“Geez,” Anya’s voice came out of nowhere. “She’s her father’s daughter,” she finished her mutter, moving out of the hallway into the living room. She stopped close, her attention on her girl. “Uncle Nick said he had to go.”
Kasha crossed her arms on her chest. “Unka Nick should stay.”
“Put her down, Nick,” Anya ordered and the instant she did, which was the second Nick moved to acquiesce to her demand, Kasha wrapped her arms tight around his neck.
He started quietly laughing.
“Unka Nick is staying!” Kasha declared.
“Yeah, he is,” Knight put in.
Nick looked to his brother.
So did Knight’s woman. “Not you too.”
“Me too,” Knight decreed then looked down at Kat. “Baby girl, can you help Daddy and put out another placemat for Uncle Nick?”
“Yeah, Daddy!” Kat, Knight and Anya’s first, almost eight-years-old, always daddy’s little helper, agreed immediately and jumped to do as asked.
“Knight, he has somewhere to be,” Anya called.
“He can be there a couple hours later. Now he’s having dinner with his family,” Knight returned.
“Maybe he wants to have dinner with his family next weekend,” Anya returned.
Knight’s eyes settled on his woman and his, “Baby,” was a warning.
Anya’s glare stayed glued to her man in a way Nick knew she was telling him he could shove his warning right up his ass.
He forged into the silent breach.
“I’ll stay.”
“Yay!” Kasha screeched.
“Yay!” Kat yelled.
Anya’s head whipped his way. “Don’t give in to him.”
He looked down at his smiling niece then at her mother. “Too late.”
Anya rolled her eyes.
Nick moved to the kitchen and planted Kasha’s booty in a stool at the bar beyond which her father was cooking. “To have dinner with you, gotta make a call,” he told her.
“That’s allowed,” she decreed.
He was again chuckling when he glanced at Knight before he moved out of the space, down the front hall and into Knight’s office.
He pulled out his phone and called Olivia.
The call (and not a text) was a test. A test he suspected would go to voicemail because she’d said exactly five words to him since they’d met so it was not likely she’d answer the phone.
If he had to guess, his voicemail would eventually get him a text that said she wasn’t going to wait for him to have dinner with his family in order to meet up with him later. Alternately, she wouldn’t communicate at all and he’d eventually lie in bed at Hotel Teatro, pissing valuable time away waiting for her only for her not to show up.
What he didn’t expect was her to answer on the third ring.
“Sebring,” she said as greeting, her voice soft just as the five words she’d said to him were, except now she wasn’t whispering.
He liked the sound. Especially having it wrapped around his name.
Fuck.
“Olivia,” he replied. “Listen, I’m having dinner with my family. I’m not gonna get to the hotel until eight. Maybe later.”
“Are you checked in?” she asked.
“No,” he answered.
“My turn,” she stated.
He blinked at Knight’s desk.
Her turn?
“I’ll text you the room number,” she went on.
“Right,” he pushed out, trying to hide his surprise and not sure he’d succeeded.
“By your—” she started but abruptly stopped, said no more though she didn’t disconnect.
“By my…?” he trailed off on a prompt.
She didn’t take the prompt for several beats before her soft voice again came at him.
“By your family, I’m assuming you mean Knight and his girls.”
“Yeah.”
He heard an almost indistinct noise.
Relief.
That pissed him off.
Why, he had no clue.
He wasn’t the fucked-up one in this scenario, working for his dad who was a gangster who did seriously jacked shit including ordering the head blown off a female undercover FBI agent at all, much less right in front of the man who loved her.
“Not tied to anyone and fuckin’ you,” he bit off.
“We don’t exactly chat in order to get to know each other,” she replied.
“You hell bent on taking control of my dick the minute you hit the hotel room, that’s not on me,” he reminded her.
There was another hesitation before she suggested, “Maybe we should take a break for a couple of nights.”
“Uh…fuck no,” he denied, after years of waiting to put it in action, not about to let anything delay him further in carrying out his plan. “About now I’m in the mood to tussle with you and see who comes out on top.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You gonna text me a room number?” he asked
“Yes, Sebring,” she answered in that voice that was almost goddamned delicate.
Which was annoying.
Because it was not annoying.
It was beautiful.
And a fucking turn on.
Shit.
“See you in a couple of hours,” he replied.
“Okay,” she said.
She might have said more but he disconnected before he heard it.
He turned to rejoin his family to see Knight leaning against the doorway.
“You in over your head?” his brother asked the second he caught his eyes.
“Absolutely,” he answered without hesitation.
“Worried as fuck about you,” Knight told him.
“Don’t be,” he replied.
Knight shook his head, pushed from the door and looked down the hall before he entered the room.
“I do not know this woman and since before you even started this shit, I’ve been askin’ around. No one knows her. She’s unknowable. Mysterious pussy can be good. But mostly, mysterious pussy is just a trap,” Knight shared.
“Not me caught in a trap, brother,” he reminded him.
His words did not reassure Knight.
“You gotta control this situation completely, Nick. You gotta be one hundred percent on the ball. I don’t need to tell you that father of hers is a fuckin’ lunatic. You know that better than anyone. And this has not changed in four and a half years except it’s gotten worse as the man gets more desperate. I didn’t finally get my brother in a way I love havin’ him, givin’ him to my woman, my girls, to have some bitch outplay him and take him away from all of us.”
Again, Nick was pissed off.
“I won’t get outplayed.”
Knight opened his mouth but didn’t get anything out.
“Don’t say more,” Nick warned. “I wanna eat a steak with my two princesses, my brother and his woman. You broil a fucking good steak and I love my princesses. I do not need to be in a shit mood while doing it ’cause that’d spoil everything.”
Knight gave him an intense look that melted into his lips quirking.
“I got my brother the way I want him too, Knight,” Nick continued. “I fucked it up with you. With Anya. I worked to earn that back. I got it. Do you think I got what I spent the afternoon with out there, then my niece is throwin’ attitude to keep her uncle close for dinner, and I’d do shit to lose that or anything I earned the last four years?”
During his speech, his brother lost the lip quirk and the intensity came back.
“No,” he answered.
“Trust me,” Nick urged.
“You need me, you do not hesitate. Yeah?” Knight asked.
He nodded.
“Shit, need to check the steaks,” Knight muttered, turned and walked out of the room.
Nick gave it time, mostly doing this because he could still hear her voice and he was still dealing with the fact he liked it.
Then he walked out of his brothe
r’s office to go have dinner with his family.
In the middle of it, he got a text with a room number.
He felt Knight’s eyes on him when he looked at the text.
He didn’t reply to the text.
He also hadn’t lied to his brother.
Fucking Olivia Shade was so good he was in over his head. He knew it. He just didn’t care, happy to take from her everything she was prepared to give on the path he was negotiating, not giving that first fuck she was taking everything she could milk out of him along the way.
But when he took that text while eating the steak his brother put in front of him, his mind flashing on what exactly he intended to take from Olivia Shade in an hour and how much he’d enjoy her milking everything she could out of him, he had no idea.
No fucking clue.
No fucking clue that before dawn hit the sky on a new day, he wouldn’t be in over his head with Olivia Shade.
He’d be drowning.
Chapter Seven
Drowning
Nick
They were both on their knees, her back to his front and she was taking him.
And she liked what she was getting.
She had one arm lifted high and wrapped around his head, her neck twisted, her lips parted, her breath coming in pants, his jaw to her hair.
She was in shadow. Before session two—this session—she’d turned out the lights in the room. But the curtains were open, the lights from the city the only illumination in the room.
Outside of it being him knocking on the door, it had been just like it always had been. Hot, fast, hard. A clash. A grab. Taking all you could get and giving only accidentally while doing it.
She’d got her mouth on him. She’d blown him. Before she made him come, she fucked him.
She came hard while she did.
So did he.
He took advantage and gave that back, taking as he did.
Now he was fucking her.
And, Christ, her tight wet cunt was astounding.
He pushed forward with his chest and she got his message, dropping to her hands in the bed. He curled over her, arm wrapped around her, hand cupping her tit, fingers pinching and tugging.
She reared under him.
Out of necessity before things took a turn he did not want them to take, he broke their usual silence.
“You need to come,” he growled.
To his shock, immediately, she gasped, “In a second.”
He pounded into her, pinching hard and tugging harder at her nipple.
She whimpered.
Fuck.
She didn’t make a lot of noise outside breathing heavily.
That sounded nice.
Too nice.
“Olivia, you need to come.”
She twisted her neck and caught his eyes, hers scorching even through the dark.
He fought the brand.
“Fuck me, Sebring,” she ordered.
He let her tit go and slanted his arm up her chest, curling it around her shoulder. His eyes on hers, he held her steady and fucked her.
She bit her lip, let it go and closed her eyes, turning and dropping her head.
Finally submissive in her orgasm, he drilled her and she took it, but not for long before he exploded in her sleek wet.
He stayed buried, coming down, liking it as she spasmed around his dick, not knowing why what happened next would happen next.
Maybe after two orgasms she was sated.
It being later than normal, maybe she was tired and off-guard.
Maybe she was getting used to him.
But when he pushed his hips into hers and took her to her belly before he pulled out, rolled off and rolled her on top of him, what happened next happened.
She shoved her face in his neck and pressed her chest into his in what felt like a body hug without the arms.
Then he felt her sigh against his skin as she relaxed on top of him.
She always smelled good, and right then that was no different, except it was better. This was because, mingled with her perfume, the products she used in her hair and the natural fragrance of her skin, he could smell them on her. A nuance of him and the scent of sex clung to her, heavy and exquisite.
Her hair always felt good and right then spread across his chest and shoulder that also was no different.
And her body always felt good, but he’d never had it like it was right then.
And it was not good—in fact it was entirely fucked that he liked it like it was right then maybe better than any way he’d already had it.
He took a guess at the reason behind her actions, shoving the rest of his thoughts in the back of his mind, and advised, “You liked that so much, you need to submit more often.”
It felt like she relaxed even more at the same time he felt something weird against his throat, like her cheek moving with a smile.
He almost caught hold of her hair to pull back her head to see if that was the case when she snuggled into him.
Fucking snuggled into him.
It was not a burrow but it wasn’t deniable as a cuddle either.
He felt his body still.
What the fuck?
Olivia Shade, made of stone, she comes, she fucks, she comes, then she leaves…snuggling?
Even though that happened, she made no response.
“You gonna do that?” he asked and explained, “Submit.”
Her shoulders moved in a slight shrug.
Back to silence.
He wanted her voice.
As risky as he knew it was, he pushed for it.
“Definitely hot, you on your hands and knees in front of me, head bent in submission, takin’ me.”
She gave him her voice and he automatically soaked it in.
“I was coming,” she pointed out.
“I made you come,” he corrected.
“I can’t really argue that,” she murmured.
“And doin’ it, you definitely submitted.”
He was right, he knew it. He knew the difference.
He had a feeling she did as well when she attempted to stop their conversation with, “Quiet, Sebring. I’m recuperating.”
He felt his lips twitch up.
“Good call. Plenty of energy so I can fuck you submissive again,” he muttered.
Another body hug without the arms and then he felt her lips trail his collarbone.
Shit.
He should let her go.
This time, he should get up, get dressed and get the fuck out of there. He was getting in too deep. The first actual conversation they’d had and it was happening.
He had to step back and get control.
He didn’t. He slid his hand up into her hair, fisted it gently and gave it a tug.
She lifted her head and he saw her face, shadowed but visible by the lights of the city.
“You dug that scene, master and slave,” he noted about the scene that she definitely dug when they met at the club.
As a response to that, she lifted her hand, cupped his jaw and slid her thumb along his lower lip before her eyes caught his in the shadows.
“We should book a salon,” she suggested softly.
They were seriously fucking doing that.
But that wasn’t what they were talking about.
“Changin’ the subject, Olivia,” he noted.
“Are you asking me if I liked to be whipped?” she asked.
“Whipped. Spanked. Caned. Cropped. Some or all of the above,” he replied.
“I have no idea,” she told him. “Do you?”
“Think you’re missin’ in your desire to cow me that I’m tryin’ to do the same to you.”
“No, Sebring,” she said in that fucking voice. That fucking voice that now that he had, he had to brace against because he liked it too much. “I am not missing that.”
“Not sure this works, two tops with neither of us feelin’ good thoughts about bein’ a bottom.”
She dipped her face cl
ose as she again slid her thumb along his lip in a gentle way that felt good just as it felt claiming before she moved her hand down so she could stroke his jaw.
“I don’t know. Seems you don’t mind when I top you.”
“Prefer it when I top you. And I’ve noted, especially just now, you don’t mind it either.”
He felt her lips touch his.
Then he felt, actually felt her smile.
And he wished the lights were on so he could see that in those green eyes.
“Strange that we don’t seem ill-suited,” she remarked.
Seriously?
“Ill-suited?” he asked.
“Ill-suited,” she answered, then went on like he needed an explanation. “Not a good match.”
“I know what it means. But who says ‘ill-suited?’” he asked and felt another smile.
“Me,” she whispered against his lips
He felt that whisper there and in his gut and he knew. He knew he was better when the woman didn’t talk.
He was about to do something about that when she asked, “Are you saying you think we should stop meeting?”
“No,” he replied swiftly and continued, “My guess, we’re gonna have to fight that out another way, a way we both like. A discussion about it is not gonna earn us jack. But what I’ll say now is you aren’t gettin’ dressed and leavin’ my ass here. For once, we’re actually gonna use a room one of us is payin’ for for more than half an hour. I would prefer that be one of the times I paid for it but I’ll take this time. And we’re usin’ it partly because I’m wiped and need to sleep and partly because I’m not done so when I wake up, I wanna wake up and fuck you.”
She remained silent so he kept talking.
“And before the next time we meet, I want you to think about your kink. You liked that whipping, you can’t deny it. I do not wanna take it, but I enjoy giving it. You’re up for a test, we’ll break you in easy.”
She didn’t sound offended when she stated, “That’s not going to happen.”
“Olivia, you practically mounted me at the club watchin’ that man with his slave.”
“I’m a top, Sebring.”
“I’m not taking a whip.”
“Hmm…”
Fuck.
He wanted her tied for him and he knew he wanted it not just because that was one of the many things he liked, but because, from what they’d already had, he wanted that from her.
Not because she was Olivia Shade, a woman he wanted to cow before he gained her trust so he could get the information he needed to take his revenge against her father.