I blinked.
Then I asked, “What?”
“Babe, do you have any clue how much it costs to set up a place like this?”
I totally didn’t.
“No.”
“A fuckin’ lot,” he told me. “I had a silent partner. He was the capital, I was the face. He existed to drive me up the fuckin’ wall. I did all the work. He shoved his nose in, fucked things up. Repeatedly. He did not get the concept of ‘silent’ no matter how often or what tactics I used to explain. Couple of years in, I was done with him drivin’ me up the wall. I made moves, took over, forced him out. Hostile. Though, I was thorough and he was half asshole, half idiot. Didn’t put up much of a fight. Now I own the club outright and he lives in Costa Rica with three local women who, sources say, regularly get in catfights not for his attention but for his generosity ‘cause he’s still got more money than sense. One of his bright ideas for this place was female mud wrestling. He’s havin’ the time of his life.”
I felt my lips quirk and I asked, “Female mud wrestling?”
“Like I said, the dude is half asshole, half idiot.”
I started giggling.
Knight didn’t find anything funny.
“I’m tired of you crawlin’ out of bed three hours after I joined you in it. I’m tired of classes and client nights and Saturdays which means I cannot have dinner with my woman but once a week. And bottom line, I’m not gonna sit back and watch my woman work her ass off when I can do something about it. You need to lose the day job.”
“Knight –”
“You can’t not accept because that’s unacceptable,” he cut me off. “You put notice in, no more than two weeks, Anya. And you spend your time with that bossy bitch who likes to spend money and move your clients to days. And your nights, before I have to take off, are spent with me. You design the spa you want. You decide how you’re gonna play it. We market it to get you clients. And I cover all that and your rent and living expenses until you get that show on the road.”
“Knight –”
“This isn’t a discussion.”
“Knight!” I shouted.
“What?” he clipped.
“Okay, but I have twenty thousand dollars saved for when I was gonna start my spa and I handle my rent and living expenses until I get that show on the road. And you keep track of what you spend and when I start turning a profit, we’ll set up a schedule for me paying you back.”
This was the wrong thing to say and I knew by the hard look that settled on his face.
“You don’t pay someone back for a gift, Anya.”
“But this is too much,” I replied carefully.
“When a gift is given, isn’t that for the person who’s giving it to say?”
Damn, he had a point.
“I –”
He interrupted me again to rap out, “You happy?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“In a way you know it’s gonna last?”
He asked that because he was happy in a way he knew it was going to last.
My heart turned over and I stared at him. Then I looked over my shoulder at his window, not able to see my party but knowing it was there.
A party he gave to me.
Mr. Sebring.
I looked back at him.
“I’m in love with you, so yes.”
He closed his eyes and he did it slowly, dropping his head.
That meant something to him.
I stared at him. Tall, broad, strong, scary, dude you don’t mess with Knight Sebring, head bowed, overcome.
No, I was wrong.
It meant everything to him.
My nose began to sting.
He opened his eyes and looked up, catching mine.
“Come here, baby.”
I moved back into his arms.
“Please let me give this to you,” he whispered.
“I can’t now nor will I ever be in the position to give you –”
He squeezed me quiet and his face dipped close. “Toasted almond pancakes. Sweet soft ‘okays’. Makin’ me laugh more in a few weeks than I have in decades. ‘Yes, Daddys’ I feel in my dick. The first voicemail you left me, babe, I saved it and I listen to it once a day. If I lose focus, I see you on your back, knees high, legs wide, offering your sweet, wet pussy to me. You smile at me in bed every time you wander outta my bedroom in my shirts, my tees or your work clothes and honest to Christ, it sets me up for the day. And no matter what shit goes down, I get through it knowin’ whichever bed I climb into at night, you’re in it ready to snuggle into me or give me what I wanna take. Your girl, a headache. You, never. And in a life that’s been full of headaches, babe, having that, there is no price tag. You gotta get it and do it right fuckin’ now that there’s a lotta different kinds of give and take. And you give as good as you get, baby, trust me.”
“We haven’t been together very long,” I reminded him.
“You love me and I love you. How long does that need to be?”
Another excellent point.
“I don’t want you ever to think I’m using you,” I whispered.
“You ask for a Maserati?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You ask for anything?”
“No. But –”
“You start takin’ what I don’t offer, babe, or askin’ for the moon, we got a problem. But I’m tellin’ you right now, and mark it, Anya, I’m fuckin’ thankful your cell phone was jacked. Because if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have wandered into my bedroom that night and I wouldn’t go to bed at night with the scent of your hair all I can smell and the taste of your pussy still in my mouth and your sweet body close to me and know I’ll sleep easy and wake up happy. And I wake up happy, baby, because I possess beauty and I own that beauty in all the forms it can take and the least important of those are physical.”
Oh God.
“Knight –”
His arms gave me a squeeze. “Let me give this to you.”
I fell silent, not that I was saying much of anything.
His face got closer. “Let… me… give this to you.”
I held his vivid blue eyes.
Then I whispered, “Okay.”
It was then his vivid blue eyes held mine.
Then he whispered back, “Okay.”
I closed my eyes tight then opened them and asked softly, “You love me?”
“Baby, you were made for me.”
Oh God.
My face started scrunching up again and his hand wrapped around the back of my head and shoved it in his neck.
I held on but muttered a broken, “Thank you.”
“Fuck, you’re the hardest bitch I’ve ever met to give shit to,” he grumbled.
My emotions careening all over the place, I pulled back and narrowed my eyes on him.
“Oh, so, you were also generous with your smorgasbord of pussy?”
He grinned. “Baby, don’t ask me that but I will say I never gave any of them a spa.”
“Good,” I snapped.
“Or a phone that cost a G,” he went on.
“Excellent,” I snapped again.
“Maybe a dress or shoes but not both and definitely not three,” he muttered then finished musingly, “Or even two.”
“It might be a good idea to shut up now, Knight,” I suggested.
He grinned again.
Then he noted, “Now who’s bossy?”
“I’m allowed to be bossy. I’m about to be the owner of Denver’s most kickass spa.”
Knight’s arms got tight around me and he burst out laughing.
I watched.
I did it smiling.
And I did it in love with Mr. Sebring.
Chapter Thirteen
My World
On Knight’s black, marble counter my phone rang while I was at the stove, boiling water for spaghetti and browning hamburger for sauce. I left the meat, grabbed the phone and saw on the display the call was from Viv. I took it
while wandering back to the stove and put it to my ear.
“Hey, honey,” I greeted.
“I was a bad girl.”
I blinked at the hamburger.
Then I burst out laughing.
Through my giggles, I asked, “Were you now?”
“Very,” she said through her own giggles. “Have I told you today I love Knight Sebring?”
I pushed the meat around, smiling at it and said, “Not today. Yesterday you did. Not today.”
“Well I do.”
“I take it things with Rhashan are going good?” I asked softly.
It had been just over a month since my party. I was no longer a file clerk. All my nail clients, and I lost only one, were able to move to days. But losing the one was okay because two of my clients took on six-weekly facials, Kathleen added a monthly facial, so did Sandrine and Viv and Kathleen got her girlfriend Louise to bring her acrylics business to me. So I was actually ahead.
I spent part of my days talking to Mahleena, the bossy bitch who liked to spend money who actually didn’t seem bossy to me but she definitely liked to spend money. We were now implementing the plans to deal with my gonna-be kickass spa. I was also taking an online course in small business management that Knight suggested.
So even without the day job, I was still busy.
But my nights were at Knight’s. In fact, the last two weeks since my last day at work, my apartment felt like my workplace since I’d go there to work and come home to Knight. We had dinner together then he left for work. I rambled around for a few hours, reading, watching television, talking on the phone, doing my coursework at his computer in his study and I went to bed in satin sheets. I woke up in them too. And without having to be at work at eight, I woke up later and got to sleep longer with Knight.
It was the bomb.
Life was good.
And now it seemed it was good for Vivica too.
“Hun… nee,” she whispered as an answer to my question and said no more.
Surprising both Viv and me, Rhashan had started things out with only dating and this had lasted three weeks. He was feeling Vivica out. She was my age, he was thirty-six. A nine year gap which concerned him, because as he told Viv, when he first saw her, he saw her clubbing. He was in settling in mode and looking for The One. And he wasn’t fucking around, not even literally. It wasn’t about getting off. It was about finding a partner for more than spanking.
Viv was impatient, she liked to get herself some and, like me before Knight, had hit a dry spell even for normal sex. But she was understanding as well as intrigued. As date wore into date, that understanding deepened and she got smitten and she was smitten with more than the fact he was seriously hot.
Last week, Viv reported, he broke the seal. “Vanilla sex” she said that was “out of this world”.
The night after Rhashan broke the seal, he started breaking her in. Or, in Rhashan lingo, bringing her to heel.
Viv was on top of the world.
“After you were bad, was he good to you?” I asked.
“A powerhouse, six foot, seven inch brother doling out punishment?” she whispered. “Yes, Anya, my guy was good to me. He can wield a crop and I mean that in more ways than one. At one point, I think I was in a different galaxy.”
I put the spaghetti in water, thinking vaguely I should ask Knight to take us shopping and find some way to be naughty while smiling and murmuring, “Great honey.”
“He ties me to him while we sleep.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“He ties our wrists together while we sleep so I won’t go very far. He likes his woman close while he sleeps.”
My belly melted.
I loved that for her.
I just hoped she did.
“You like that?”
“Cuddling a warm, hard mountain of muscle who wants me close? Girl,” she drew it out softly. “Abso-fucking-lutely. Living the dream.”
“Oh Viv,” I whispered.
“Anya.”
I jumped and turned to see Knight, who’d been in his study, standing at the edge of the bar, eyes on me, face weirdly unreadable.
“Hang on, Viv,” I said into the phone and put it to my shoulder. “Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Let Viv go,” he ordered and his tone was as weird as his expressionless face.
I knew he could do impassive but he didn’t do that very often anymore. Not with me.
And his tone…
I held his eyes as I put the phone to my ear. “Viv, Knight needs to speak with me. Gotta go, honey.”
“Right, babe. Been bad?”
I smiled a small smile still looking at Knight. “Not lately.”
“Get on that. Report back. Later.”
“Later.”
I disconnected and the minute I did, Knight said, “Turn off the stove.”
“But the spagh –”
“Baby, stove. Off.”
I drew in breath.
Then I turned, set my cell aside and switched off the burners on the stove.
Then I turned back to Knight. “Everything okay?”
“You might or might not get a visit from the cops. I’m tellin’ you now so you’ll be prepared in case you do. And I’m tellin’ you ‘cause you got the right to know.”
My body locked but my lips whispered, “What?”
“David Watson was shanked today. Bled out before they got him to the infirmary.”
My hand flew out, found counter and held tight.
David Watson killed my parents.
I stared at Knight.
Then I whispered, “How do you know?”
“I know because I looked into shit, found out who he was and where he was. Then I talked to some people who talked to some people and I made it clear I’d look on it favorably if David Watson wasn’t enjoyin’ his state-funded, lifetime vacation.”
Oh my God.
Knight wasn’t done.
“I did not call the hit. That said, I do not give a fuck that dirtbag is dead. Though, I would have preferred they played with him a while longer before he hit the yard in a pool of his own blood.”
Oh my God.
“Why did you do that?” I asked quietly.
“Because he set my woman up for eleven years of misery. And I did it before I even knew the fullness of what that bitch of an aunt of yours took from you. I knew to carve a decent life for yourself you worked or went to school sixty hours a week. I also knew you had a cell phone that didn’t work which meant you were unsafe and a woman with a father who gives a fuck about her, no matter her age, would not be unsafe. Not like that. And I knew you had no real family to speak of. He made that happen. I’m not down with that. Payback was not him not being here. Payback was making him pay. That’s no longer an option. He’s dead.”
I didn’t know what to do with this. I didn’t know what to think about this. I didn’t know what to think about Knight doing this.
Therefore I didn’t speak.
Knight did, eyes pinned to me.
“It’s time you learn something about me, Anya,” he said gently. “I don’t live in your world. I live in another world. It’s my world. I took it over. I rebuilt it. I own it. I control it. I have a code. Anyone in my world lives by my code. And in my world, a man who shot a husband and father on the way to work then put a bullet in that man’s wife’s brain, my woman’s mother’s brain, does not breathe easy. I can see you strugglin’ with this and I’ll give you time. But you need to come to terms with it. The understanding of retribution is essential in my world. You do not fuck with what’s mine.”
“That was twenty years ago, Knight,” I whispered.
“I don’t give a fuck, Anya.”
“You didn’t even know me then, not even close.”
“I don’t give a fuck about that either.”
“He was paying for his crime,” I reminded him.
“Not hard enough,” he stated firmly.
This, I could not d
eny, was absolutely true.
I held his eyes.
Then I said quietly and cautiously, “Don’t you think that’s a little crazy?”
“Not… even… close.”
I held my breath.
Knight held my eyes.
I let out my breath and looked away.
“Eyes to me.”
“I need time,” I told the floor.
“Look… at… your… man,” he growled and, my heart beating wild in my chest, my eyes went to him. “You do not fuck with what’s mine.”
I was silent.
Knight was not.
“Carl Sebring came in my life when I was seven and that was the beginning of the end of a life that was pure shit. David Watson came into your life when you were seven and that motherfucker made your life shit. Only when I came into it twenty years later did it stop bein’ shit. It is not lost on me we share that age when our lives rocked but I lived seven of bad and I got twenty-eight years of good. You lived seven years of good and got twenty of shit. That is absolutely not acceptable to me. And when something is unacceptable, I do something about it.”
I loved it that he felt that way.
I still could not process what he’d done for me.
So I remained silent.
Knight did not.
“He harmed you, irrevocably. He changed the path of your life. You mentioned my smoking once and then didn’t say dick about it. Women bitch about shit like that. You do not. And it’s not because you were used to it with your aunt. It’s because it reminds you of your father. You loved him, you miss him. So you don’t say dick. You dream more than any fuckin’ person I know. You say they’re all not good. You don’t sleep all night by me but you sleep by me, babe, and if you think for a second I don’t feel you jerk awake at least once every fuckin’ week because you had a bad dream, you’re wrong. I feel it. Every fuckin’ time. You said that started when you were seven. They died when you were seven. He gave you that. He did all that. And he paid. That’s what happens in my world to someone who fucks with what’s mine. Like I said, you need to find a way to come to terms with that. You want me to help guide the way, I’m here. You can find that path on your own, good. But you need to find that path, Anya. Because I own you. You live in my world. You need to find a way to live with that, baby. There’s no other option.”
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