Knox pulled out all the stops as he leaned in to press his lips to hers. Teasing and controlling, mixing heat with sweetness, and then reconnecting with that consuming passion. When he broke the seal of their lips, Shiori actually chased his mouth for more.
“That kiss was good?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’d better kiss me like that again so I can be doubly sure.”
“Greedy.”
“When it comes to you.”
This was what was killing him. Getting to know all sides of this complex woman and liking every single one. And wanting to spend as much time as possible with her. But she didn’t appear to feel the same way.
“So what were you doing out here in the dark?”
“Dinking around. Having a beer. You want one?”
“No. But I like the way it tastes on you.”
“I’ve had two. That’s my limit.” He brushed her hair off her shoulder. “Do you wanna go inside?”
She shook her head. “I’m good staying out here with you.”
Knox took her hand and led her up to his lounge chair. He plopped down and pulled her onto his lap, enfolding her in his arms with her head resting beside his neck.
Shiori shifted to gaze into his face. “Were you upset with me today?”
“I don’t know if upset is the right word.” He twisted a section of her hair around his finger.
“Then what?”
He kept twisting and releasing that hank of hair. “I got an Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! shrieking phone call from Vivie today. Seems she received a package from me, a package that contained the dress she tried on last weekend. Ring any bells?”
She blinked innocently. “Vaguely. Fill in the blanks for me.”
Knox pulled her hair. “Nice try. Explain yourself, She-Cat.”
“That dress looked perfect on her. So you, being the thoughtful big brother, bought it for her.”
“But I didn’t buy it for her.” He realized the instant they started talking about money, a mask dropped over her face.
“Yes, you did. You get to be her hero, Knox. I’ll bet she forgets who her date was for this event, but she’ll never forget the dress.”
“Hero.” He snorted. “That’s stretching it.”
“Not from where I was standing. Vivie and Zara worship you.” She traced circles on his chest. “You being there for them whenever they need you means more to them than a party dress. And I’ll admit I’m jealous of them because I wonder what it would’ve been like to have a brother like that.”
“So the distance between you and Ronin . . . ?”
“Isn’t a recent development. He left for the martial-arts academy when I was fifteen. He promised to keep in touch, but I didn’t see him for four years. And that was only to tell us he was moving to the United States. So in a way, buying that dress for her was filling in an empty space from my teen years.”
“That was incredibly generous of you. But that’s who you are. Buying a dress for a girl. Buying a trainer for your brother, who hasn’t always been there for you.”
“It was a loan. If Ronin gets on board with Maddox, I will expect repayment.” She bit her lip. “So that was part of your problem earlier at the dojo. After you’d heard from her, you thought I was trying to buy her affection.”
“The thought had crossed my mind. Until I realized if that had been the case, you would’ve taken credit for it.” He kissed her. “So thank you.”
This time she held him in place when he tried to pull away. “Knox. I can feel your restlessness. Will you let me take care of you tonight?”
“Isn’t that against the Domme code or something?” he joked.
“Completely. I’ll probably get kicked out of the ‘I don’t give a shit about my sub’s well-being because it’s all about me’ Domme club. Oh, right. I don’t belong to that club anyway, so we’re good.”
“There’s that smart mouth. I’ve missed it since we’ve become civil to each other.”
“Then I’ll try to insult you at least once a day.” She pressed her palms to his cheeks. “Go into your bedroom, strip, and lay facedown on the bed.”
“Shiori—”
“No games. I just want to touch you.” She hopped off his lap and held out her hand. “Lead the way.”
It was late, and the two beers had made him tired. He shed his clothes and pulled back the covers on his bed before he stretched out.
Then she was there, straddling his butt, leaning forward to rub her naked breasts on his back. She whispered, “Hard or soft?”
“What? My cock? Getting harder by the second.”
She playfully sank her teeth into the nape of his neck. “No, your massage. Do you prefer hard or soft?”
“Hard.”
When Shiori dug her fingers into his shoulder muscles, he let out a hiss of pleasure. He made that sound frequently as she worked him over. Reaching those deep tissues by pressing with her thumbs. Using her fists in a circular motion and digging her knuckles in.
Giving himself over to her—a sneaky way for her to prove her dominance—Knox felt himself sinking deeper into the state of bliss.
“Turn over so I can do your front.”
She massaged his hands. His forearms. His biceps and triceps. His nipples hardened when she massaged his pecs. When those caressing fingers stopped at his sternum, he forced his eyes open.
Shiori brushed the back of her hand down his face. “Keep your eyes closed. No matter what.”
“Okay.” He stared at her, struck by the softness in her tonight. It was a side of her that he never would have believed a month ago.
“Starting now.”
He let his eyelids flutter closed. And his body, which had been relaxed almost to the point of sleep, perked back to attention when her silky hair trailed down his belly.
His cock went erect as the moist breath from her soft laughter blew over the tip.
Knox clutched the sheets beside his hips instead of grabbing her head.
In true Shiori fashion, she teased him with licks and hand action. Stroking his balls. Letting her hair drift up the insides of his legs.
The teasing ended abruptly, and she sucked him into her mouth, past her lips, over her teeth.
So wet, so hot, so fucking perfect.
When she began to bob her head, he drifted into an altered state. The hot, wet suction felt amazing. Tiny swipes of her tongue in the magic spot beneath the head of his cock. Then long strokes as she pulled back and pushed his shaft back in deep.
She started with sexy humming noises that drove him to the edge. With all those sensations together . . . this would be an embarrassingly short blow job.
Shit. He couldn’t come until she allowed it.
“Stop. Please.” He panted. “I can’t hold off.”
“Yes, you can. Two more minutes. Count the seconds off in your head.”
Definitely was the fastest he’d ever counted to one hundred twenty. But it’d worked.
She let his shaft slip from her mouth. “Good.”
Her hand worked his cock, slippery with her saliva. Then she bent her head, and holy fuck his balls were in her mouth as she rubbed her thumb over the strip of skin behind his sac and his anus.
The sensations were so intense Knox couldn’t control the shaking in his legs.
But he kept his eyes closed.
His balls were wet and tight when she pulled away. He thought she’d finish him with a hand job, but she said, “Come now,” and all that delicious heat enveloped his dick again.
Four sucking glides and he was done. He groaned with relief when that first spurt shot out and she swallowed it down. He pulled the damn sheets off the bed when she caught the rhythm of his release and sucked in tandem with every spasm.
Add in the way her nails scored the insides of his thighs brought even more sensation. It was the mother lode of blow jobs.
At some point his consciousness might’ve left
his head and spun around the room because he lost any sense of reality.
This? This was a true fucking Zen moment.
Her soft body moved up to lie next to him. Smooth lips brushed his. “Now you can open your eyes.”
He lifted his lashes a little at a time, so he could drink in her beautiful face slowly from her stubborn chin, over her full mouth, her nose, to those golden eyes. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Knox twisted a section of her hair into a spiral, watching as it uncurled and straightened. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but why are you really here?”
“Because I missed you.”
“We saw each other on Saturday night,” he pointed out. That’d easily been one of the hottest nights of his life. But it had gotten weird. After he’d come so hard he worried he’d ruptured brain cells, it seemed she hadn’t cared about his inner struggle because she’d basically left him with his dick hanging out. “Then I didn’t hear from you or see you until today.”
Shiori tucked herself along the left side of his body and positioned his left hand on her lower back—a subtle reminder that she needed his touch. “My departure Saturday night was rude. I’m sorry.”
“Why did you leave like that?”
“Because I wanted to invite you to spend the night with me. Then we could have had a repeat of last Sunday.”
Knox lifted his head to look down at her. “And that would’ve been bad . . . why?”
“It wouldn’t have been bad. It would’ve been great. But I don’t know how this kind of thing works, okay? Every other sub I’ve been with, we parted ways at the club. Last week, when we ended up at your house, it was an easy transition. Saturday night after the scene, you acted like you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“You could’ve just commanded me to come home with you.”
Her eyes were so serious. “I know. But I didn’t want to fuck this up, and I ended up doing it anyhow. Last weekend wasn’t us only being Domme and sub, or coworkers. We were—”
“New lovers getting to know each other outside of bed.”
“Exactly!”
He kissed her forehead. For someone so smart, sometimes she overanalyzed things too much. “Shiori. There’s a word for that. It’s called a relationship.”
She sighed. “I suck at this.”
“You suck very, very well, so don’t ever apologize,” he murmured against the top of her head.
She pinched his side.
He pinched her ass.
They didn’t speak for several long beats as they each gathered their thoughts.
“I did some thinking, which is why you didn’t hear from me,” she said. “I also did some painting, but that was way less productive than the thinking.”
“Painting? Like painting the walls?”
“No. Like painting pictures. But I’d be hard-pressed to call my paint smears art.”
“Wait a sec. Did you paint that picture you brought me the first night you came over?”
“Yes.”
“I love it. I put it front and center on my mantel.”
She smiled against his chest. “I’m glad.”
“Keep going with the other part. The thinking part.”
She propped her chin on his chest and looked up at him. “Ironically, what I decided is exactly the opposite of what I originally told you.”
This caginess drove him crazy. “Get to the point.”
“I don’t want to hide that we’re romantically involved. Not from the people we work with or anyone else.”
Knox couldn’t stop his big grin. “Seriously?”
“Yes. I know how to be your Domme, but the rest of it outside that . . .”
Knowing how much pride she had, he understood how hard that’d been for her to admit. “I’ll make you a deal. Since you are the big, bad Domme for sexy times, I’ll take the lead on the relationship side. If what we do together as a couple is in the gray area of who calls the shots, we’ll discuss it, okay?”
“Okay.”
He kissed her, and soon soft and sweet turned into hard and hungry. He wanted to eat at her pussy the same way he ate at her mouth. “Stay with me tonight.”
“I can’t. But ask me tomorrow.”
“And every day after that. I like having you naked in my bed, kitten.” He let his breath tease her ear. “Be forewarned; I’m staking my claim on you tomorrow at Black Arts.”
“How do you plan on doing that?”
“Well, I have this fantasy of bending you over my desk and fucking you until you scream, Yes, Shihan, over and over.”
“You’d have to get my permission to do that, remember?”
“Huh-uh.” Knox nuzzled her neck. “The dojo is my domain, remember? I’m in charge.”
She sighed. “Nailed on a technicality.”
“Literally.” He laughed. “But I promise I’ll only nail you when we’re alone. No one gets to see any naked bits of you, Mistress. They all belong to me now.”
“Same goes,” she murmured.
“And since you outed yourself as my Mistress to Master Merrick, that means I get to take you out on a real date this week too.”
“You are enjoying the hell out of this.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TUESDAY morning Ivan walked into the conference room and caught them kissing.
His face turned the color of borscht and he left without uttering a word.
“Won’t be long now,” Shiori said.
“Three minutes, tops.”
Sure enough, Deacon stormed in. His gaze went from Shiori, sitting on the conference table, to Knox, standing between her knees, to Shiori’s hand on Knox’s chest, to Knox’s hands on Shiori’s ass. “I told Ivan he’d probably misread the situation. Either that or I’d misheard him—figuring he’d meant you two were killing each other, not kissing each other.”
Knox brushed his lips across hers. “Ivan’s eyes did not deceive him. We got a little carried away. Probably something you should get used to seeing.”
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. You two are together?”
“Yep.”
“How long have you been secretly playing grab ass?”
Shiori tugged the lapels of Knox’s gi top. “A couple of weeks.”
“That’s it. I’m making a call.”
Deacon made it to the door when Knox said, “Wait. Who are you calling?”
“My priest. Seeing the two of you sucking face is a sign the end of the world is near, and I’ve got a lot of shit to confess.”