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“Hello, Dear. How are you?” he asks when I step through his office door.
“Good. I just wanted to drop by and see you for a second since our lunch got interrupted yesterday.”
“I’m sorry about that. He was adamant about meeting right then. Funny thing, really. Once we were alone, he didn’t remember what he needed.”
“Weird,” I say. “I heard you call him King yesterday. I pictured him older.”
“Oh, yes. King is his surname. His father was King before him, and that is probably who you’ve heard mentioned before. He passed in his late fifties, about five years ago now. Kaius inherited the company.”
“Ah, makes sense,” I say, tucking away the knowledge. “Well, I hope he doesn’t give you too much trouble.”
“He’s a good kid. Nothing like his pops, really.”
It’s always funny to me when my dad calls grown ass men kids, but I guess to him they are. Sometimes, it slips my mind that Dad is aging. I still see him as I did when growing up, long before Mom skipped town. The divorce was brutal. Even the newspapers published articles on the Holland-Pierce scandal. It was almost a year before I could stand to read the paper again without seeing pictures of her with the twenty-something pool boy.
The affair ruined my father, and in a lot of ways, me too. I stopped wishing for love then. If love left you feeling the way my father did, I wanted no part of it.
I lean over and kiss his cheek. “I love you, Dad.”
“Love you too, Dear.”
With the information dad unknowingly gave, I drive back home and open the search engine on my Mac. My preliminary searches for King don’t yield much, but when I try Kaius King, pages upon pages fill the screen. I knew he owned the club here in the city but didn’t realize it was part of a franchise he started five years ago. He now has similar places in all the big cities across the US and a few abroad. I click on an article about the local club, and after reading for a few minutes, I begin to plan.
Carley, one of the girls on the team, hand delivers my dress at three that afternoon. I lay it on the bed and fill her in on my plan. After all, it’s always good to let someone know when you’re about to do something incredibly dangerous and possibly illegal. I decide on a nude makeup look tonight. Light, rosy blush, faint contour, and barely any eyeshadow followed with a sharp, exotic swipe of liner. I curl my hair in loose, beachy waves and then brush them out for ten minutes until I’m left with a soft curl reminiscent of the Hollywood girls from times past.
“Are you sure you want to do this alone? It will take me less than an hour to shower and get ready.”
Even though I know should take her up on the offer, I decline. “I need to do this alone. I’ll be fine. If he wanted to hurt me, he already would have.”
“Maybe. But maybe not. It’s hard to say. I’ve heard some heinous things about the man.”
I don’t bother explaining that I heard them too, but most of that was his father. Mostly because I don’t know if that’s true or not. For all I know, the stories could’ve been about him even when his father still lived.
“Help me slip into this.” I down the last of my wine and place the glass on the vanity. Carley holds the dress open at the neck, allowing me to step into it. I slide the dress up, the fabric molding to my skin. It’s a glorious piece. The top is satiny smooth with a look of velvet, long sleeves, high shoulders, and a V cut down the middle ending just above my pelvis that forms into the bottom of the bodysuit. The bottom is see-through lace in a floral pattern that hugs my legs. It would show off every inch of my womanhood if not for the built-in bottoms.
I take a breath in as Carley zips the side. When I turn toward the mirror, a smile springs free. I spin, checking myself from different angles, then turn to Carley. “Oh, yes, I think I’ll do just fine alone tonight.”
She laughs, refilling our wine glasses. “Looking like that, girl, I’d be surprised if the man lives through the night. King or not.”
I raise my gaze to hers. “Exactly.”
Whether King knows it not, he has not seen the last of me. Until this point, he has controlled every move of this match. It’s time to take back the reins. I admit he knocked me on my ass. For a minute, I forgot who the hell I am, what I’m capable of. I let the power of his name dictate the game rather than staying true to myself. He may have a title. Hell, he may even have the power to cut me down where I stand with no one the wiser. But I have power too. The power that comes with being a woman and owning the complex facets of that.
Woman. There is power in that title too.
At the end of the day, Kaius King is still just a man. He may be rich, dangerous, and so far out of my league its laughable, but he’s still just another combination of X and Y chromosomes. He still undeniably thinks with the much smaller brain between his legs when confronted by a powerful, sexy woman. Today was proof enough of that. He could’ve easily proven his control in a hundred other ways, but he chose to do so with sex.
My first mistake was letting him.
My second came when I let him walk away. It won’t happen again. Tonight, I take no prisoners. I claim back my identity, my freedom.
And while I’m at it, I think I’ll make him finish what he started this morning too.
Chapter Eight
KING
Every time I close I my eyes, I picture Nolan’s hands skimming her thighs and the dazed look on her face when she put touch to my command. I’ve walked around all afternoon with a semi-hard dick. The moment it starts to go down, another flash invades my thoughts, and I’m right back where I started.
