Knight's Game (13 page)

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘You always have a choice,’ he said, clipped and curt.

She gave in to his cool stare and nodded.

‘Christ, dealing with you is like rewriting
The
fucking
Art of War
,’ he grumbled, leaning over and pulling open the drawer on the bedside table. Grabbing a foil-wrapped condom, he ripped it open.

‘Don’t use that. OK?’

About to toss away the foil, he shot her a startled look.

‘I don’t mean to be difficult.’

‘You could’ve fooled me.’

She was all huge, pleading eyes. ‘Just don’t. Please?’

He stared at her. ‘You’re killing me, babe.’ His jaw twitched, he swallowed hard – twice – the silence between them suffocating, his personal freedom at stake, every basic instinct screaming dissent. Then he swore softly, tossed the packet and condom back in the drawer. ‘I suppose if this is make-up sex, you get to make the rules,’ he said gruffly.

‘Thank you.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Hold the thanks. This might not take more than thirty seconds the way I’m feeling.’

‘I hope not. Sorry,’ she added quickly.

‘You better be. You’re the girl who never even came with Andrew or what’s-his-name. Don’t expect me to be on a time clock.’

‘Sorry. Really. You’re always wonderful.’

He finally smiled. ‘Polite humility? I’m impressed.’

‘And I’m grateful.’

‘You’re just grateful I’m better than Andrew.’

‘In a thousand different ways,’ she said sweetly. ‘Although speaking of Andrew, I have a question?’

‘Could it wait?’ If he was actually participating in a game of Russian roulette, he’d prefer a quick orgasm to compensate for the sword of Damocles hanging over his head. Shoving her into the middle of the bed, he pushed her down.

‘Andy tells me he’s in Greenland,’ Kate said, ignoring Dominic’s question, gazing up at him with a lift of her brows. ‘Did you do that?’

‘Maybe.’ Placing his hands, palm down, on either side of her arms, Dominic leaned over, swung his legs up and settled between her thighs in a smooth reverse push-up that showcased his swelling biceps. He nudged her legs wider.

‘He has a girlfriend there. Did you do that too?’

Guiding his erection to her slick, glossy sex, he stopped and looked up. ‘Shit. I wish I’d thought of that.’

‘So you really are managing my life?’

Intent on getting off, he eased the head of his dick forward just far enough to make his point. ‘What happens if I say yes?’ His deep voice was silken, assured. ‘Are you going to cut me off?’

‘Damn you,’ she whispered, stirring her hips faintly, so he slipped in deeper, so the delicious flesh-to-flesh friction burned away minor resentments. ‘As if I could.’

‘OK then, yes.’ After which he effectively ended the conversation by plunging hilt deep into Kate’s ripe, welcoming body with a business-like combination of finesse, authority and a seriously spectacular hard-on.

Dominic’s carnal groan was gut-deep and brute. Kate whimpered at the head-banger hysteria electrifying her senses.

A long, simmering silence fell.

‘You’re sure you don’t mind my insisting … on no condom?’ Kate’s voice, softly apologetic, broke the stillness.

Discarding a number of rude replies, Dominic reminded himself that he was currently snugly engulfed in the human equivalent of paradise and capable of a few seconds of politeness. ‘Of course I mind.’ Like he minded this conversation. ‘But my dick has trouble saying no to you.’

Kate smiled up at him. ‘That’s sweet.’

He sighed softly. ‘Look, babe, fucking you isn’t a real imposition. Although I might make you pay somewhere down the line for this goddamn gamble.’

‘You were willing to gamble last time,’ she reminded him. ‘How about I have a turn?’

‘It’s OK to make mistakes so long as they’re new ones. We keep making this one, baby, we’re going to be in trouble.’

‘I
am
an accountant. I can crunch numbers.’

‘Could we talk about this later?’ he said. ‘I’m having trouble focusing on more than one thing right now.’ Smoothly flexing his legs, he marginally withdrew, then swung his hips forward again and drove in until she was chock full and blissfully sighing, and he was wincing from a super sensory wallop to his nerve endings that made even calculated risks like this one worthwhile.

‘Later’s good.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ He laughed. ‘Am I doing something wrong?’

‘I felt that.’

‘Feel this, baby.’

And from that point on, he made sure that she no longer had breath to speak.

But she felt each slow, gliding, perfectly measured invasion
and gasped at the plunging depth of each powerful downstroke, the ravishing ripples spreading outward in a sumptuous wave of ecstasy, offering her consecutive glimpses of shining nirvana. She clung to him, his back muscles flexing and moving beneath her wide-spread fingers, the musky fragrance of his hair brushing her face, the warmth of his body offering palpable comfort and content after her weeks of deprivation. And panting, needy, obsessed, she trembled with longing, whimpered for release.

Her breath was warm on his shoulder, her impatient pleasure sounds a potent drug to his senses, stiffening his already rock-hard dick, powering his next plunging thrust, and the next and the next as he forced himself deeper, buried himself in her velvety warmth and ravished, seduced, dazzled her senses.

Until quivering and nearly unstrung, she looked up, opulent and flushed, her gaze half-lidded, and begged, ‘Please, please …’

His eyes wide and clear, he dipped his head, kissed her rosy cheek and whispered, ‘Anytime, baby.’ Then he smoothly took her over the edge in a billowing, sweet-scented delirium, followed with his own surging climax, spilling into her succulent sex, freely if not wisely.

Moments later, while Kate was still floating and aglow, he dipped his head, kissed the hollow behind her ear and in the grip of some manic lust said in a warm hum against her skin, ‘I’m going to jack off on your tits. You don’t have to move. This one’s for me.’

In one smooth motion he withdrew, rested his weight on his hands, swung his legs up and knelt, straddling her waist.

Just watching the easy, coordinated power, his muscles tense and flex, his lean athletic body move into position with such single-minded intent triggered an insurgent fascination deep in some evolutionary female reflex. Not only was his visual splendour arresting, Kate thought, but his determined wilfulness kindled a sharp, primal response that instantly jolted her senses. Her nipples immediately swelled on cue, hot desire blazed through her body, her sex throbbed in wistful longing and she moaned softly. Shameless in her greed.

Dominic smiled faintly. This
was
going to be short and sweet – no games, a purely selfish climax. Maybe next time. ‘You want some of this, baby?’ He gently stroked her taut nipples. ‘It looks like it.’ Effortlessly balancing a hair’s breadth above her ribs, years of surfing forging enviable leg muscles, Dominic drew his erection away from his belly, forced it down between her breasts, and said, ‘Hold it there.’

As her fingers closed hard around the swollen crest of his dick, he sucked in a breath. ‘Easy, easy, or this is going to be over in a hurry.’ Capturing the outer flare of her breasts in his palms, he pressed his hands together and her soft, resilient flesh framed his rigid length. ‘I got it now,’ he murmured.

His hair had fallen forward, obscuring most of his face, although with high-pressure sensation beginning to surge through his brain, he may not have seen her anyway. And
as her hands slipped away, he focused instead on tactile satisfaction. ‘Do you want my cum all over you? That’s not actually a question,’ he murmured, his lashes drifting downward, shutting out the world. Gently thrusting into the cushiony silk of her flamboyant cleavage, he eased back as the head of his dick touched her neck, then swung forward again and with a soft sigh, settled into a highly gratifying rhythm.

But ultimately the sound of Katherine’s frenzied breathing registered in the small portion of his brain not completely consumed by feverish sensation and he remembered that he wasn’t alone in his unremitting horniness. He didn’t sigh, although he would have liked to. Instead, he summoned his manners, or perhaps he cared enough about Katherine to summon them. ‘Here, baby,’ he said indulgently, taking her hands and positioning them. ‘You hold your tits. There, tight, like that, so I can feel it. That’s the way. Now you can come along for the ride.’ Gently squeezing a nipple with one hand, he reached back with the other, found her swollen clit, slid his finger deeper, targeted her soft, cushy G-spot and murmured, ‘How’s that? Feel good?’

Her wispy sigh ended in a soft, low groan. Beyond words at the moment, she nodded yes in the event it mattered to Dominic.

He got the message, slid in a second finger.

And she suddenly understood, as though the paradoxes of the world had been revealed to her, that feeling this intense pleasure had nothing to do with free will but with
the wilfulness of one Dominic Knight – who held her in thrall. Although he moved his fingers just then in delicious, lazy circles over her throbbing G-spot and that melancholy truth was quickly erased by a ravenous thrill that tore through her sex, raced up her spine and exploded in a sharp high cry.

Check one
, Dominic thought.

Then, since the game had changed and speed was no longer the issue, he moved his hips in long, slow strokes, taking his time. Indulging himself and her, bringing her up again, skilfully teasing her hard, pink crests, leaning down occasionally on his back stroke to suck on her engorged nipples, continuing to massage her swollen clit and G-spot, slowly, delicately, gently drawing one orgasm after another from her slick, throbbing sex. Until he finally said on a suffocated breath, ‘That’s it,’ covered her hands with his, exerted additional pressure and climaxed in a powerful, protracted, strung-out-to-the-max orgasm that rocked his world.

When his breathing was semi-restored and he knew where the fuck he was again, he flipped his hair out of his face, smiled down on Kate, and stroked her tousled curls in gratitude and content. ‘Christ, it’s good to have you back, baby. Better than anything. Past fantastic. Really.’ He shook his head; a quick reality check that this was still about sex. ‘Now, how big a mess did I make?’ He reached for a towel, then looked back and grinned. ‘Sorry about that.’ He wiped her cheek.

‘Not a problem,’ she said, returning his smile, beginning to recognize his leaps back from the edge. ‘You were good to me. I have no complaints.’

‘There you go. Two people with common interests. It must be karma.’

‘Or random fate,’ she purred, not knowing how long her personal paradise would last, but intent on enjoying every minute. ‘Either way, we win.’

‘Nick’s phone is turned off. What the fuck is going on?’

Max squinted at the bedside clock, quickly rolled out of bed. ‘Jesus, keep it down. You’ll wake Liv.’

‘Well, where the
fuck
is he?’

Only a slightly lower roar from Dominic’s CFO, Roscoe, back in San Francisco. ‘You woke me up at two in the morning to ask me that?’ Max muttered, striding away from the bed, not wishing to interrupt his wife’s sleep.

‘Nick always answers his phone. Is he dead and no one told me?’ Roscoe growled.

‘He’s in love,’ Max said, moving towards the bathroom.

‘So he can’t talk on his phone?’ The notion of Dominic in love was too preposterous to credit.

‘I’m guessing he’s busy fucking his sweetheart.’

‘Nick doesn’t have sweethearts. He doesn’t even understand the meaning of the word. So what’s he really doing?’

‘I’m serious. He has a sweetheart – or some equivalent word better matching his personal views on fucking.
Although, I wouldn’t be so sure he’s not learning the language of love. What do you think of that?’ Max grabbed his robe from the hook on the bathroom door.

‘I think you’re fucking
crazy.
’

‘I’m not but Nick might be … at least for the moment.’ Crossing the white marble floor, Max opened the connecting door to his office. ‘He’s in Singapore pursuing his dream girl. Now, granted,’ Max added, shrugging into his robe and making his way to a chair by the windows, ‘this lust or lovesickness or whatever might not last. But long story short,’ Max said bluntly, dropping into the chair, ‘our hard-nosed, pragmatic, emotionally distant CEO is currently way the hell over the edge. And I’m not exaggerating. Justin says Nick had him set up a job for Katherine in Singapore and he’s paying for it all, including her princely salary.’

‘Jeez, what the hell does she have that the other thousand didn’t?’

‘What she has is … she’s not like the other thousand. She’s not an ornament or a mountain-climbing companion. She’s a beautiful, sexy, small-town girl with a brain who doesn’t care about his money.
And
she walked away from him in Hong Kong.’

‘So it’s the bloody challenge,’ Roscoe said with disgust. ‘He can’t ever pass up a challenge. If there’s a mountain to climb, he’ll fucking climb it.’

‘That’s my guess.’

‘Then once he has her, he’s reached the summit and it’s
over. Which would be real fucking convenient because I need my phone calls answered.’

‘
Maybe
it’ll be over,’ Max said in a warning tone, squinting at the brilliant silver moon over Hong Kong harbour. ‘But Nick hasn’t touched a woman in a month. No sex clubs, no call girls; Vicky kept phoning in Paris and I had to tell her he was on safari and out of cell range. So I’m not completely sure where this is going. He’s not playing to past history.’

‘Christ, is he sick?’ Roscoe’s stridency gentled to a genuine concern. ‘You’re not saying that, are you?’

‘No, no, Nick’s health is fine. Although one of our Paris attorneys who hit on him and was rejected was spreading a different story in the office. I had a talk with her the minute I heard, and shut it down. We don’t need any rumours about Nick being sick. It doesn’t affect the stock price since Knight Enterprises is privately held, but gossip like that can be dangerous in terms of the company’s long-range plans.’