Expecting Surrender (Dominion Trust Book 3)
Page 21
They just… were.
The questions swirled in her mind again, her brain unable to anatomize all of it, all the implications of it. To see what this might mean for her — and for her relationship with her husband. It was probably time to talk to Sharon again, and maybe Joely too.
Or maybe both.
* * *
It was the last full day of the meeting. He’d learned more about the new updated EPA regs than he’d ever wanted to know in ten lifetimes. He and two dozen other environmental attorneys had sat through conference after conference, breakout sessions, lectures, and more. Fortunately, nothing he’d heard would have much of an impact on the Coal Creek project. Stan would be happy to hear that — if indeed it was possible for Stan to be happy about anything. Perhaps some of the BLM updates would present complications, but Keihl didn’t have the brain power left to unravel all of them now. Most of it was bullshit. Well meaning, yes, but like so much in government, full of unintended — and most of them negative — consequences. He’d wait until he got home to try to unpack all of it. Ella was good at such work. Very good.
Maybe he could use this to keep her nose in the books, and keep her out of trouble.
During a short intermission before the closing break-out session, Keihl found a quiet chair in a corner of the hotel’s beautiful lobby. It was a sort of atrium, all soaring glass ceilings, palm fronds, and bubbling fountains. Balancing his laptop on his thighs, he peeled away the spill guard from the coffee cup, the heat of it starting to singe his palm. He inhaled the slightly burned, but still wonderful, aroma of the coffee as the computer booted.
The e-mail notifications cascaded in as he’d expected — conferences were hell on e-mail inbox queues — but there was one particular e-mail that caught his eye. Well, the subject line did, really.
“Subtle, Ella.” He shook his head, chuckling.
Then he scanned the e-mail, lowering his coffee slowly from his lips as he read.
Hello Keihl,
Hope the conference wasn’t a complete waste. It’s been crazy without you here. Different partners keep asking for you, and I keep telling them you’re at the conference they paid to send you to. It’s like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand’s doing. Stewart Phillips asked for you twice! Guess he didn’t believe me the first time I told him.
Anyway, I thought you might find this… illuminating. I pulled the next batch of names from that agent list. As you might have already guessed, they’re also all listed as Dominion Trust. No surprise there, right? But take a look at some of the companies listed there. Call me when you get a chance.
Ella
Keihl pulled out his phone, looking around for somewhere to put his coffee, wishing he had three hands. He finally set it between his legs on the chair, hoping he wasn’t stupid enough to spill it on his crotch and parboil his nuts. No lawsuit would rescue him from such idiocy — and it certainly wouldn’t cure sudden infertility either.
He dialed the number, still reading the e-mail, trying to remember where he’d seen some of those names before. While not technically illegal, if he were an auditor — or the IRS — this would send up a whole army of red flags. No matter how above board it looked, when something didn’t feel right, it usually wasn’t.
The phone connected.
“Ella Rhodes.”
“Now, that is very interesting, Ella.” Keihl lowered his voice. “Did you pull the rest of the names from the list yet?”
“Nope, I wasn’t sure if it’d be worth it. Trying to be a good girl — for once.”
Keihl laughed softly. “I like this new Ella — but stow that shit for a while. I need evil Ella back for a bit longer.”
“Thank God!”
“I recognize some of the names on the list you sent me. Centurion, Fiske Capital, RefServ — I think that’s an oil services one — but most of the rest don’t ring a bell. What would I need to do to convince you to—”
“Way ahead of you, bossman.” He could hear the glee in her voice. “I looked up most of them. No real pattern I could make out, but some of them are definitely big time corporations.”
“Yeah, I know Fiske has something like a four billion market cap.”
“Jesus.”
“A couple things jump out at me,” Keihl said. “They’re all over the map — financial services like Fiske, then you’ve got petroleum, mining. I see one that’s a telecomm outfit in the Midwest. I think Centurion is a goddamned weapons manufacturer. The other question I’ve got is how come they’re all connected to the Dominion Trust? Doesn’t make sense for one entity to be into all of these areas at once.”
“Fishy?”
That’s my Ella.
“Looks totally legal from what I can see. Nothing I can point to as being an issue. But the whole thing has me twitchy. Something definitely doesn’t look right here.”
“I’ll keep pulling them for you. Maybe when you have all the names, you can piece together something, a pattern, commonalities — something.”
“I like that idea,” Keihl said, leaning his head back and watching the way the broad, brilliant green of the palm fronds above him seemed to wave upon the air currents in the atrium. “But I want you to do something for me.”
“Do I get to carry a gun? Jump out of a plane?”
“You’re not in a spy movie, dear.”
“Shit. And I thought this job was going to be fun!”
“I’m serious, brat.” His voice lowered to a murmur as two of his breakout partners walked by, giving him a nod as they went. “I need you to promise me this. Keep this shit quiet. You understand?”
“Okay, but why? This isn’t anything that’s not publicly available, with some patience and persistence.”
“Just trust me on this. Quiet as a mouse.”
“Or a ninja.”
Keihl chuckled again. “Whatever will keep you under the radar. I don’t know exactly why yet, but for now, this is just between you and me.”
“No problem.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you flying back tomorrow? Why don’t you just go home?”
The image of a naked, kneeling Kirsten, her palms laid neatly on her pale thighs came to mind.
Not now, horndog.
“I’d love to. But I need to check this all out first. And if I go home …”
“Distractions, distractions.” Her voice was a lurid sing-song tone.
“It’s not like that, Ella.”
“It needs to be. Considering the amount of sex I’m not getting? You married peeps better be making up for it.”
“I want a new secretary.”
She snorted. “We call them admins these days. It’s like, the twenty first century now, you caveman.”
“I thought you liked cavemen?”
“Only in the bedroom.”
He covered his mouth to stifle his laughter. “Annnd now we’ve officially passed over into line-crossed land. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Fly fast, bossman!”
He hung up, slipping the phone into his pocket, and taking a sip from his coffee. This list posed more questions than it answered. Really, this was probably nothing — or at least nothing a lowly enviro attorney needed to be fucking with. But curiosity was always an Achille’s Heel of his, and he knew he couldn’t just let this drop. At least not now. He did know one thing, and he wasn’t sure if it was a good, or a very bad, thing.
He needed to talk to Tom Forster.
Chapter Nineteen
She was on him before the front door even closed, finding those soft demanding lips of his that had haunted her dreams every night he was away. She surprised him, driving his body against the hallway wall, his bag slipping off his shoulder to thud against the floor. Her fingers worked at his belt as he growled into her mouth, showing her how much he’d missed her too.
He pulled her back, the dark eyes glinting with lust. “Missed me?”
“Oh you know I did.” And she flung herself against him once more, pulling his shirt from his waistband, working the fly open, all the while her mouth devoured his, their hot breath mingling, the taste of his wet lips driving her desire yet higher.
Should she tell him everything? How many times had she paced at the front door waiting for him? She’d tried on at least a dozen outfits, rejecting one as too conservative, another as not quite slutty enough. She’d settled on the tight white tank she knew drove him wild. She’d put her hair up, a wild, black mess atop her head, held together —barely — by the Japanese sticks she knew he loved.
She hoped those sticks wouldn’t survive the next five minutes in her hair.
His hand snaked up her thighs, lifting the mini-skirt with it, his fingers finding the heat of her sex, her gasp loud as he touched the labia that seemed to be permanently swollen now. First trimester was behind her, and thankfully, so were her bouts of nausea.
It was replaced by a sex drive that seemed to be rocketing into outer space.
She wondered how much of it was the fact she’d been deprived of him for almost three weeks — battery operated boyfriend notwithstanding — and how much of it was the hormones. Hadn’t she read that in several of the books she’d been perusing? Those books had been coy, of course, or maybe simply clinical.
‘You may see a noticeable increase in your libido.’
Noticeable? Who the fuck were they kidding? Her pussy seemed to be hot and swollen on a more or less permanent basis now, her nipples hardening at even the thought of sex.
“Down on your knees,” Keihl said, his breath hot against her neck, his big body turning her and trapping her against the wall. “Now, Kirsten.”
She dropped, pulling down his slacks as she went, exposing the heavy cock rearing up, the large scrotum she took in her palm. He groaned as she stroked his testicles, lifting them, and squeezing gently. She looked up at him, taking the burning shaft of his cock in her hand.
His gaze met hers as his hands stroked through her hair, the sticks clattering to the wood floor as he divested her hair of them, replacing them with a firm grip of his fist.
“Suck, Kirsten.”
She smiled up at him, then took the thick cock between her lips, her mouth
watering. Inhaling the musky male scent of him, she sucked him deep, the head pushing for the back of her throat.
“Look at me as you do it.” He yanked at her hair harshly, and her gaze opened to his as she worked him with her lips, her tongue sliding up and down the shaft.
He pushed farther, holding her head tight, and she froze, knowing what he wanted, concentrating on relaxing her throat. He plunged deep, holding for a moment, as her throat pulsed, then pulled back, holding his cock in his fist, tapping the now swollen purple head against her cheek, before plunging deep again.
“Hold it, girl. You can do it.”
He forced it even deeper this time, until her nose was pressed to the wiry nest of his pubic hair, holding her head fast to him as her throat clicked, as she willed herself to open to him, to let him have her at his speed, in his way. She was his, and she wanted nothing more than to show him how much she wanted to be his.
Then he pulled back, telling her to suck on the head, to lick the slit, to lap at his balls. She did all of it, without question, loving this, wanting to obey him, to show him how much she’d missed this, missed being his — only his.
She sucked him hard then, her cheeks hollowing, the hallway silent except for the sounds her mouth made on Keihl’s cock, his labored breathing. She could feel his balls draw up tight, his cock swelling even larger.
“Fucking slut,” he growled. “My slut!”
“God, yes,” she breathed as he pulled her off him harshly, the stinging grip of his hand in her hair just spiraling her desire even higher. She lifted his balls in her palm again, loving the heaviness of them, the heat against her skin.
“Put your hands behind your back, slut.”
Her pussy spasmed at the order, at the words. He didn’t often talk to her like this, but it was the stuff of her darkest dreams when he did, that animal lust that he took such pains to keep under control, now unleashed upon her. She hoped he’d unleash it more often.
“Open those lips, Kirsten. I’m going to fuck that mouth, and then I’m going to come down your throat.”
He drove into her, crowding her back against the wall until the back of her skull was pressed tight to it, the strong, muscular thighs seeming to surround her, his body all around her now. His fist tightened in her hair, and she whimpered at the hot pain at her scalp. His thrusts grew more urgent, her lips tight about him, wishing that thick cock was thrusting between the throbbing lips of her sex. She clasped her own elbows behind her back, letting the gag reflex take her as he repeatedly drove to the back of her throat. She tried to look up at him as he fucked her mouth, her head bouncing against the wall at each thrust. He was too close though, her vision taken up by his torso, the line of dark hair that led down that hard belly toward the pubic hair that rasped against her lips at each plunge into her throat.
“Thought about… this mouth… while I was gone,” he grunted between each thrust. “These soft lips. Made… for me.”
This was right, her on her knees, her mouth serving him. It was simple, and perfect, and wonderful.
And she was his.
He pushed forward with a harsh groan, holding her forehead to his belly, as she felt his cock pulse over her tongue. She pulled on it, tried to suck even harder as his come poured forth, spurting deep, down her throat just as he’d promised. He kept her tight against him as his hips gave little, sharp jerks.
“Swallow all of it, slut! Every fucking drop,” he ground out, his cock pulling free from her lips, her tongue following it.
She collected another drop of his essence from the slickened, swollen head, tasting the salt of him. Then she swallowed it all down, smiling up at him at his pleased murmur.
“Good girl,” he said, his smile beaming down upon her like brilliant rays of sunshine.
She darted forward, her gentle tongue seeking his softening cock. He inhaled sharply, her hands closing upon his powerful thighs, feeling the tremor going through his body, as she licked him clean, even laving the balls, as they lolled in the loose, soft scrotum.
He leaned an arm against the wall above her, his chest heaving, his smile still bright. “Now, that’s a good way to be welcomed home!”
God, just the start. Please God, let it be just the start.
“Told you I wanted you home,” she said, tilting her head up at him, her hands stroking the hard muscles of his thighs.
His hand dropped to her hair again, his fingers combing the strands back from her face, stroking though the heavy weight of it until she almost purred. How she loved it when he played with her hair. Then his eyes flashed, one eyebrow lifting.
“On your feet, girl. We’re just getting warmed up.”
* * *
He sprawled on the couch, fly still unbuttoned, the dark pubic hair a mere shadow, hinted at in the folds of his clothing. His shirt was still on, but unbuttoned, the powerful chest, the dark, flat nipples, the hard, defined abdominals, exposed to the air, and her lust-filled gaze. She could see, smell, the sweat upon his skin. She wanted nothing more than to lick all those muscles. Perhaps if she were good, he might let her. For now, as she stood before him at attention, she’d have to be content with looking at him from afar, the taste of his seed still upon her tongue.
“I did some thinking while I was gone.”
“I should think so,” she murmured, giving him a mischievous smile. “Might be difficult to do your lawyering stuff without thinking. Or is it all instinct for you bloodsuckers?”
“You’re going to pay for that one,” he said, giving her a raised eyebrow, his lips quirking. “Cruisin’ for a bruisin’ I see?”
“A girl has needs.”
Christ, did she. The lips of her sex were so slick, she was positive it would start dripping any moment, a shaming drop of it meandering down her thigh.
“A man has needs too,” Keihl said. “The first of those needs is to have you take your clothes off.”
“What about you?”
“What about me, Kirsten?” His brow lowered, his voice quiet. “Clothes off, now. You’ve already got a spanking coming later. Don’t tempt me to add to it.”
She swallowed, her pussy spasming at his words.
“Tank top first. I want to see those tits. Video doesn’t do them justice.”
“If that’s the case,” she said, fingers gripping the hem. “I guess I won’t send you any more pictures of them.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind.” His finger lifted. Time to get on with it.
She took a breath, feeling her cheeks already heating, then pulled the tank up and off, dropping it at her feet.
“Hands behind your head, bad girl.”
Kirsten kept her eyes up as she did, looking over his head, somehow knowing he wanted her that way. He liked to peruse her charms on his own time, unhurried, and he often liked her at attention as he did so. Channeling his inner drill sergeant.
“Now… what?” He sat forward, elbows on his thighs, gazing at her, his brow furrowed. “When did…?”
“What?”
Of course, she knew perfectly well what he’d seen. It had taken her by surprise too, seeming to happen almost overnight.
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