Chapter Eighteen
Sadie
I t’s late and I don’t know how many times we’ve fucked. More than we should. Not nearly enough.
How this happened is both a mystery and completely inevitable. One night only, I tell myself. One night of insane pleasure that will keep me warm for winters to come.
Oh, how I’d love to say this was mediocre, but there’s only so much lying I can do before it enters a ridiculous fantasy realm.
His arm is around me, heavy on my middle, and it feels good, right. It shouldn’t.
Nothing about Kingston should.
It’s not near dawn yet, but it’s insanely late because we started so early. A part of me wishes I could go back in time, a very small part. The rest of me? Not on your fucking life would I trade sleeping with Kingston for anything. It has nothing to do with who and what he is on paper and everything to do with pure, old-fashioned chemistry.
I could curl up and sleep in his arms. I could spend a lifetime of him touching me gently, of him kissing me. Of sparring with his cynical bastard self, of cupping my hands around his rare sweet and naked smile, the one I’ve seen only hints of.
Like before we slept.
I go to lift his arm, but he shifts, pulling me in tighter and his thick length grows as he thrusts against me in slow, lazy moves.
A moan escapes. I’m that good kind of sore. That sweet ache that leaves an emptiness that yearns to be filled again, that only comes from phenomenal sex.
I know, because this…this is phenomenal sex with him. I’ve had great sex, but never this. Never the kind of mind melting thing that happens between us.
Reaching behind me, I wrap my hand around his beautiful cock and he groans, biting my ear. “Again?”
“Yes.”
Once more and never again. It has to be that.
He’s thrusting into my hand, slipping down to find the wetness between my thighs, sliding along my opening, dipping in only to come up to tease my clit that’s aching for him, a bundle of live wires that suddenly need his touch to truly sing.
Kingston bites down on my throat and he starts to turn me on my back, but if I face him I might lose myself forever, so I roll the other way as I release him and push up to my hands and knees.
He doesn’t need telling.
His hands come down on my hips and he uses his thigh to push my legs apart, and then he rubs himself against me. Dear God, this man can tease a woman to commit all kinds of crimes.
Letting go of my left hip, he lightly scrapes his short nails down my spine to my nape and he grips, pushing me down so my head is on the pillow and my ass is there for him.
He thrusts into me, deep. And my pussy stretches around that invasion.
It’s so good a tremor of pleasure washes through me.
And then he starts to take me in slow, deep strokes. He’s in total control and it’s even hotter than it was before.
He pulls out and thrusts in. Long. Full. A slow kind of pounding that builds and builds, stretching my sanity, my absolute need for release to the very edge.
And then he lets go. Hard. That good kind of pleasure that vibrates right down to the marrow and I come. I come so hard I cry and then he wraps about me, moaning, coming down on me as he slams into me, over and over and he bites down on my shoulder as he comes, convulsing.
Finally, finally, we’re done.
We have to be.
Otherwise I’m lost.
The sun is coming in gray when I finally sneak out. If I didn’t think a man like Kingston would bring up what happened, I’d pretend it didn’t happen.
But I can’t.
As much as I hate myself for it, I don’t want to, either.
I take a cab home because the last thing I want is the subway ride of shame. Not that I’m shamed. I just don’t want to deal with looking like yesterday when everyone else is starting their today.
Besides, the sooner I’m home, the sooner I can get stuck into work and the sooner Kingston will be out of my life.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll take the tiara and whatever else as a souvenir.
Three hours later and I’m exhausted. More exhausted than I’d be if I’d been pounding the pavement hard.
And I really shouldn’t think of the word pounding, as it takes my mind to other activities that could lead to exhaustion. The good kind. The naked, sweaty, depleted kind.
I lean back in my chair and stare at my laptop. It’s not quite dark web that I’m trawling, but it’s through a VPN, and for what I’m looking for I don’t want to go too deep. I need to be where any action might be, in regards to the movement of the tiara.
Me taking the damn thing aside—if I choose to do that—I know I’m on to something about his mom. The whole missing jewel situation doesn’t smell right. I don’t care about police involvement. There are plenty of circumstances where above board things go around official channels.
But the timing…
That’s what’s bothering me.
The final jewel, rumored to be the most intricate, the one worth the most and certainly the one lusted after by collectors, not only appears along with the other Sinclair jewels, but it goes missing in time to fit in to the month before Kingston’s birthday? And to get his slice of the family pie he has to make it appear again?
My involvement with his mother also has me suspicious.
Yes, she’d choose me or someone like me, but she seemed very keen I try and work with him. If he hadn’t hired me himself, would she have thrown me into his path?
If so, for what reason?
I make a mental note of everything.
Well, I need to do something as all my leads and avenues I’ve followed have ended in exactly the same place—nowhere at all.
Sure, there are whispers and rumors that grow stronger, but that’s all they are. People want it, no one is claiming to have it.
But instinct tells me they will. And soon.
Whether that soon will be in time for Kingston’s deadline, I don’t know.
It depends on who has it. And if it was actually stolen.
I’m waiting for Damon to get back to me when he bangs on my door. It has to be Damon because he knows how to get into places and I made sure the security to this building is top notch.
I get up and stomp to the door, throwing it open. “Damon…”
It’s most definitely not Damon. I look up to the unsmiling face of the dark lord himself, Kingston Sinclair.
I don’t know why an inexplicable warmth rushes my veins.
“Is that his name?”
“Who?” I glare at him.
He glares back. “The mythical ex.”
Kingston pushes past me and into my apartment that suddenly feels too small.
“One.” I tick these off on my hand. “He’s not mythical. Two, I’ve said his name before. Three, at least I mentioned I have an ex and you’re all into keeping women like deep, dark secrets. Four, what the hell business is it of yours? And five…are you jealous?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not looking for a relationship, so why would I be jealous?”
I shove my hands on my hips. “I don’t know. You called him my mythical ex.”
“He’s back to being a boyfriend now? You move fast.” Kingston goes to my computer, looking at the screen. “And I don’t keep them like deep, dark secrets. I keep them labeled, in boxes on a shelf, for ease.”
“You’re—”
“An ass?”
“What do you want, Kingston?” He’s drawing me in with his weird charm and I don’t want to be drawn in, or charmed.
Maybe I’ll steal everything from him. It would serve him right.
“What’s this?” He thumbs at the computer.
“Work.”
“For me?”
I breathe out. What was that about charm? “Yes. I put everything on hold for this.”
“And?”
“If you’re asking why I’d do that, I don’t know and I’m regretting life choices,” I say. “If you’re asking about the tiara, I don’t have anything.”
He looks at me long and hard. “Unless you’re hiding something.”
“If I was hiding something from you, then you would never know.”
We’re a rollercoaster of unspoken things. Up and down and all over the place at breakneck speed and I can pinpoint the exact moment we got on board. It was when he kissed me last night.
I really am going to steal everything from him. Duante comes to mind, but I’ll deal with him when I get my hands on the jewel and not before. Instead, I fold my arms. “You can relax. Last night was sex and nothing more. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
“I prefer to wear high cut non-twistable panties, like all the big boys,” he says in a low and dangerous voice, “and I’m not here about that. I don’t give a flying fuck about that. Sex is sex, Sadie. Right? We decided that. So, pull up your big girl boxers and get it together. If you want a repeat, just ask. I’ll pencil you in.”
He’s angry. Deeply, darkly angry and I can’t work out why. He knows where we are with all this tiara business. I haven’t had time to find and steal the damn thing. And he doesn’t care about the sex beyond it being sex—the pang inside is something I ignore—so whatever his problem is, he better get it out in the open or when things happen he’s going to fuck it up for himself.
Things like losing the tiara. That is, of course, if I don’t steal it to teach the idiot a lesson.
“You’re going to have to tell me why you’re so furious, Kingston.”
He pushes a hand through his hair. “Because I’m not sure I trust you.”
“In what way?”
“In the maybe you have the tiara way.”
“I don’t.” I breathe out. It’s time to put my own petty little fantasies to one side and play big ball. “I won’t be able to make money from it if I have it.”
“You will if you double bluff me to push up the price for me to get it back in time.”
Actually, I never thought of that. Because I might still keep a hand in the water, but I don’t ever drink that water. I haven’t stolen in years, just like I’m sure I told him when we met.
And sure, I’ve been currently entertaining the idea of taking it all for me if I can, but that’s just entertaining an idea, not doing. Not following through.
“I’m not going to do that. I have a reputation here. One you know is built on a weird trust. If it gets out I stole it, if you spread that rumor, then I’m done in my line.”
“Well, I—” He stops. “Okay. I might be angry. Frustrated, I guess is the word. But time is running out, Sadie, and we’re exactly nowhere. What am I meant to think?”
“That the world doesn’t work on your whim. And we’re not nowhere. I’m looking, I’m following all sorts of leads. So far, it’s just rumor and whispers, but something is going to happen. I feel that.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then I’m wrong.”
I might hate him, I realize, for his complete lack of trust in me. I don’t care if it’s warranted or not. I haven’t actually done anything to him. Yet.
“So if you’re wrong, we don’t find it? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“That’s not an option,” I say. “Because that option means I lose. And that’s one thing I don’t do.”