice maker churned out a few pieces of filtered ice. The Xbox hummed from its shelf in the media cabinet. Once I thought I may have heard the elevator making its way to the penthouse floor, and that little tease in particular was tough to handle.

After an hour of waiting, my nerves were shot. How long would I have to wait? What would he do to me when he got there? Did he have a key card, or had he given me his only one? What if someone else came to the door, and I answered it in my birthday suit? Because I didn’t dare answer it any other way. Didn’t want there to be any question about whether or not I wanted Kage. I was ready.

By the time I finally heard the elevator arrive for real, my hands were a little shaky. I thought I would pass out listening to his footsteps approach the door and stop in front of it. I waited for a knock, but instead I heard a card slide through the electronic lock. It clicked, and the door swung open.

Kage strode in wearing his faded red t-shirt, and a pair of threadbare jeans that hung low enough to reveal his boxers. His hair was still knotted at the top of his head, though a few strands had worked their way loose. Without a word, he stepped out of his shoes at the door, pulled his t-shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. The jeans came next. He worked the sexy button fly with nimble fingers as he approached.

He came to a stop directly in front of me where I sat on the sofa, and I looked up at him, waiting.

“Open your mouth,” he said, pushing his pants to his hips and bringing out his cock. It was already hard, the head swollen and flushed.

I did as he said. Opened my mouth wide, anticipating the taste of his cock— a taste I had already memorized by heart. My own dick waxed and waned through varying degrees of hardness since I’d received his note. Hell, since before that if I was honest. When I really thought about it, it seemed it had been that way since I’d gotten my first glimpse of Michael Kage.

He bent over the sofa, grasping the back with one hand and leaning on it for support, and fed his cock impatiently into my waiting mouth. He wasn’t gentle. He shoved it down my throat until I choked and pulled back, only to shove it in again just as hard.

It reminded me of his performance in the ring, only now I was the mouse. The barbaric look in his eyes was still there, though now it was tinged with desire— and something else. Something that gave me hope and made my heart seize in my chest.

Kage was relentless, needy, leaning even farther in as I instinctively pulled back for breath. But I didn’t want him to stop. I loved it. Loved it when he was rough. Because I was learning that the more he needed me, the rougher he got. And tonight he needed me bad.

He pushed me down onto my back on the sofa, then stripped off his jeans and underwear. When he was naked, he climbed on top of me and straddled my chest, pinning my shoulders to the sofa. Then he knelt up over me and forced his cock rudely into my mouth. All I could do was take it and suck it, looking up at him with watering eyes as he loomed over me and labored.

His face was tight with lust, as if he might lose control at any moment. But he was strong, and I knew he wasn’t about to let go until he was good and ready. If he could choreograph a fight against a skilled opponent with a hundred grand on the line, he could damn sure control himself in bed.

He fucked my mouth with long strokes, not giving me a chance to speak. All I could do was grunt and whimper around him as he watched me closely with his shrewd, calculating eyes.

“My sweet college boy,” he said in a reverent voice, reaching down with one hand and running his fingers through my hair.

He was choking me with his cock, but loving me with his touch and his words. It was the most cherished I’d ever felt, being used and loved at the same time, being needed so fiercely.

After a moment, he slipped his hand under my neck and cupped the back of my skull with his large hand. He lifted my head off the sofa so that it was at nearly a ninety-degree angle, and fucked my mouth deep and slow, using his hand to keep my head still. It was a lot like dirty boxing. I would have told him so if I could have spoken.

He didn’t keep me that way for long, though. He sensed the very moment when I’d had enough, and he released my head back down to the sofa and pulled out. My mouth and his cock were both over-wet with saliva, and he rubbed the slicked head against my battered lips. Back and forth he dragged it over my mouth, watching me with those lust-filled eyes.

“Get to the bed,” Kage said finally, and he stood and let me up. I knew what was about to happen. Knew what that look in his eyes meant. I had to get my bearings as I made my way to his room and climbed onto the bed with shaky legs.

I laid back on the bed and spread my legs, reaching down to pump my cock as I watched him approach. Then I bit my lip, gave him my best come hither look, and surprised myself with my first words of the evening. “You didn’t shower. I can smell you on me.”

“And that gets you off?”

“Yes,” I whispered, still working myself, knowing I needed to stop soon. I was dangerously close to hitting that point when coming was too much of a temptation to stop. “I didn’t shower, either,” I said.

The more time I spent around Kage, the more his scent aroused me. I wondered if it was the same for him.

“You always smell sweet.” He laughed darkly. “I smell like sweat, blood and fear. But I wanted you to smell it on me, Jamie. I wanted you to smell it on me the first time I fuck you. So you’ll know who I really am. I need you to know me.”

“I do know you,” I said. “And you’re perfect.”

“Baby, don’t be naive. I’m a killing machine. The only things that separate me from the inside of a jail cell are a referee and a bell.”

I dropped onto my back, staring up at those same rafters that had shifted and danced in hallucinations that seemed so long ago. “All I know is I want to be with you.”

Kage climbed on top of me, planking up onto his elbows and lowering his body so that we were touching from hip to toe. Our cocks aligned against each other, and nothing had ever felt so good or so right.

His stubble scrubbed against my cheek as he lowered his head to whisper in my ear, “Last chance to run.”

I smiled and wound my arms around his neck. “Why would I want to run?”

He peeled my arms from around his neck and secured them above my head with one strong hand gripping my wrists. “Because I want to hurt you.”

At the sound of his words, my eyelids fluttered shut, and a dark need began to unfurl in my belly like an infinitely-repeating fractal. It was fear and desire all mangled together, because I knew in an instant that I would do anything for him. Anything he asked of me. And what he was asking was to let him work his aggression out on me.

He kissed me, licking along my lips, teasing my tongue with his, and finally biting my bottom lip hard enough to make me yelp.

Still holding my wrists just above my head, he slid off to the side of my body and took my nipple into his mouth, sucking on it and scraping his teeth along the sensitive sides of the tiny bud until I was breathing heavily. Then he spit into his hand and reached down between my legs, bypassing my dick and my balls and going straight for my hole.

His prize.

He lubed me up, rubbing his fingers around the outside and just on the inside, barely breaking the surface. I started to contract the muscle, loving the stimulation of the tip of his finger barely moving in and out. I knew there was going to be pain, but this didn’t hurt at all. Not this part.

All the while, he continued to worry my nipple with his lips and his teeth. It was as if there was an electric wire that stretched from my nipple to my asshole, and every time scraped his teeth along my flesh, my muscles would tighten around his finger in response.

“Christ… Kage. That feels so good.” I couldn’t hold the words back. He had said he wanted to hurt me, but everything he’d done had brought me nothing but pleasure.

My head rolled loosely on my shoulders, the only part of my body that was relaxed. The rest of me was coiled tightly around the epicenter of my desire— right at the base of my straining cock. Tingling waves of heat and tension radiated out from that one spot, and all I could think was
more, more, more
.

“This is mine now,” Kage said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t share.”

“Me, neither.”

That made him smile.

Getting up onto his knees, he rolled on a condom, and grabbed a bottle of lube from the bedside table. He poured a pool of it into his cupped palm and then very slowly fucked his own fist, coating every inch from the tip to the root. All I could think was,
That’s about to be inside me.
It made me nervous, because my ass was virgin territory, and his wasn’t exactly a beginner-level size dick.

He noticed my trepidation and smiled. “This is going to hurt. Probably a lot.” He rubbed the remnants of the slick liquid all around my entrance, and I gasped when one of his fingers slipped easily up inside me. “But you’re going to love it.”

I believed him, because I wanted it so much. I’d never wanted anything more.

He crawled right up between my legs, bent one of my knees, and draped it over his arm. The other one he left sprawled on the bed. I looked up at him, scared, and felt myself tense up. He pressed forward, positioning the head of his dick at my entrance and using the weight of his body to push— not going in, but almost. He repeated the action several times, slowly, methodically gaining position within my body. He was loosening me bit by bit, until finally he just went right in.

Kage let out a long, agonized groan as his cock slid in. He squeezed his eyes shut momentarily, as if sheer willpower was the only thing keeping him from losing it.

When the head of his cock popped past the initial resistance of the outer band of muscle, my cry was loud enough to be heard outside the front door of the apartment. But then he was in, and as I adjusted to the sensation of being filled so uncomfortably full, my body began to respond. I wiggled on it just a little, then bit my lip against the strong, pleasurable ache.

“Open your eyes, Jamie,” Kage said in a gruff voice. I opened my eyes and stared up at him. God he was beautiful, looming over me with that powerful body. More strands of hair had worked free of their knot and were faming his face. “I want you to see me,” he said. “I don’t want you pretending I’m someone else.”

“There is no one else but you.” I wrapped my fingers around his slick biceps and squeezed, thrilling at the feel of those strong muscles moving beneath my hands.

“There better not be,” he growled. “Do you feel me? Feel how hard I am inside you? This is what you do to me.”