Chapter 7
Kai
DIANA WALKS THREE steps ahead of me through the marble lobby of her office building, her heels striking the floor in a rhythm.
The burgundy carpet swallows the sound the moment we step off the elevator and onto Rutherford and Blake’s floor, but I still hear it. My ears have trained themselves to her. Heels on marble, barefoot on the hardwood of her penthouse when she pads in for coffee in the morning.
Today, her skirt is charcoal, tailored to within an inch of its life.
There’s a slit up the back that opens and closes with every stride.
A flash of thigh. A shadow. Another flash.
The fabric parts for her, and gives me a clean view of her leg from mid-thigh down to the sharp bone of her ankle riding above those heels.
I’ve seen those legs up close. Open wide. Ass up and bare and my hand parting her butt cheeks. The way her hands gripped the sheets. The image lives in my head now.
And the thought that follows is the one I can’t outrun, the one no treadmill in a gym has managed to sweat out of me.
Other men have seen her that way too. The barrister.
Whoever came before the barrister, or at the same time as the barrister.
A line of men who got to watch Diana Jensen’s composure come undone, and not a single one of them earned it. Not a single one of them deserved it.
Neither do I.
Remember who you are.
Oh, I know who I am, there’s no forgetting that bit. I’m the guy walking three steps behind her with a duffel bag of emotional shrapnel slung over his shoulder.
The reception desk is a slab of dark walnut, and the woman behind it is trained to greet billionaires without blinking. She’s my age. Dark hair pinned up. When she sees Diana, the professional smile cracks into a real one.
“Diana. Good morning. Your parcel arrived.”
Diana’s whole posture shifts. She leans forward and plants both palms flat on the walnut.
“Already? I thought it’d be next week.”
“It sounds special.” The receptionist slides a small black box across the desk.
“Amara, you have no idea.” Diana picks up the box and turns it over in her hands, inspecting the edges, smiling. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile like that.
Amara’s eyes flick past Diana’s shoulder and land on me. Then back to Diana with a question sitting in them plain as day.
“My bodyguard,” Diana says, not turning around. “Kai Romero.”
Amara gives me a polite nod, which I return.
Diana tucks the box under her arm and walks inside without another word, and I follow her down the burgundy corridor.
What if I’m having sex with all of them? What is that to you?
Nothing. It’s nothing to me.
I’m her bodyguard with a dead-end revenge plan and a raging hard-on for a woman who treats sex casually. My chest tightens at the thought.
Her office is the corner unit at the end of the hall. The door is solid wood, nothing glass about it, and that sets it apart from every other office on this floor. When it closes behind us, the rest of the building stops existing.
Two walls are floor-to-ceiling glass over the park nine stories down.
Morning light pours in and catches the treetops, the joggers, the fountain throwing mist into the air.
The other two walls are wallpapered in the same olive green as the door.
The desk is clean. Big. A monitor, a leather portfolio, and a single pen lined up next to it.
She sets the black box dead center on the desk and shrugs out of her blazer, draping it over the back of her chair.
I take my position by the wall, next to the set of sofas around a low coffee table. Standard bodyguard placement. Close enough to respond, far enough to be furniture.
She sits. Powers her computer. Types for maybe thirty seconds. Then her eyes drift to the box, and she’s no longer pretending to work.
She picks it up. Opens it.
I can’t see what’s inside from where I’m standing, but I see her face. The smile comes back. She tilts the contents into the window light, studies them, closes the box, and stands.
She walks toward me. Heels silent on the carpet. She holds the box out between us.
“This is yours.”
I look at the box, then at her.
“What?”
“Open it.”
I take it because she’s close enough that refusing would require a conversation I’m not prepared for. The box is heavy for its size. I lift the lid.
A Rolex. Steel and black dial. I’ve seen these in magazine ads and on the wrists of men who own buildings.
“Is this fake?”
She laughs. Out loud. The question catches her off guard, and she doesn’t bother hiding it. “What do you think?”
I close the box. “I can’t accept this.”
“Yes you can.”
“Why are you giving me this?”
“Your birthday was last month. I saw your ID.” She pauses for half a beat. “Consider it a belated gift.”
I hold the box out toward her. “This is too much for a birthday gift. This is—I can’t. It’s too much.”
“It’s a watch.”
I stare at her. She stares back. She bought a Rolex for her bodyguard’s birthday, and she’s presenting it to me with the energy of someone handing over a Starbucks coffee.
And I hate it.
I hate what it does to me. She’s reminding me, without meaning to or maybe meaning to exactly, of every square foot of distance between her world and mine.
She buys Rolexes for the men she sleeps with.
She buys Rolexes for the men she employs.
There’s no real difference in her books because both categories live on the same shelf. Temporary. Replaceable.
The watch isn’t a gift. It’s a receipt. She’s paid for my time, my body, my silence, and she’s tying a bow around the transaction.
Remember who you are. That fucking thought again. It never stops.
She slides her hand down the front of my trousers, and my brain freezes.
Her palm finds my cock through the fabric and presses, her fingers curling to measure the shape, and I’m already thickening against her hand because my body stopped listening to my head somewhere around chapter one of this disaster.
“I really want you to have it,” she says. Her voice is level. Conversational. The hand on my cock is not.
I swallow. Set the box down on the arm of the sofa beside me.
“The thing I really want to do right now,” she says, lower now, “is suck your cock.”
She doesn’t blink when she says that. Neither do I.
“But I’ll only do it if you accept the gift.”
Her hand squeezes me through the fabric. I don’t answer. She takes my silence for what it is.
Her fingers move to my belt. She works the buckle one-handed, the leather sliding free with the patience of a woman who has done this in offices before.
She unbuttons me. The zipper comes down slow, tooth by tooth, and I watch her face the whole time.
She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at what she’s unwrapping.
I’m hard. I’ve been hard since the slit in that skirt. Since the memory of her ass up and the sound she made when I pushed inside.
She pulls me free and the air hits my skin and her eyes finally take me in. Then Diana Jensen drops to her knees.
The image is a detonation in my chest. This woman.
This career. This office. Kneeling on the carpet of her corner office, with the park stretched out behind her.
She wraps one hand around the base of my cock and takes me into her mouth, and the sound I make is involuntary.
A grunt I couldn’t have caught if I’d tried.
Her mouth is hot. Wet. She doesn’t ease in. She takes me deep on the first stroke, her cheeks hollowing, her tongue flat under me, the back of her throat right there. My hand goes to the base of her skull, fisting her hair, and she doesn’t resist. Doesn’t slow down. Takes me deeper.
She told me what she wants. So I give her that.
I thrust forward. Her eyes water, but her hands grip my thighs and pull me closer, and I thrust again, harder, the head of my cock hitting the back of her throat.
She gags and recovers and takes it. I set a rhythm.
Deep. Punishing. My hand fisted in her hair, my hips driving forward, and she meets every stroke.
Her nails dig into my thighs through the suit pants.
Ten small points of pressure that say more.
Her mouth works me. Sucks. Pulls. Swallows around me. The sounds are obscene in the quiet of the office, wet and hungry and deliberate, and I think about the door behind us. Solid wood. Soundproof, probably. She picked this office for a reason.
I look down and see her mascara tracking, her lips stretched around me, her eyes glassy and focused and entirely alive.
I thrust harder. She takes it. I thrust harder still. She takes that too.
The orgasm builds from the base of my spine, and I don’t fight it.
I pull out at the last second, my cock slick and throbbing in my fist, and I come across her face.
Thick ropes across her cheekbones, her chin, her open mouth with her tongue jut out.
She looks up at me with my cum streaking her face, and she looks pleased.
I stare down at her. At the mess I made of her.
And I understand, with the clarity of a man who has walked to the edge of a cliff and looked over it, that I am in this.
Deep. A hole I dug with my own hands, and every day on this assignment, I drive the shovel in further, and there is no rope, no ladder, no exit strategy that gets me out.
The revenge plot is a joke. Jack Rutherford is a ghost I’ve been chasing through a house I no longer want to burn down.
This woman on her knees is the only thing I see.