“Not this Saturday. I plan on spending the morning with you. This afternoon, we’ll go to my place for a few hours, and tonight, I’m taking you out to a proper club.”
She stopped in mid-motion, gaze darting up to him. “Oh Jon. I don’t know.”
“I do. After breakfast, we’ll go pick out something you’d like to wear. With my approval, of course.” He put his hand over hers, already anticipating her next thought. “You won’t be hedging about money. I have plenty of it, and what I spend on you is my business, not yours. Understood?”
That was clearly his Master’s voice, stern and uncompromising. She nodded, a little uncertain, but trying to take things in stride better than she had when they were at the table.
“I’m a little freaked out,” she confessed. “Can we talk about something else for a little bit, so I can process? Something that helps me…I don’t know, feel more balanced. What’s the worst thing that happened to you as a child?”
He curled his hand over hers now on his shoulder, slid his thumb into the cup of her palm to rub, then tugged her hair with the other hand. “My job is not always to make you feel more comfortable, Rachel. Especially when I know you need to be off-balance. But I’ll answer your question, if you ask me with the proper address.”
That was exactly what she’d been attempting to do, she realized. Assert some kind of control with the personal information, and he’d recognized it in a heartbeat. She was starting to think his flat statement that she wouldn’t get away with lying to him meant lying at any level, even when she wasn’t immediately aware she was doing it.
She moistened her lips. “Master, would you please tell me the worst thing that happened to you as a child?”
“Well done.” He nodded, and the hold on her hair eased. He stroked instead, following the strands down her back, a more soothing gesture, one that lingered at her waist then dropped lower. Sensitive nerves responded as he idly traced the depression at the base of her tailbone.
“My parents were killed when I was ten. That’s why I had the stutter for a while.”
“Oh Jon. I’m sorry.” It was instinct to comfort, to lay her hand over his forearm. He joined hands with her, bringing both to his lips for a nuzzling kiss. As he caressed her knuckles, he studied them, his expression caught between past and present.
“He was a middle school teacher, English lit, and she was the school nurse. A student brought a gun and, well…the usual thing.” His grip increased on hers, reflecting the weight of those memories. He’d obviously learned to deal with them, but it didn’t mean they didn’t still have the power to overcome him. Just like she knew she’d never really “get over” Kyle’s death, that horrible, ridiculous expression.
“He killed several students, wounded others. My father was shot when he tried to talk him down. The shooter got my mother when she tried to help the wounded. She was actually a trained midwife, but also served as the school nurse. You would have really liked her. And my father knew everything about every book that had been written before the twentieth century, and nothing about any written after. That’s what I told him, a precocious kid’s scorn for a parent’s talents. I inherited his library. I think I read all of it during my junior high years.” A smile touched his lips. “Everything from Paradise Lost to Pliny.”
She tried to match his light tone. “The Kama Sutra?”
“Cover to cover, baby. The original text, geared toward wealthy young males in that society. And I dog-eared more than a few pages of that one.”
It made her laugh, but she also impulsively hugged him. He accepted the embrace, and she felt something different from him then, taking comfort for a deep wound that never healed. Now it wasn’t about getting into his vulnerabilities to balance her own. This was about understanding more about the Master and lover who absorbed her, on so many levels. And the more she knew about him, the better she could serve him—if she dared to believe this would last. “Dana said that there were things that connected you to the other…to the K&A management. Is that one of them?”
“Oh go ahead and say ‘Knights’. That damn article has infected everyone’s brain.”
“Well, it wouldn’t if it wasn’t so darn appropriate.” She gave his knee a light pinch and won retribution as he returned the favor. However, he pinched much higher up, sliding his hand beneath her skirt. She stilled as he left it there, tracing a line on the inside of her thigh, all the way up to where it met her hip. Looking down at the thin cloth, she saw the shape of his hand move there, so close to the seam between her legs.
“What did I tell you, Rachel?”
Her brow furrowed, then she remembered. “Oh…” She parted her knees, but before she could look around, he touched her chin.
“Your eyes stay on my hand. I won’t embarrass you. This is a small exercise in trust, taking steps toward the bigger ones.”
“I trust you more than I’ve trusted anyone, ever.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He caressed the crease between thigh and hip, sending electric tingles to her p-ssy that urged her to squirm on the rough, sun-warmed wood of the bench. When he slid his finger beneath the lace band of the thong at her hip bone, she was acutely aware of the way the fabric burrowed deep between her buttocks, teasing the rim of that sensitive area. “Back straight. Let me see those nipples hardening.”
It made her cheeks flush, because of course they were, stressing the dress fabric. He shifted, his shoulders blocking the immediate view from anyone who might step into the alley. Then he stretched the elastic of the gathered neckline so it caught beneath her breasts, exposing and framing them fully to his gaze. His incidental touches to her bare curves as he made the adjustment had her fingers clutching the bench edge. When he was satisfied with the view, he bent, picked up his tea, sipped it as he studied her exposed, quivering curves in pregnant silence. She held her back straight. Held totally still, though it felt so wicked to be sitting like this, near one of her favorite coffee shops, exposed purely for the sexual enjoyment of her Master.
“Yes, things like that connect us.” It took her lust-saturated mind a moment to realize he was answering her earlier question about the other men. “All of us lost our parents young. Ben was actually in foster care from the time he was five years old. Ran away from bad situations a couple times, lived on the street. At age nine, he tried to pick Jonas Kensington’s pocket. Matt’s father. When Jonas asked him why he should let him go instead of calling the police, Ben argued that he was doing him a public service, making him conscious of the value of his money, so he wouldn’t take it for granted. And, in point of fact, if the lesson had value, then Jonas should really give Ben a percentage of what was in his wallet.”
Despite her current aroused state, she couldn’t help the breathy laugh. Seeing Jon’s gaze flicker at the way it made her breasts move caught it in her throat.
“You are so damn beautiful,” he murmured. She trembled at a deeper level then, responding to the sudden fervency in his tone. He didn’t touch her, but she’d never felt so…enveloped, in a man’s attention.
He lifted his eyes back to her face, a wry quirk now at the corner of his mouth. “That was the abridged version of Ben’s argument. Mr. Kensington described it as worthy of a closing at a capital trial. Needless to say, he didn’t let Ben go. He worked to find him a better foster home placement and committed to financing his education. When Jonas was killed by a Mexican drug runner on the border, Matt was seventeen. But he was born for business, had been part of his father’s industry practically since he could walk. He took over his father’s interests, even his philanthropic ones.” Jon lifted a shoulder. “And in this particular case, I say philanthropy with a grain of salt. Matt’s no fool. He saw the advantage of training up a sharp lawyer, particularly when he decided to refocus his father’s business toward manufacturing acquisitions.”