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  It was funny now that I thought about it, as I cleaned up the remnants of breakfast and got ready to enact my low-tech Plan A. What had there really been to stop me and Lock from being together for ten years except threats? No email, no phone calls, no letters...I’d swallowed the list of rules whole and gone away to school like a kicked puppy. Ranulf Christie had Spoken and Made It So, and I’d toed the line. Was emotional blackmail really that powerful, or...

  “Oh, shit.” My coffee mug fell from my suddenly limp fingers and into the stainless steel sink with a clatter. I stared down at the chipped rim, watched the loose piece circling the drain.

  The blackmail. Of course. It had never been about Lock’s secrets. It had been about him and me. Even back then, Lachlan’s father must have held something terrible over his head to keep us apart. Nothing else made sense. And whatever ammo he’d had hadn’t expired with his death. It was still active. Still forcing us apart from the grave.

  I clung to the edge of the counter, feeling like I’d been gut-punched. Probably exactly how Lachlan felt when he’d read that piece of paper while Kyle Attwood looked on with a smarmy smile. Now I really wanted to see what was on his phone and find out what was in that letter. Because there was no doubt in my mind it had something—no, everything—to do with me.

  I straightened up slowly, breathing in deep and exhaling until I was calm. Okay, calmish. And then I left the kitchen and went to gather the rest of my battle gear.

  Lachlan Christie was in for a fight.

  And then I’d—no, we’d—take on the ghost of his father.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lachlan was normally up before sunrise. When he was in the city, his schedule was sacrosanct: wake up at 5AM; drink the world’s strongest cup of French Press; go for a run in the park; grab a quick shower and change; and head to Calanais. There, he would go over menus and inventory with his sous chef, Reggie, before they headed out for the day’s marketing...which would inform that night’s specials. He was a hands-on boss, a fully involved executive chef. He didn’t expect his staff to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. After all, it was far easier to be a hard-ass when A) You’d done the thing before and B) You were always right.

  That philosophy did not apply to Nayantara Kopekar Christie. Running a restaurant was child’s play compared to dealing with her. Even when she was nowhere near him. And then there was the fact that he now rather acutely understood what a submissive’s side of a scene was like. After he’d poured out his whole sorry tale to Mistress Jewel and Chloe, the two had tongue-lashed him so severely for his “heartlessness” and “stupidity” that he practically had welts.

  So, at half-past seven, he found himself still at his apartment—still in his bed—communicating with his staff via tablet and smartphone. Davis and Reggie were more than capable of running the show—they’d done so with no notice when he’d gone off to Mumbai—but he felt like he was skiving off from school. Shirking his responsibilities. Hiding.

  Celebrity chefs did not hide, for fuck’s sake.

  Neither did sexual dominants. There was probably a handbook that said so. He should’ve asked Jewel for it while she read him the riot act.

  “Trust is the biggest thing you can give your sub,” she’d reminded him. “When you broke that, you broke her. And yourself. You have no one to blame but yourself, Lachlan Christie.”

  And here he was licking his wounds. Slouched amidst his Egyptian cotton sheets. Naked as the day he’d been born except for a pair of reading glasses he never wore in public. A cup of coffee sat untouched and cold on his night stand. The blinds were still drawn. He had to set up a meeting with Ranulf’s weasel of a lawyer at some point; he’d made no moves to do so as of yet. He hadn’t grieved his father at all...but he was certainly mourning a relationship with Naya that had barely begun.

  Fuck, you’re pathetic. Just like the old man always said..

  Lachlan was so caught up in his navel-gazing that when he checked his devices again, it was nearly 9AM. With a groan, he forced himself upright and swung his legs over the side of the queen-size bed. The hardwood floor was cold under his bare feet, bracing. He liked his apartment at approximately 69 degrees Fahrenheit, and he could only imagine what Naya would say about that.

  “You have an incredibly juvenile sense of humor, you know.”

  “Oh, please. Like you weren’t laughing, too. And, guess what, I AM a juvenile.”

  He’d been painfully, stupidly, aware of that. But apparently he didn’t know how to handle a grown Naya any better. Brilliant job there, Lock. Top marks. Scrubbing wearily at his face, at his scratchy beard stubble, he crossed the bedroom and went into the hall. He needed to shave, shower and get on with it. Blackmail didn’t care if you were heartbroken. Extortion didn’t wait for a rainy day. Nobs like Kyle Attwood didn’t go, “Oh, sorry, you had to dump your girlfriend, we’ll pick this up next week.”

  So, fuck it. He’d deal with the immediate threat and then get Attwood out of their lives for good. Keeping Naya out of the spotlight and safe was his first priority, even if it meant he would never see her again. So long, darling. Goodbye, brat.

  “Good morning, Lock.”

  He blinked.

  Then, he blinked again.

  No, he wasn’t imagining it. He wasn’t hallucinating.

  Naya was sitting in his living room. In his favorite chair. Her long legs were crossed. He had a sense of white material and bright red shoes and Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct and then he leaned heavily against the wall and practically choked on his tongue.

  “The security desk let me in,” she said, while he continued to gawk. “I didn’t even have to bribe them. I hope TMZ never finds that out.” Her dark, liquid, eyes were calm. Her cherry-stained lips curved in a slight smile. Her hair, he so fucking loved her hair, was loose around her shoulders.

  Even if he wanted to say something, he couldn’t. Because his cock was speaking already, swelling at the sight of her, jutting upward so quickly and sharply that it hurt. There was no hiding now. His reaction to her was obvious. Whatever cruel things he’d said didn’t matter, because he’d always want her. He could be dying and he would want her. He’d spring an erection in his coffin.

  Naya glanced down and back up again. Almost dismissive of his plight. And then she tilted her head. “So much for getting me out of your system, hmm?”

  Oh, God. You are magnificent. The way Lachlan saw it, he had two choices. He could turn back like a coward and barricade himself in his bedroom until she went away. Or he could fall upon her like a ravening sex beast.

  So, of course, he did neither. He stood there, took a few deep breaths, and curled his hands into fists. “What are you doing here?” He was almost impressed by how composed he sounded. As if his enormous hard-on wasn’t an elephantiasis in the room.

  “It’s simple.” She shrugged, uncrossing her legs and letting them fall wide open. “I’m rewriting the script.”

  * * *

  I wasn’t religious. My mother had been more devoted to her kitchen gods than to any Hindu pantheon. Still, I couldn’t help but send up a little—okay, a big—prayer to Lord Ganesha, the remover of all obstacles. Because he’d also seen fit to remove all of Lachlan’s clothes. It was hard to lie when you were naked...when your body told the truth in such a glorious, undeniable way.

  He was hard for me. Instantly. The minute our gazes met. I could say it was the dress. Or the fact that I’d taken my panties off and stuffed them in my purse after sneaking in and shutting the front door as quietly as possible. But I knew it was me. He wasn’t any more ready to let me go than I was to be released. And he was standing there, leaning against the wall, wearing nothing but adorable wire-rimmed glasses, still trying to pretend he had the power to shove me away.

  God, he was beautiful. All that muscle. So much skin—pale in some places and sunburnt in others. I loved the tufts of red-gold hair on his chest and under his arms. His thighs were powerful. His feet absurdly cute because it was
such a vulnerable thing to see him without shoes or socks. And his dick...it was the crowning achievement. I’d seen more than a few ugly ones in my time, but his was perfectly proportioned. I’d already memorized its shape and its weight. I could stare at it for hours. I could lick him all over and still never get enough.

  If he would only just let me in.

  “I’m a writer,” I reminded, keeping with the scenes I’d plotted out in my head. “I can change the story any time. You forgot that when you cast yourself as the villain.”

  “I am a villain.” Lock practically huffed. It was a really terrible lie. “I want you gone. An inconvenient erection doesn’t change that.”

  An inconvenient erection? Was he an Al Gore documentary now? An Oscar Wilde farce? I was trying to be serious and seductive and strong, but the giggles rose up anyway. I stifled them against my palm and shook my head. “Do you really think you can resist me? How has that worked for you so far? The only way you managed it for a decade is because I took myself out of the game. If I’d gone after you hard at sixteen...?” I snapped my fingers. “I would’ve had you likethat.”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but then closed it, opting for a mulish frown instead. No doubt because he couldn’t disagree without telling me that he’d been blackmailed. Ugh. Men. I loved them, I really did, but they were a headache-inducing, stubborn, tunnel-vision oriented species.

  I stood, brushing out the folds of my skirt, making sure to linger on my backside a few seconds longer than necessary. He followed the motion. Of course he followed the motion. He hadn’t stopped looking at me since he’d walked into the room.

  For the whole car ride uptown, I’d told myself “You can do this. You can get through to him.” I’d chanted it like a mantra in the lobby of his Art Deco building. And on the refurbished elevator that had been around since long before either of us were born. The doorman on board with me had given me some serious side-eye, but was obviously used to eccentric, beautiful, rich people. He’d let me into Lock’s penthouse and gone back downstairs, no questions asked.

  I can do this. I can get through to him. I was already a quarter of the way there, according to the sundial extending from his crotch. No, wait, make that halfway.

  “Lachlan.” I said his name softly, beseechingly. “Don’t you know that we’re better together? That we can take on anything and anyone as a team? Whatever happened in Mumbai, I’m not giving up on you. I’m not letting you lie to me or hurt me just to prove some imaginary point.”

  “Of course I’m going to hurt you!” The words burst out of him like a shot. His eyes were pale behind the lenses of his glasses, like cubes of ice. And he was shaking, just barely, as I moved toward him. With fury, with repressed desire, or maybe both. I didn’t know. Any minute now, he was going to come completely undone. “What the fuck else do you think is going to happen here? That this is all going to end happily ever after? Neat and tidy? No, Naya. It’s a goddamned natural disaster. I’m going to destroy you. What other alternative is there?”

  “I think...” I paused, shored myself up with a breath, and channeled every diva actress I’d ever penned dialogue for. “I think you’re going to fuck me until neither of us can walk. Then you’re going to spank me. And then you’re going to tell me what the hell is really going on.”

  He flinched, and then acted like he hadn’t. Like he was an unfeeling monster who wasn’t aching to put his hands, and more, on me. “No,” he said, while every other part of him screamed yes.

  So, I reached out and plucked off his glasses, putting them on the nearby bookcase. With the breakables out of the way, I wrapped my fingers around his thick length, around this amazing, throbbing, angry, bit of honesty. His skin was like hot satin, warm velvet, and no deceptions.

  “You can safe out if you don’t want this,” I told him, quietly. When had I become so dominant? Had he given me the reins, or had I just taken them? I had no clue, but the confidence surged through me. The certainty and the fortitude. I have you. I have you, and I am not letting you go. I continued to stroke his cock, rubbing my thumb across the tip of him. “Just say the word, and I will walk out of here.”

  The only word he used was a curse. And then he grabbed the back of my head and brought his mouth to mine.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Her lips. Oh fucking God. Her fucking lips were a miracle. He’d been rational for a bit. Resolute, even. But then she’d touched him and dared him, and after that nothing mattered but kissing her, having her, devouring her saucy tongue. He held her to him—burrowing his fingers into the thickness of her dark hair, grinding his aching cock into her palm—and took and took and took. Until he tasted coffee and toothpaste and heat and victory. He couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to. Happily stole the air he needed from her lungs.

  How had he thought he could do without this? That he could ever function without her touch?

  Lachlan knew he’d crumbled far too quickly. He knew his brain was pudding—the American kind, not the English kind with sticky toffee and custard. He didn’t particularly care, because he was caught up in the scent of her, the feel of her, and how right it felt to be so close once again.

  He slid one hand from her hair to the curve of her shoulder. Then to her back and her hip. The dress she wore was calculated, perfectly designed to slay him. Tight in all the right places. Just short enough to tease and torment...and for him to find his way beneath it. He squeezed her delectable rear and then slapped her cheek. Hard enough to make her jolt and squirm and moan into his mouth.

  She thought she was in charge, did she? Little minx. He could be weak for her and command her at the same time. He could be bare-arsed naked and still hold some of himself back.

  Lachlan swept her up into his arms and back the way he’d walked less than ten minutes before. If he was supposed to stay in bed today, then so be it. He’d glut himself in Naya. Drown in her. Overdose. “See what you’ve done to me, minx? Is this what you want? To fucking ruin me?”

  She pressed her mouth to his jaw, his cheekbone, and then her tongue traced the shell of his ear. Her whisper was hot, damp, utterly ruthless. “Yes, Chef.”

  Oh, God. His knees nearly buckled. He nearly hit the floor with her. He would never hear those words the same way ever again. He would never hear any words the same way again.

  “Be with me, Lock. Be with me in every way,” Naya murmured, twining her arms around his neck and hooking her feet behind his knees—so that when he lowered her to the mattress, he went along with her. So that her slick pussy brushed against his cock again and again.

  He’d almost lost it when he saw she wasn’t wearing knickers. If he’d had just a shade less self control, he’d be mopping come off the living room floor instead of kissing her throat and her jaw and the sensitive dip behind her right ear. He wanted to spill inside her. To give her everything she asked for and everything he’d dreamed of. But how could he make that promise only to break it?

  “You broke it already, you idiot,” he could almost hear Mistress Jewel say...and if that wasn’t enough to still him, to hold him aloft above Naya’s trembling body, he didn’t know what was.

  What was he doing? What in the bloody seven levels of hell was he doing? Did he want a repeat of Mumbai? Of taking just a nip, eating just a bite, and then walking away from the lush banquet before him?

  She looked up at him, her pupils dark, dilated swirls of ink and lust. And she cupped his face. “You can take me in the ass if you think it’ll mean less,” she offered, huskily. “I still won’t be a virgin on our wedding night.”

  Fuck. Lachlan felt like he’d been clocked. He saw stars. His breath whooshed out of him. He fell beside her on the bed because his arms refused to hold him up any longer. “You can take me in the ass.” She’d said it as plain as day. “If you think it’ll mean less.” He’d already had a dildo in her arse while he fucked her with his fingers, filling both holes as she rocked against him, and that had meant plenty. Wasn’t anal sex supposed to mean more
to a couple? At least, that’s what he’d gleaned from a few erotic paperbacks he’d found at The Gift. And no virgin on their wedding night...oh, wasn’t that rich?

  He was going completely mad. Absolute, raving, starkers. That was what was happening. He was being punished for all manner of sins—up to and including walking around his own penthouse in the buff—but mostly for falling for his sixteen-year-old stepsister the moment he saw her and trying to pretend otherwise.

  “Lock?” Naya nudged him gently with her shoulder. “Did I just kill you?” When he didn’t answer, just covered his face with his hands, she rushed on. “I didn’t realize butt sex was a hard limit. Or is it all penetrative sex? Is this a thing? Do we need to talk about this? Does your penis have issues?”

  He choked. The words “No, my penis does NOT have issues” refused to leave his throat. Laughter did instead. Rather hysterical laughter at that.

  Naya busied herself removing her shoes. He heard the thunk of each ridiculously high, and ridiculously arousing, heel hitting a far wall. He couldn’t be bothered to look. Not with tears of insane mirth running down his cheeks. After a while, when he could breathe again, he just said it. And it felt good to say it. To simply put it all on the table and lay down the burden.

  “I’m being blackmailed.”

  She rose up on one elbow and frowned at him, furrowing her eyebrows in gorgeously grumpy speculation. “To not stick your dick in me?”

  When Naya put it like that, it did sound incredibly absurd.

  He’d kept from making love to her because...why? Because it would make walking away from her easier? It hadn’t. Because it would seal their connection? They were already bound so tightly he didn’t know where he ended and she began. Because it would mean too much? It was too late, she meant everything to him. Nothing else even registered on the same scale.