Willing Sacrifice (Knights of the Board Room) Read online

  She tilted her chin, met his eyes. “I’m self-aware enough to know that might be a coping mechanism rather than truth, but if you can find an illusion to bring balance to your reality, it makes every day possible, manageable. Right?”

  “Yeah, it does. Other things do that as well. Moments like this.”

  She had no disagreement with that. She laid her fingers on his lips. “I guess we need to be thinking about clearing out.”

  “Yeah.” But neither of them moved. She studied him, pondering, then realized there was nothing to think about. She simply refused to let go of him. “I want you to come home with me, Max. Share my bed tonight.”

  His gray eyes kindled with heat, telling her they’d be doing more than sleeping. Probably several times. She was going to need some painkillers in the morning. That was fine—she’d gladly swallow down a bottle of Advil to pay for a night like that.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  He stayed until Monday morning, something she hadn’t expected herself to offer. But he helped her prune and trim the shrubs, edged the walkway. They took strolls around the district, ate at small holes-in-the-wall restaurants that offered better food than opulent ones. When Saturday night came and they were sharing takeout on her living room floor, watching television, it seemed natural to invite him to share her bed once again. Especially when he carried her up there and gave her a memorable bedtime story.

  On Monday, he offered to take her to work, if she didn’t mind going by his place that morning so he could pick up clean clothes. She didn’t mind. She hadn’t minded waking up with him curved around her body, the smell of him on her skin, the lingering stickiness of his seed between her legs from the couple times they’d come together in the night. Her designer pillows had spent the weekend scattered about the floor of her bedroom like a flock of colorful sheep. There hadn’t been room on her bed for them and a sprawling, large man like Max. She liked the new look.

  Showering with him had been an indulgence that almost made her forget it was a workday. He’d given her sore back muscles a thorough massage under the jets. When he’d moved down to her lower back and hips, she’d let out a noise that he observed sounded close to orgasmic. He’d also knelt and sponged off her thighs, cleaning in between while she watched him, bemused, threading her fingers through his wet hair.

  He placed an almost chaste kiss on her mound, her clit, her labia, then suckled beads of water off her skin, tongue making slow, heated circles beneath the spray that had her gripping the wall bar and her thighs loosening. His hands slid up behind her buttocks, supporting her as he worked her up to a slow, decadent climax that sighed out of her body. He hadn’t asked for anything after that, simply standing to give her a kiss, letting her taste herself on his wet mouth.

  “Later,” he’d murmured, though he’d been hard against her abdomen, enough she rubbed against him, teasing. He’d turned away with a glint in his eye that promised he’d want to get back at her later for that. “We better get to my place if I’m going to have us to work on time.”

  When they arrived at his house, he parked her at his scarred kitchen table with an excellent cup of coffee they’d picked up at the corner, from a store with bars on the windows and graffiti on the outside walls. She sipped it, studying the dismal backyard he had, neatly mowed but otherwise devoid of flowers or even a decent shrub. No cover for an approach, she realized. He had a clear view of any of the neighboring houses, small shoeboxes like his own. He might have grown up poor, but she expected his mother in Texas had had at least a flower box, little touches to make even a poor house a home.

  Ah well. Inside his safe, all his guns, grenades and rocket launchers were likely arranged with the proper feng shui.

  She smiled into her coffee, then heard the sound of a vehicle stopping out front. From the roar of the diesel engine, she guessed an old pick-up truck. When she heard a door slam, she assumed a neighbor was picking up a carpool companion. However, a moment later, a large man strode into the backyard and onto the broken concrete walkway, headed toward the back door. While he moved confidently, she noted a hitch in his step, a slight limp.

  It was more than the clean-shaven jaw and close-cropped dark hair, handsomely peppered with silver, that told her this was one of Max’s brothers-in-arms. He had the same alpha-male-capable-of-handling-anything expression. She wondered if they ran them through a press at BUD/S graduation, stamping it on their faces.

  She was sitting in the corner nook, not visible until he opened the door and stepped in, but his eyes went to her immediately. She’d surprised him, she could tell, and she expected that didn’t happen often. “Sorry,” he said genially. “I didn’t realize Max had company.”

  “Not a common occurrence?”

  An amused look crossed his rugged features. “Honoring the bro code, I’d say that’s need-to-know, but you have eyes. What woman would come to this dump willingly? He didn’t kidnap you, did he?” He bent to look beneath the table. “No chains, but if you want to make a dash for my truck, I’ll get you to safety—and to a place that doesn’t have lingering eau-de-crack-house, what this place used to be.”

  When she chuckled, enjoying him, he offered his hand. “Dale Rousseau.”

  “Janet.”

  The pressure of his fingers and the direct look telegraphed another quality, one she’d seen often enough for her to guess she and Dale had something else vital in common. She decided to throw out a line and see if she was right.

  “So, did Max come to you for advice on how to deal with someone like you and me?”

  His slow smile told her she’d hit the target. “Lots of differences between a Master and Mistress. I hopefully told him enough not to get his ass chewed off. How’d he do with the information?”

  “He exceeded expectations.”

  “He always does.”

  She ran her gaze over him, a thorough appraisal of the broad shoulders, the fit body that looked solid and unstoppable as a Mack semi. When he shifted, the tilt of his head, the hitch in his step, brought the whole package together, and she realized he was familiar to her. She was almost certain he was an occasional regular at Club Progeny. Though he was always masked, his public sessions with submissives were memorable enough that Janet had watched more than one of them. He was thorough and overwhelming, an artist of their craft.

  She didn’t ask if he recognized her as well. With the level of detail Max brought to every encounter, if this man was of the same stripe, the decorative mask she wore for public play wouldn’t hamper his ability to pick her out of a crowd. “Would you like to share my coffee? I still have half a cup. I’m sure I can find a mug here to split it.”

  “There’s nothing in these cabinets except roach powder, though he usually keeps a supply of paper plates for takeout. Since he mostly swigs beer and bottled water, paper cups aren’t a priority.”

  She hadn’t gotten as far as snooping through Max’s cabinets, but when Dale crossed the spare couple strides to the nearest one and opened it, she saw he was right. Even to the roach powder. Her brow creased.

  Everything about Max’s house was neat, clean, well-ordered. But as she’d noted on her earlier visit, except for his clothing, a pocket change jar and a file cabinet for some paperwork, there was nothing personal in the house. Even the blankets on his bed looked like they’d been picked up from an Army-Navy supply store.

  “In all fairness, given the neighborhood and the fact he’s here so rarely, he doesn’t buy things that can be stolen. He doesn’t lock his doors, so he doesn’t have to worry about repairing broken windows.” Dale shook his head at her expression. “Don’t judge the boy too harshly for it.”

  “His mother and sister were his home,” she said.

  After a pause, during which he was clearly evaluating how much she knew about their common subject, Dale inclined his head. “Not sure he knows how to make one without them.”

  “Besides which, he’s still down range, isn’t he? Still w
orking the mission.”

  Dale’s eyes sharpened on her. She leaned forward. “Are you helping him find the last one?”

  “Are you going to tell me he shouldn’t be doing that, that he should be moving forward with his life?”

  “What do you think?”

  He sat down across from her. When she pushed her coffee over to him, he took a sip, handed it back to her. “You take it strong. No cream or sugar?”

  “I don’t like diluting the full strength of something meant to be strong.”

  “I’m liking you better and better. You won’t be able to talk him out of it.”

  “I get that. But did he try other options? The police?” She knew the hypocrisy of pointing it out, but she cared enough about him she asked anyway.

  Dale grunted. “Max has a healthy respect for the law, the Constitution—the real deal, not the crap that people and politicians twist to serve their own purposes. But he gets there’s a difference between justice and the law sometimes, and justice gets served first when we have the ability and choice to make the call. This call is his choice. No muss, no fuss, no drama. He’s not going to talk about it, but I guarantee it takes up about a third of his brain space every day.” He cocked his head. “I expect the other two-thirds is probably about you. So you still have the majority of his brain cells, if that’s a comfort.”

  “Competition is not my major concern, not when it comes to this.” She met his gaze. “Why do you limp, if it’s not too personal to ask?”

  “Amputation below the knee. Lost it during an explosion.”

  Her gaze swept downward, and now she noticed how one pants leg seemed to crease differently below the knee. At her look, Dale reached across, closed his hand on hers. He rested it on what felt like a plastic cuff molded to his knee joint beneath the denim. Continuing downward on her own, she felt the solid metal shaft he had instead of a leg. He wore hiking shoes, such that except for the slight limp, she wouldn’t have guessed it.

  She looked up. They were almost eye to eye. He gave her a faint smile, nodded and straightened.

  It affected her peculiarly, feeling metal and plastic where a firm calf should have been. She moved her touch to his other leg for comparison. It was intimate, forward behavior, but Dale didn’t object. She gripped the calf as he flexed beneath her touch and offered her a somber wink. When she sat up, sat back, her stomach was doing an odd flip-flop. That could have been Max. Or instead of losing a limb, he might not have come home. His sister would have been all alone in the world, and Janet would never have known him.

  You might as well say it. I’ve known since the hospital… She hadn’t said it. Unlike him, she wasn’t ready to accept the strength of his feelings, let alone her own. This moment didn’t really leave her a place to hide from that, did it?

  She reclaimed her coffee, took a bracing swallow. “You know what happens when you break them down, break them open. You understand who and what they are. There’s no compromising that. I wouldn’t want to compromise what Max is, but I have a real problem with him doing anything that would take him away from me, by death or imprisonment. I’m a selfish bitch that way.”

  “Well, God bless you. Hope that he starts to see things your way.” Dale fished a card out of his pocket, slid it across the table to her. A phone number was handwritten on it. “My cell,” he said. “In case you ever need it.”

  Janet lifted her gaze, held his. He had unusual blue-green eyes, but in them she saw a clear message. With a nod, she slipped the card into her pocket, took another sip of coffee.

  “You know, sound carries through this house like a megaphone,” Max said, arriving in the doorway.

  “Don’t kid yourself, Ack Ack. These walls are thin enough people could sit in the street and hear you,” Dale said comfortably. “Brought you the yard and plumbing tools you wanted for Gayle’s next weekend.”

  “Appreciate it. I would have come and gotten them.”

  “Eh. I was in the neighborhood.”

  Janet turned to see Max shrugging into his shirt. Today it was tailored silk and cotton, coupled with slacks. Matt had an important meeting at the Omni Royal, one that called for his driver to wear formal attire to properly impress the attending members. As he buttoned the shirt, Max moved into the kitchen, touching her shoulder before claiming his own coffee from the counter. He didn’t seem particularly perturbed by Dale’s discussion with her, but from the glance the men exchanged, she realized Dale wouldn’t have imparted anything to her that Max wouldn’t want her to know.

  “So did you check to see if he had a prosthetic ass while you were groping him?”

  “That looked nicely real to me,” she said without missing a beat. “But I’d be happy to verify.”

  “Better not challenge this one,” Dale advised. “She’ll kick your balls into your throat. And then grope my ass while you’re curled up like a shrimp on your dingy-looking tile floor. Jesus, buy some cheerful linoleum. Something with little yellow and blue flowers. At least a freaking potholder. I’m getting you a potholder for Christmas.”

  Janet looked between the two men, amused, but then focused on Max, brow raised. “Ack Ack?”

  Max rolled his eyes. “My nickname.”

  “Kind of like Maverick or Ice Man from Top Gun, only a lot less cool-sounding.” Dale winked. “It’s from an early John Cusack movie, One Crazy Summer. There’s a character in it who’s a mild-mannered Boy Scout. He always comes through in a pinch. Face like a choir boy, heart of a lion and stubborn as hell when he’s sure he’s right. His nickname was Ack Ack. It fit, on all levels.”

  Scraping back his chair, Dale rose, giving her a nod and another wink, then directed his parting words to Max. “I’m due at the community center. Let me know if you need anything else for Gayle.”

  “Thanks for bringing them by.”

  Dale raised a hand, letting himself out the back door without another word. The minimalist communication of the Homo sapiens male, Janet thought. A moment later, they heard the diesel roar of the truck starting up.

  She put down her coffee, just in time to have Max lift her under the arms, turn and sit her up on the counter, putting himself in between her knees. He pushed up her short work skirt, his fingers sliding along her thighs under the hem. “You wore stockings just to drive me crazy,” he muttered against her mouth. “I need you.”

  She gave back as good as given on that heated kiss, but then she pushed him back, holding him off. Somewhat. He started on her throat, his body pressed close enough to her core that she felt his erection grinding against her. “I thought you said we had to be to work on time.” Despite her protest, she slid her arm over his shoulders, bringing him closer.

  “We will be. Need you. Just need you, Mistress. Please.”

  It was the please that did it. The almost desperate request of a man who always seemed so self-possessed. Maybe her being here, amid the bare evidence of his life outside of his work, had sparked this response. She was real and alive, part of the present and his tentative future. A stark contrast to his past, that poignant desolation provoking a clash between the light and the dark.

  She knew that feeling. At particularly bright moments, she still occasionally experienced it, that blot of darkness on the sun, the memory of blood in a bathroom. Hacking through a throat with a meat cleaver. She clung to him tighter and surrendered to their mutual passion, willing to be swept away from nightmares together.

  * * * * *

  The emotions he’d stirred up there at the end lingered with her, making her feel unsettled. Not wrong, exactly, not after such an incredible weekend, but emotional upheaval was emotional upheaval, and even the good kind could stir the silt at the bottom. The war between dark and light wasn’t something that could be shrugged off lightly.

  One member of the K&A team knew that better than anyone. Unfortunately, it appeared the condition was contagious this morning, because when she arrived Ben sounded as unsettled as she felt.

  She heard him snarling at
someone on his phone, then he slammed it down with a creative combination of oaths that could fill a swear jar to the brim. “Alice,” he snapped.

  Janet dropped her purse and keys on her desk and moved down the hallway to his office. It was in a separate wing due to the confidential nature of the things he handled, but in this mood, he could be heard clearly. “Alice is off this morning. Doctor’s appointment, remember?”

  “Great. Fucking great.” He muttered it under his breath, so she decided to let it pass. He looked tired, telling her he’d been here all night. When his therapy session dredged up particularly difficult things and he got in a foul mood over it, sometimes he came to his couch here, rather than taking the attitude home to Marcie. Janet knew he’d do better if he went home to her, but men could be stubborn about that, especially a man determined to give the woman he loved only the best side of himself. He sometimes forgot that what Marcie wanted most was all of him, good and bad. It made Janet think of her discussion with Dale again.

  Ben launched into another tirade. “Somebody down at the courthouse royally fucked up the filing of the Watkins affidavit. Missed the deadline. The asshole judge, who likes to jerk our chain, has rescheduled the hearing for fucking two months.”

  “I’ll call Stacie in the clerk’s office. She owes me a favor. She might be able to fix that.”

  “Fine,” he snapped. “Fucking do it then.”

  As Janet patiently waited, he stopped, closed his eyes. Pivoted away from her. She could almost hear him counting. He didn’t turn back toward her, but when he spoke, his tone was more even. “Sorry, Janet. No excuse for that.”

  “No, there’s not. It’s just a piece of paper or two.” When he glanced over his shoulder at her, she kept her expression neutral. “Are you all right?”

  “She made me agree to marry her. This spring. I was going to let them know this morning, before the Omni.”

  “I assume you mean Marcie.”

  “No. The hooker on the corner who gives me insider trading tips. Yes, Marcie.”