BoardResolution (3 page)

He snarled and she twisted, thrashed, threw them both off balance. She managed to scramble off his thigh, but her heel twisted and she went to one knee. He was on her in a second. Amazingly, she thought she heard him chuckle, but that turned into an oath as she palmed her fist and elbowed him in the chest when he tried to pounce on her. She spun to her feet and had a flash of that clean white shirt she’d admired earlier as he caught her by the hips and lifted her, maneuvering her onto her back on the slick surface of the table. Keeping himself between her thighs, he locked her wrists down with his hands as he leaned over her, breathing hard.

The position
rucked
her skirt all the way to her hips and his eyes coursed over the lace thigh-highs, the swatch of white lace panties.
“Class and elegance, wrapped in a fuck-me-if-you-got-the-balls package.
So what about it, Savannah?”
He moved against her, and his hard cock rubbed the damp crotch of her panties through his trousers. “Have I got the balls to fuck you, make you scream for me? Whether you want to or not?”

He was taunting her, and she wanted to hate him, be repulsed by him. “I’ll scream if I want to scream. You won’t have anything to do with it.”

She bit back a gasp as he released her wrists and caught her by the back of the neck, one large palm supporting her skull as he lifted her up against his chest, bringing them eye to flashing eye.

“You’ll scream for me, even though you don’t want to. You’ll beg, despite the fact every cell of your stubborn, rebellious mind will be telling you not to do so. Before this evening is over, you’ll belong to me, heart, body and soul, and you’ll be cursing me, even as you accept that you’ll never be free of my claim on you again.”

“Stop it, Matt.”

“No.” But his tone gentled, as if, by her use of the shortened version of his name, she had alerted him to her desperation, the sudden vulnerability that leaked through her armor and made her doubt herself.

“You know what I fantasize about sometimes, Savannah? I’m sitting at the head of that table, listening to my team give me a report on something… Hell, anything. Could be the weather in Shanghai, for all I care.” A light smile touched his lips, simple, startling her with its ease in comparison to the intensity of the past few moments. “I have you sitting on my lap, and you’re completely naked, your arms bound behind your back. That tight little ass of yours is squirming against my cock because I’m fondling your breasts, just idly stroking the curves, caressing the nipples, pinching them, watching you get more and more aroused.”

He slid his arms around her back, anchoring her against his chest, banding her to him with those long arms. His mouth took hers again. She pushed against his shoulders with the heels of her hands, but he only deepened the kiss, widened her mouth with the pressure of his, delving deep into her, his tongue exploring every moist crevice. She could have pulled his hair, twisted, done several things to buck the embrace, but being in Matt Kensington’s embrace did not suggest battle. It screamed for surrender.

Savannah ignored that path, but compromised with a momentary cessation of hostilities to experience the most potent mouth she’d ever tasted, or been tasted by. Not that she’d really tasted many, but this one had to be exceptional. She came to that conclusion from the simple realization that if there were men’s mouths more potent, there would have been reports of women dying from experiencing them like this.

When he lifted his head and they stared into each other’s eyes, his lips wet with her mouth, she could not say her body was her own. It seemed to have melted into soft pliancy against every hard curve of his, and her pussy throbbed against the hard reminder of his cock. A disturbing reminder, a return to the reality of what he wanted from her today.
The impossible.

She was making more of this than there was. Her hormones hadn’t been indulged often enough, and Matt had hit the right buttons. She repeated it to herself fiercely, though her mind screamed that she had just drop-kicked Rule Two, always be honest with
yourself
, right out of the ballpark. Or was it Rule One?

As if he were reading her thoughts, his voice dropped to a rough whisper. “You said a moment ago you’re willing to have sex. Why are you fighting me?”

She managed a shrug, not an easy body language to pull off with her body shaking and her chest heaving with the exertion of their struggle. “If you want to fill tonight’s dance card, then I had to make sure you worked for it.”

His lips curved up in something that would have been a smile if it wasn’t so cold and deliberate. “You deny there’s anything special between us.” It was a statement, not a question.

“That’s your arrogance talking, Kensington. Nothing is between us but lust and about a hundred million in costs in three start-up ventures. You want me, and it’s the hunt that’s got you so worked up. Tomorrow, when we’ve sated it, you won’t even remember. We’ll get an equal thrill from seeing that steel prices went down.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to show you that, even though your body can be pleased in other ways, your mind and heart have only one avenue to fulfillment. I’m going to straighten up now and lay your wrists on the table on either side of you.” He unfolded her arms from her chest between them and did just that, stretching them out and placing her wrists against the smooth table surface. “I want to unfasten your bra and see your breasts. If you move your wrists, lift them from the table, I will spank you. I’ll turn you over, pull those pretty panties to your knees and make your ass rosy with the palm of my hand. I’ll enjoy it.” His voice lowered, his eyes glittering with purpose. “So do me a favor and disobey.”

She set her jaw, lifted her chin. “You’re a pig. If you’re going to do this, don’t play your sick games. Just do it. You might be better than my…vibrator, but I doubt it.”

“Just any guy will do, if his cock is hard enough?”

She managed to keep her voice from breaking, but she suspected only a lifetime of discipline made it possible. “I’m sure you can get me off easy enough. You’ve had the practice. I’m just another Friday night paper doll fuck to you, same as you are to me. Change the hair, clothes,
shoes
.
Same person, forgettable after it’s over.”

“I see.” With a warning glance to reinforce his earlier threat, he
spread open
her torn blouse. It was a back fastening bra, but he simply took hold of the piece connecting the cups in the front and tore it, holding the tension on the two separated cups so she was arched off the table. His cock, still pressed against her through his clothing, slid an inch along her panties at the change in position. When he looked at her exposed breasts, to her shame, the nipples were elongated and erect, as if begging for attention. As he lifted her, her wrists slid along the table, but did not leave it, as if they were chained to the table in reality. Her hips wanted to move, to writhe against him to relieve the painful build up of pleasure vibrating along the nerves between her pussy and abdomen.

She tried to keep an indifferent look on her face, though she was perilously close to losing control completely. What she wanted to do was scream, fight him with everything she had just to get away from him and what he was doing to her. He seemed determined to take her choice away from her. Her body and mind were getting lost beneath that intent gaze and sexy firm mouth, both of which gave her imagination a thousand ideas, just watching them as he studied her.

“I knew this would be difficult.” His gaze never left the quivering slopes of her breasts, the upward tilt of her rib cage. “And I prepared for it. You say you’ll fuck me because I’ve turned you on, but it could be me or any other guy to scratch your itch. Is that right?”

“Are you having a hearing problem?” she retorted. “That about sums it up.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to back you down and prove you wrong.” He bent close to her. “You want me with a hunger so bad you’ll tear my flesh off my bones to crawl inside me. I know it, have known it for months, and so have you.”

“You—”

“Do you want me to hurt you, Savannah? Is that preferable to me being gentle, tender with you? Cherishing you? You won’t make me rush this.
And one other thing.”
She felt like a desperately cornered mouse staring into a hawk’s eyes. “I won’t let you out-negotiate me. There is no draw. Tonight you’ll surrender to me completely and give me everything I ask for. And I’ll make you glad you did.”

“You wish,” she said, more faintly than she’d intended. A light smile touched his mouth, but something else was in his eyes, more frightening than hard purpose. He cupped her face in both hands. “You can fight me, scratch at me with your nails or that biting sarcasm of yours, but I won’t hurt you, Savannah. Except in ways that will bring you pleasure. And I’m not ever going to let anything else hurt you again. You’ve already had your quota of pain for one lifetime.”

“No.”

“Yes. And it’s time for you to realize that.” His hand reached under her, one hand coming around her back to hold her up as he smoothly unbuttoned the top button of the skirt, lowered the zipper, his fingers sliding down the satin-covered crease of her buttocks as if they had every right to be there.

She
did
want to have sex with him, so why not just help him along,
get
it over with? Why stay rigid under his touch now?

Because he wanted more than that, and he wasn’t asking.
He was taking, stripping off more than her clothes, and it frightened her in a way the physical discrepancies in their strengths did not. She understood everything about how this moment had come about, had enough of a history with him to know tonight wasn’t about rape. He wouldn’t force her if her body said no, but he had to realize, when his hand slid lower, smoothed over her pussy and found the crotch of her panties wet to the touch through the satin, that her body was screaming for him.

To hell with it.
As he pulled her slightly forward to get the skirt down past her hips, her feet touched the floor. She reared up, stomped on his instep with the spike, managing to land a blow in between the side opening of the expensive shoe and the thin black dress sock, a poor protection.

He swore, flipped her and plastered his hand against the center of her back, used his weight to bear her back down onto the table.
Holding her there that way while she thrashed uselessly, he bent, pulled off first one shoe and then the other, tossed them across the room.
He stripped her skirt off, sliding it down over her kicking feet. Then, with a violence that dropped her stomach to her knees, he tore the remains of her blouse from her, leaving her in stockings and panties only. He stripped the bra down her arms, but instead of taking it off, he used the garment to tie her wrists behind her back.

“Kensington, what are you doing?”

“Something I’ve been planning to do for a while. A great while, so that I planned it out to the last minute piece. I’ve heard you admire my attention to detail.” He paused, holding the pressure on her body to keep her still. “Actually, that’s my interpretation. The rumor was that you called me first cousin to the Grinch, who didn’t overlook even a last crumb for the Who
Mouses
.
Which shocked me only because I didn’t think you’d ever been allowed to read Dr. Seuss.

“I intend to impress you with my level of detail tonight.
Often,
and well.”

He yanked her to her feet, turned her to face him. “But first, I’m going to explain some things to you. Just consider this one of those corporate trust retreats where you stand on a stage and fall back into your co-workers’ arms.”

“I always hated those things.”

“I’ll bet.” He produced that sexy, easy smile again, which kept tempering these moments between absurdity, terror and wonder. “We hate them because of the hypocrisy, because we know there’s no peppy corporate organizer in the real world, inspiring fuzzy feelings in people so they’d want to catch strangers in their arms. But didn’t you despise it even more because you wanted it to be true, a group of people willing to take care of you, to catch you when you fall?”

She wished he had left her shoes alone. Standing before him in her bare feet was discomfiting, and not just because it increased the difference in their heights. It increased her awareness of his gaze traveling over her bare breasts, thrust out because of the restraint of her arms behind her back. He traced a finger along the sensitive crease of her thighs, along the lace of her white panties. She was trembling, which she also hated, so she focused on being still, standing like a statue before him, determined not to give him anything other than the responses of her body, which she could not control under his touch, and the disdain of her expression, which she could.

“That’s good.” He reached her face at last. “You’re the strongest woman I know. But you’re going to learn you don’t have to be tough with me.

“Here are the rules. You can give up at any
time,
admit I was right, that I do affect you. That you’re absolutely crazy about me.” That smile grew broader, even more arrogant and infuriating. “And then, if you want, we can call it an evening. You can walk away and I’ll let you.
For tonight.”
That smile shifted, became more of a threat with the devastating promise implied in it. “But both of us will know I won. So, just say the word. And you’re free to go.”

She smiled back, a quick, feral gesture, and rammed her knee into his groin.

It was a suicidal move, all in all. She was by herself, with her hands tied, with a man who physically outmatched her several times over. Her hands were tied, her clothes scattered in tatters on the floor.

But she didn’t intend to run. She merely took one step back, threw out her chin and waited.

He’d made it a competition, and she didn’t quit or surrender. She intended to walk away with every hair in place, figuratively if not literally. She’d call tonight an amusing diversion of sex games to his face, her sophisticated indifference intact.