Willing Sacrifice (Knights of the Board Room) Page 21

  She’d told him he was different, because he’d been to her home, engaged her in an environment different from the club. In turn, he’d pulled a Pretty Woman moment, insisting that was just “geography”. Fuck, he really needed to stay away from late night television.

  On the day she’d killed Jorge, it had taken her a trip to the border and then twenty miles after that to feel everything that she’d done to escape. She’d planned and committed cold-blooded murder. Then, on top of that, she’d butchered the body. Most people couldn’t countenance either act, let alone execute them. He knew up close and personal the difference between taking out a man through the sights of a rifle, and holding him against your body as you cut his throat. Feeling how hard he struggled against his fate, the way the soul slipped away when he lost.

  Janet had shared the terrible story with him, a story he assumed no one but Matt Kensington knew. That had been her additional offering to show him he was different.

  Yet, in the end, she’d shut him down just like she’d shut down one of her subs. That might be true, but he had no doubt he was the asshole here. He’d basically proven what she’d said. He’d rushed the boundaries, taken advantage of those shields being down. It was an unforgivable breach, he was sure. He’d fucked it up at every level, because he’d wanted it too much. He’d stirred the shark-infested waters, but it was his own demons that had made him crash and burn.

  So that was clear enough. But was it the finish line? Was their pleasurable interlude a short-term thing, now over, just as she’d predicted from the first?

  If she felt that way, he had no doubt she would have made a move toward closure within twenty-four hours. But five days passed, and that didn’t happen. And his feelings toward her didn’t dim in the slightest. If anything, they became even more excruciating.

  The simple truth was he wasn’t done with it, and apparently she wasn’t either.

  We both feel it’s worth it, because neither of us has backed off yet.

  The problem was, he had no course of action. No matter from which angle he considered it, he came up with nothing. It suggested the ball was in her court, and he needed to wait her out. She’d said that as well, hadn’t she?

  He was forced to face the fact he had to do something utterly foreign to his nature. Nothing. He had to wait for her.

  At the end of that first week, he sent her a text. I’m here, Mistress. I’ll wait. And then he hunkered down into his daily schedule, dedicating his energy to not going out of his fucking mind while he waited.

  * * * * *

  Janet stood on the nature trail, gazing up through the leaves. She should have worn gloves, because her hands were cold, but if she decided to use the park’s fitness area, she’d get warm. For now she watched the leaves play with one another in pretty patterns above her head, listened to the birds chirping to one another. She kept her mind still. She really was in unfamiliar waters here. It would have made her laugh, but too much was weighing down her heart, churning in her stomach. She wondered if, when Max went into dangerous situations, it was anything like this. Every detail planned, yet if one small piece went awry, all of it could fall apart, such that he had to be ready for any contingency, adapt as the circumstances changed.

  He came down the trail at an impressive clip, given that she knew at this point he’d already run five miles that took him through the marsh, by the river. Though he was in that mental workout zone, she was wearing a red fleece pullover and black exercise leggings. The red caught his attention, as planned. His gaze touched on her, probably expecting she was another insanely early jogger taking a break, then he locked on, recognizing her.

  She’d only seen him at a distance for four weeks, and not that often. They’d both managed it that way, and she’d been impressed by his understanding of the nature of their détente. I’m here, Mistress. I’ll wait. A pause in their chess game, but possibly not an end to it. Game sounded too frivolous, especially given that the word had launched their argument, but battle was too much the other way.

  She watched him slow to a walk. His hair was damp on his neck, and he wore T-shirt and sweats on the body she knew intimately. With his gray eyes fixed on her, the plans she had unraveled. And not just because she couldn’t hold it together in the face of how much she felt, being alone with him again at last.

  Initially, she’d been angry with him, with his typical male, overinflated testosterone reaction to her wanting him to back off. But then, as she was able to settle the waters of her past to a deceptive placid surface again, she’d thought a lot more about the scenario, things they’d both said and felt. And she’d known there was some truth to his words, but beyond that, there’d been an elusive and unexpected weight in her chest, a sense of regret and guilt she couldn’t define.

  The moment his gaze met hers, she couldn’t have said what it was in his expression that helped her find that meaning, but she did. She finally pinpointed what he’d been seeking from her that night. He hadn’t been able to properly express it either, and, as often happened in an argument when emotions were so raw, things had gotten blown out of proportion, truth lost in anger and hurt.

  She’d given him the story, yes, which seemed a huge concession, but if she’d been asked to report it to a police precinct, she would have delivered it the same way. And then she’d asked him to leave. In her world, the men who attracted her were managed, enjoyed, but never truly trusted. While it might have been unreasonable for him to demand that much from her so soon, she realized he hadn’t been looking for all or nothing, just a step in that direction. Something spontaneous, unplanned.

  From his expression, she thought he might be pleased to see her, but he was wary as well. Maybe he thought she was going to call an end to it here. Was that what he wanted as well? She quelled the despised insecurity. He hadn’t made that move in four weeks. Why would he want it now?

  He stopped, two feet between them, and didn’t say anything. She looked up at him, the rise and fall of his chest as he adjusted to the change in exertion, the dark-blond hair rumpled and spiked. He’d likely rolled out of bed and gone straight into his workout.

  “It’s a little early for a woman to be hanging out in the park alone,” he said at last. “Ma’am.”

  It was the ma’am that did it. As she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, he gave her a faint smile, though his eyes remained serious.

  “I have it on good authority this is where a Navy SEAL does his morning workout,” she managed. “I wasn’t worried.” Reaching out, not sure what she was doing, she curled her fingers into the fabric of his T-shirt. Then she’d latched on with the other hand as well. As she stepped closer, his hand rose, rested on her hip, drawing her in. She pressed her face to his chest, inhaling his scent. In a heartbeat, she was overcome with a sense of well-being so strong she shuddered with it. She’d missed him. Really, really missed him. And she had no words to convey that. Touch seemed inadequate, or at least she thought it might be, but when his other hand cupped her skull, she reconsidered.

  “I’m sweaty and nasty,” he said.

  “Yeah, you are. I tend to like my men that way.”

  He offered a tight chuckle, then his grip around her grew stronger. “You’re not here to end things, are you? Because that would be a shitty way to start my day.”

  “Well, I was, but since it doesn’t fit your schedule, I guess I’ll do it another time.” The band in her chest loosened further at that mild comment, which drove away any worry she’d had that he wanted to go that direction. “Max…”

  “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry in so many ways. I pushed too hard, too fast. You got deep inside me, quicker than I expected, and I reacted like a kid having his fucking ice cream cone taken away.”

  She shook her head against him. “No. You don’t need to say you’re sorry. You followed your gut, and your gut wasn’t wrong.” She took a deep breath, tilted her face up to meet his eyes. “Sharing that was very difficult for me, but I lock things
down when my emotions are involved. I let you in, but I shut you out at the same time.”

  “It’s an impressive skill. Very effective. Like being thrown on a bed of railroad spikes and being told you can leave as soon as you can get up.” He sighed, stopping her response to that. “Look, when bad shit happens, and it often does, I’ve learned not to get stuck in that moment; I use it to do better going forward. From what I see of your life, how you live it, you would have made a hell of a SEAL. If you weren’t a girl.”

  She made a face at him but then sobered. “I haven’t been a girl in a long time.”

  He touched her cheek then, stroking her hair. “The girl in that picture is still there. I know, because sometimes she makes me feel like I’m seventeen again.”

  He’d said she’d gotten deep inside him, but he had no idea how words like that could drive him into her soul, far deeper than she’d ever allowed anyone, even when she was naïve and innocent. Of course, the soul tended to lie at the bottom of a well, its depth determined by experiences, loss and regret, things that happened over the course of a lifetime.

  He cupped her jaw, his thumb stroking it as well as her throat. Tipping up her chin, he pressed his lips to hers, taking it deeper, deep as her soul itself. Her body melted into his, leaning into it in a way she’d never remembered herself doing. It was a surrender of sorts, no physical or mental part of her held apart, just a capitulation to that kiss, to the potential of what was between them. As the kiss deepened, she put her hands under his T-shirt, and he jumped like she’d hit him with a Taser.

  “Christ, woman, did you stick your fingers in ice?” He laughed against her mouth and everything became better, such that she chuckled as well. He hadn’t tried to remove her touch, merely reacted to it, and now she spread her fingers out wide, absorbing his warmth through her palms and digits.

  “Poor baby SEAL,” she teased. “Doesn’t like the cold.”

  “Trust me. The one thing SEALs avoid is the cold, because of all the times we can’t.”

  “So if I decide to move to Alaska, this relationship is over?”

  “So over. Of course, I’ve endured a lot of crappy weather to serve my country, and you’re at least as important as that.”

  His fingertips slid into her hair, caressing the sensitive back of her neck. The sensation spread over her throat, her jaw, sending pleasurable signals to everything below those points. She slid her cold hands from the small of his back into his sweats, tunneling under his boxers to enjoy his muscular ass, which flexed beneath her grip.

  Banding his arm around her waist, he hiked her up his body, still keeping up with that kiss, teasing her lips with his tongue, a nip from his teeth. She curved her legs around his waist and hips and found herself solidly seated on a growing erection. She gripped his broad shoulders.

  “Yeah,” he muttered against her mouth. “That’s all for you, baby. Now. I need you now.”

  In answer, she took the kiss to a more violent level, biting his lip. His mouth opened to her so she could delve deep, taste him. He tangled his hand in her hair, pulling her back just enough to survey their surroundings. Going off trail, he hiked swiftly up an incline. When he went over the rise, they were standing on a slope leading into deeper forest, the ground covered with leaves and moss. They were hidden from the main trail. When he laid her down on that natural bed, she was sure it would leave mud stains on her exercise clothes, but she didn’t care.

  He laid himself down on her and took up where they left off on that kiss. From her way of thinking, he could have stripped off her leggings right then, pushed down his sweats and plunged, since her pussy was already wet, but he gave her this. Jorge had wanted to be on top most of the time, reinforcing his power, so it wasn’t a position that captured her fantasies. Until Max. Rather than feeling suffocated, this felt as natural as the earth beneath her. The earth was penetrated by a tree’s roots, yet the earth was also the thing that kept the tree strong.

  He moved to her throat, then down, unzipping her jacket and cupping her breasts under the stretch yoga top. It had a built-in bra, no padding, so he was able to nuzzle her, let her feel the moist heat of his mouth as he suckled her through the fabric. She moved restlessly against him, wrapping her legs high on his hips again. When she rubbed her needy core against him, he responded by pressing his hardness against it.

  “Too many clothes,” she whispered in his ear. “I want you inside me, Max.”

  He worked his way down her body, impressing her with the way he caught her waistband in his teeth, ran his tongue beneath it, stimulating her further before he pulled the leggings down to her ankles. He left them there, her shoes holding them on as he shifted his body inside that closed triangle, his calves beneath the stretch of her leggings holding her ankles together. He guided her thighs back up around his hips again, so now her shoes, leggings and the limbs they contained rested against the backs of his knees. It was as if her legs were bound, but with him inside that space, she had him captured as well.

  She was impressed by his cleverness, but they were both in too urgent a state to waste it on words. Putting her hands on his ass again, she pushed the sweats down, thumbs under the boxers, and he helped, getting the cloth past his turgid cock. At the first touch of the heated steel organ against her, she reached between them to close her hands on it.

  “On your knees above me, Max. I want to see you.”

  She wasn’t consciously issuing an order, the desperate desire in her voice driving her. She had to look at him. He complied, her thighs widening to give him room to stand up on his knees, his knees pressed against the inside of hers, his cock jutting up. She stroked the shaft, fingernails scraping over the testicle sac, watching all of it respond to her with a convulsive movement.

  “Shirt…if you’re not too cold.”

  He removed it, and her gaze coursed over the skulls-and-trident tattoo on his side, then back down that arrow of hair to the groin. His fingers whispered over her thighs, her knees, then they drew back. His hands opened and closed, as if he was warring with something. Her gaze lifted to him at the moment he decided. Lifting his hands, he laced them behind his head, burning gaze fixed on her face. He’d just given her total access to him.

  She swallowed, pushing herself up on her elbows to press her mouth against his hard abdomen, his hipbone. She kept one hand wrapped around him, finger rubbing over the damp slit, grip tightening as she slid up and back down. She could smell that heady scent of semen, male arousal. When she turned her head, tasted him, sucking on just the head, working her tongue around the rim, he let out an oath. His thighs trembled, but he held fast as she moved back to his stomach, let her other hand roam over his chest, down his sides, back to his hip, knuckles brushing the delectable ass again.

  “Marking your territory, Mistress?” he asked in a husky voice.

  He was encouraging her possession, something she hadn’t expected from him. Looking up at him, hands behind his head like that, she knew there was only one answer to give.

  “Yes.”

  His eyes flamed hotter in response. She eased herself back to the ground, letting her other set of fingertips trail down his thigh. When she released his cock, she gave him back the same gift. Deliberately, she laid her hands over her head, shooting him a look of raw need and challenge wrapped together.

  “Now you do the same.”

  His hands dropped. One braced him on the ground at her shoulder while the other gripped the base of his cock. He guided himself into her, measured, deliberate, keeping his gaze on her face the whole time. So she knew he was seeing the pleasure that suffused her features, the way she bit her lip, how her hips lifted to his, taking him in deep. Wrapping her legs high on his hips again, she tightened them, drawing him in farther. She got lost in his gray eyes as he settled on her, elbows on either side of her head, and began to pump his hips into her. Slow, steady, a rhythm that she met with her own body. As her arousal built, the lift of her hips became more demanding. And then he really be
gan to thrust hard.

  She let out a groan at the painful pleasure of it. “Max,” she gasped. Mine. Mine. Mine.

  Remarkably, she was already spasming around him. She hadn’t let herself come these four weeks they’d been apart, though in her bed at night her body had burned for him, recalling him there, in the hot tub, on her couch. She’d even fantasized about taking him on the hood of his truck in the parking deck. She’d open his jeans, straddle him as he leaned back against his windshield. His fingers would dig into her hips, eyes hidden behind the sunglasses but jaw rock-hard, reflecting his absorption in their shared lust. Randall’s eyes would have popped out of his head, she was sure.

  Their gazes locked. “I missed you,” he said, the fierce truth of it in his voice.

  She reached up with trembling fingers and he kissed them, bit them when she lingered there, then she curled her hand over his shoulder. The feeling was building higher, hotter. “I missed you too. I won’t do that to you again.”

  “Damn right. I’ll come sleep under your window.”

  The challenge sparked her own. She reared up to capture his mouth as she squeezed down on him, savoring and pleasuring them both. His arm banded around her like steel, his other arm and her stomach muscles the only thing holding them both up, the anchor point in a spinning world. The smell of damp leaves, earth and forest mingled with Max as she prepared to let herself go.

  When she went over that precipice, she managed to make her own demand. “Come for me, Max.” Come for your Mistress. The one who wants to own you.

  She let out a glad cry as he obeyed, every muscle of that fine body beneath her legs and hands hardening, rippling, his face going concentrated and even fiercer. He groaned out his release, hips pistoning strong enough to push her into the earth. She let her head fall back, careless of the dirt and leaves. Cognizant of who else might be in the park, though, she turned her head to his forearm, pressed her mouth against it, her screams vibrating against his flesh.