Knight 01 Knight And Play (11 page)

The woman was really moaning now, and splayed herself even wider with her fingers. Sophie couldn’t take her eyes off her glistening sex, her lips spread for that greedy mouth.

“So wet…” Lucien breathed. “Are you wet, too Sophie?”

Sophie clutched his cock harder. Yes. 

“Imagine how you’re going to feel when I lick your clitoris like that.”

Sophie tensed, too lost in animalistic sensation to feel embarrassed. The woman’s tongue dipped inside her lover.

“Imagine how it’s going to feel…” he pushed himself hot and hard against her hand, “when I fuck you, Sophie.”

The woman’s hips bucked against her lover’s face, and Lucien’s teeth sank into Sophie’s ear.

“Come on. Show’s over.”

“I guess we can cross ‘make you watch a live lesbian sex show’ off that list, too,” Lucien said dryly, as he guided her along the corridor. Sophie couldn’t look at him. Her head was spinning. Too many sexual images. Too many positions. Too many emotions she hadn’t expected and didn’t know how to handle. She was ashamed of her reaction back there in that room, embarrassed by the fact that she’d found it so erotic.

Lucien was pushing her too far. She had no clue who she was any more, how to act, how to return to normal after he’d done with her.

“Please, Lucien. Can we go back now?”

She turned to him, and his eyes scanned her face for a few silent seconds.

“Enough for now, huh?” He cupped her cheek.

“More than.” Sophie said, her throat suddenly clogged with tears. This was all wrong, wrong, wrong.

“I want to go home.” Sophie gathered her bag from Lucien’s bedroom as soon as they reached his suite. She was weary more than tired, jaded more than enlightened, and she wanted to be alone to keep her own counsel.  Lucien seemed to rob her of the ability for rational thought; one touch and her resolve melted like an ice cube faced with a blowtorch. She didn’t want to melt any more. If only she could stay cool and composed around him, then none of this would have happened.

Lucien put his head on one side.

“You could always sleep here.”

Sophie shook her head and glanced away from him.

“I need to go home, Lucien.” She knew her voice sounded watery, probably because she’d had to force it past the tears that welled up in her throat.

Lucien looked as if he was going to say something but then thought better of it. He reached for his keys off the desk and tossed them up in the air.

“That’s all right.” He caught his keys and nodded towards the door. “I’ll drive you now.”

Sophie puffed out hard, relieved that he’d
chosen not to battle with her.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, following behind him as he locked the door and headed for the fire exit again. She gulped in lungfuls of cool night air as she clicked her way down the metal fire steps, beyond grateful that Lucien hadn’t steered her back out through the club. She couldn’t face all of that again tonight. 

He blipped the car and she slid into the safety of the leather interior, the glass and metal around her a welcome wall separating h
er from the debauchery beyond.

And then Lucien was inside with her, the grandmaster of all of the debauchery, and she wasn’t safe in the car, or anywhere. Because if Lucien was around, she wasn’t safe from herself.

They drove in silence, the car eating up the miles like candy. Sophie’s body ached, but her heart ached more. Everything was such a jumble in her head. She loved Dan. She wanted Lucien. Sex with Dan was… she squeezed her eyes together.
Sex with Dan was boring.
She just hadn’t known it until Lucien had stripped the scales from her eyes. Jesus, she hadn’t even had sex with Lucien, not properly, but he’d still excited her more in the last two days that Dan had in the last few years.

Her eyes slid to his profile as he watched the road, handling the sports car with easy expertise. Lights from street signs and shop fronts flashed multi- coloured shadows across the slopes and angles of his face. Neon greens, hot pinks, dangerous reds. Foreign, yet familiar. A beautiful stranger. He’d thrown on a battered leather jacket over his T-shirt, lending him the air of a louche model from an expensive magazine. He wore his beauty with no apology, just as he made no apology for the business he’d chosen for himself. He was a man totally at ease in his own skin, and seemed to live a life without compromise or convention. Sophie couldn’t help but envy him.

He eased the car to a stop outside her house; he hadn’t asked where she lived and it came as no surprise that he already knew. He’d taken one look at her and seemed to see her innermost secrets, some of which were so deep that she hadn’t even been aware of them herself.

“Home sweet home,” he murmured as he idled the engine. “Are you going to ask me in for coffee?”

The idea of Lucien inside her house, inside Dan’s house, horrified Sophie. To see him sit in Dan’s chair… drink from Dan’s cup… it was just too wrong. Inviting him over the threshold blurred all the lines, made him part of their marriage rather than in the distinct space Sophie had set aside for him in her mind.

“Or you could just ask me in for sex. I prefer sex to coffee.”

“Lucien…” she sighed and twisted her fingers in her lap. “Lucien, I can’t work for you anymore. This is all such a mess.” She shook her head and stared out of the window, lips pursed. “I can’t believe I’ve done any of this.”

He twisted to face her, but she refused to meet his gaze.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “The mistake would be for you to scuttle back under your rock and hide from who you really are.”

Anger licked hot inside her.

“Oh come on, Lucien. What do you
really
know about me?” This man didn’t really know her, not in any way that mattered. Their relationship had followed none of the conventional routes; he knew her intimately and yet barely at all.

But then there was the sex. Oh God, the sex.

“I know enough. I know you’ve felt more alive in the last couple of days than you have for a long time. You were on pilot light when you came to me. Now…” he shrugged. “Now, you’re blazing.”

Sophie closed her eyes against the tears that threatened. She wasn’t given to crying, but being around Lucien seemed to intensify all of her emotions. He definitely made her come ten times more powerfully than she’d ever known before. She groaned and pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes and rubbed hard.

She couldn’t lie. He was right. Maybe she had been drifting through her married life in a state of unknowing unfulfilment, but that didn’t excuse her behaviour. She cringed at the idea of herself in the club, in that room, watching those women have sex, with Lucien’s erection nestled in her hand.

“Go inside, Sophie, get some sleep.” He gunned the engine. “We start after lunch again tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

Sophie already knew enough to realise that there was little point in arguing with him. She needed to escape into the sanctuary of her own four walls, to get Lucien and his flash car off her driveway.

He clearly didn’t believe she could resist him.

He was wrong. She wasn’t going back to work at Knight Inc. tomorrow, or ever again.

Lucien watched Sophie walk up her garden path, dishevelled and delicious. He couldn’t help her fight the battle that raged inside her head right now; he understood that she needed to be alone tonight to work her feelings out for herself.

He turned the engine over and eased the car away without glancing back. She’d be back in his office come two o’clock tomorrow. She just didn’t know it yet.

Inside the house, Sophie locked the door and leaned her back against it, unsure her legs would hold her up much longer. She’d changed so much since she’d left home yesterday lunchtime.

The flashing red light on the answer-phone caught her eye, and she dragged in a sharp, painful breath.

It had to be Dan.
She crossed and sat on the floor next to the hall table and pressed the button, her head in her hands.

“Hey Soph…” Just the sound of his voice brought a heavy pain to Sophie’s chest. “It’s me… where are you, babe? I really wanted to hear your voice tonight, it’s been a fucking long day… I miss you… it’s all pretty crap here... the usual shit. Bob’s being a dick as usual with unreasonable demands and screwing up the negotiations… anyway..." he sighed audibly down the line, and Sophie squeezed her eyes tight shut.

"Wish you were here. Or I was there. Whichever… Love you, babe.  See you soon, yeah?”

The message clicked off, and Sophie gulped for air as tears streamed down her face. She reached up and pressed rewind, hearing more from Dan’s lengthy silences than his words. He sounded desolate.

Where had she been when he’d needed to hear her voice?
She checked the recording time on the machine.
Eight o’clock.
Fresh hot tears of shame coursed down her cheeks. She couldn’t bear to think of Dan standing somewhere, alone, hoping she’d pick up, when all along she’d been at The Gateway Club letting Lucien fuck her with his big silver vibrator. She wanted to scratch her own eyes out with shame as she headed straight upstairs, shedding her clothes as she went and chucking them in a ball on the landing. All except for her knickers, which were still in Lucien’s pocket.

She swallowed hard, sick with disgust at herself as she stepped under the steaming shower. For well over ten minutes she stood stock-still with her face turned up into the sting of the spray, hoping it could wash away her shame along with the film of sweat that still lay on her skin from the club.

She was sleazy.
She squeezed half the bottle of shower gel into her hands and scrubbed herself, gritting her teeth against the sensation of her hands on her breasts. Even touching herself brought back uncomfortable memo
ries of Lucien’s hands on her.

"No. No. No."
The sound wrenched out of Sophie’s chest, an animal cry of frustration as she thumped her fists against the tiled wall. She refused to let the memory dictate that it had felt good. It should have been hideous because he wasn’t Dan.

Tears mingled with the shower spray on Sophie’s face as she soaped her body harshly. She was shabby, and filthy, and she’d made a mockery of her wedding vows.
And for what? A fumble with a stranger in a sex club? What kind of woman did that make her?
How had Lucien so effortlessly managed to reduce her to her sexual essence, to reveal a woman inside that she didn’t even recognise? A woman with kinks and perversions, a woman without sexual inhibition or respect for the sanctity of her marriage.

But then, wouldn’t
any
woman have crumbled as easily, faced with the Viking force of Lucien Knight and his crusade for the sexual liberation of unfulfilled wives?

Wouldn’t the threads of
anyone’s
relationship have been unpicked by the nimble fingers of such a beautiful, charismatic man?

Wouldn’t
every
woman have discovered her dark, carnal side when faced with Lucien? Or was she just an emotional lightweight?

Burdened by guilt, Sophie slid down the wall and let the shower rain onto her bowed head. It was hopeless. No amount of water could cleanse away the self-loathing from her skin and her self.

It didn’t even matter at that moment that Dan might be screwing someone else, because the horrible truth was that it would have changed nothing. From the moment she’d kissed that envelope and posted off her job application, Sophie had set the seal on her affair with Lucien Knight.

She passed out soon after her head hit the pillow, exhausted physically by Lucien and mentally by guilt. She’d expected to toss and turn, so was surprised to find herself blinking against the spindly fingers of dull morning light as they crept between the hastily dragged-together curtains.  

The alarm clock beside the bed informed her that it was a little after nine. She could get up, but her bones and her heart felt too heavy. She wanted to close her eyes and stay in bed, in her own bed, until she felt like herself again.

How long would that take? A couple of days? A few weeks? A lifetime? Sophie turned on her side and pulled the quilt over her shoulder, rolling herself into a cocoon against the outside world. She might not be able to spend forever in bed, but she could damn well spend this morning there, and this afternoon too if she felt like it, because she had no intention of going anywhere near Knight Inc.

Had Derek already filled her old job?
The idea of going back, cap in hand to him, made Sophie burrow even deeper into the quilt with misery, but at least it would be a step towards pulling her life back from the brink of disaster. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe deeply. In. Out. In. Out. Sleep crept back through her bones, and Sophie relaxed gratefully into it. In. Out. In. Out.

And that was when the telephone rang.

Sophie sat on the bottom stair and pressed rewind on the answering machine for the third time. Dan’s secretary’s panic-tinged voice broke the silence again.