On My Knees

by J. Kenner

I’ve gone two steps when I hear him, his voice so low that it is almost lost in the hum of the air conditioner. “If I need you?”

  I freeze, my shoulders stiff, my eyes squeezed tight to fight back the flood. And then, when I’m certain that I can manage it without completely falling apart, I turn to face him.

  He fills the doorway, this larger-than-life man who right now is vibrating with so many wild emotions it is a wonder that he doesn’t combust under the strain of it all. But despite all of that—despite the anger and frustration that rolls off of him in waves—it is the heat I see in his eyes that seems to propel him forward. A familiar, wild heat—and it is directed entirely at me.

  “If I need you?” he repeats as he strides to me, all force and power and intent. “Christ, Sylvia, don’t you know by now that I always need you?”

  He is only inches from me, but he doesn’t touch me, and that small omission suddenly seems like the most important and most horrible thing in the world.

  I want to reach for him, but instead I slide my hands into the pockets of my skirt. I’m afraid he will flinch away, and I am absolutely certain that I couldn’t survive that, too. “You didn’t answer my texts. ”

  “I did,” he says. “I answered each one, and then I fucking deleted it. I’m a goddamn mess, sweetheart, and I didn’t think you’d want to be with me like this. ”

  “Jackson,” I whisper as I step closer, thrust into motion by the force of my relief. “Don’t you know by now that I will always want to be with you?”

  My skin tingles, as if the emotions arcing between us are generating power, electrifying the air like a lightning storm. For a moment, he says nothing, but I watch as his chest rises and falls with each breath.

  “Goddamn him,” Jackson finally says, and my stomach clenches. He is cursing the man who pushed him away. Who turned cold and impassive when faced with the news that he had a brother. But how much worse will it be when he hears the rest of it? And will the fact that I must be the messenger make it easier or harder to bear?

  I reach for him, as if to soothe a wound I have not yet inflicted. The touch seems to ignite something inside him, and he pulls me close. “Syl—oh, Christ, Syl. ”

  My name is muffled as he crushes his mouth over mine. I melt immediately, surprise giving way to the pure, sweet relief of being claimed by this man. Of being used by him. Wanted by him.

  Of simply being his.

  The kiss is brutal. Hard. Teeth clash. Tongues battle. And, yes, I taste blood. It is as if he needs to consume me, to prove to himself that I am real and that I am here and that no matter what, I am not going anywhere.

  From somewhere in the back of my mind I know that I need to tell him the rest—that I must deliver that final, horrible blow—but I cannot find the words yet. I cannot risk that he will let me go. That he will back away from me, his eyes full of revulsion instead of desire.

  And so I push reality away and lose myself in the fantasy that we are fine. That we are good.

  That nothing can separate us again. Not even the iron will of a man like Damien Stark.

  He breaks the kiss, pulling back and breathing hard. Our bodies are pressed tight together and my chest throbs with the violent pounding of my heart. “I need you,” he says, and I can only nod and whisper yes, my body limp with both relief and desire.

  His mouth claims me again, but this time his hands grasp my hips and he lifts me. I hook my legs around his waist as he carries me back into his office. I feel weightless and wild, and god help me I want to be used. I want to be the bridge—the thing that pulls him from anger and back to me.

  I gasp as he slams us against the drafting table. My rear is on the surface, but it is angled, and I keep my legs around him to keep from sliding off. I lean forward and attack his shirt, tugging each button free, forcing myself to not just rip the damn thing off him. I want to feel his skin beneath my hand, the heat building inside him, growing toward a violent explosion.

  He is not so gentle. He yanks my shirt open, sending buttons flying and exposing my pale pink bra. I draw in a sharp breath, the ferocity of his action making my sex clench with raw, feral need. I’m wet, so desperately wet, and I clench my legs tighter around his hips, wanting nothing more in that moment than the feel of him against my cunt and the pressure of his mouth upon my breast.

  “Please,” I say as he tugs my bra down to free my breasts. He bends over, trapping me between his muscled frame and the hard, wooden drafting table. He drags his teeth lightly over my nipples. I whimper, my hips gyrating in a sensual dance that becomes more frenzied as he licks and sucks, my nipples tightening painfully in response to his ministrations. Page 10

  Every part of my body seems to be connected by criss-crossing strands of red-hot wire. From my breasts to my lips, to my belly, to the soft skin of my inner thighs, and to my wet and needy cunt. “Jackson. ” His name is a moan, forced out past my gasps of pleasure as I arch against his mouth, my breasts so wild for his touch they hurt.

  He lifts his head, leaving me feeling bereft. The sensual caress of cool air against my now damp breasts is like a tease, and dammit, I want more. I want to beg, but can only manage a whimper, and I clutch the desk to give me leverage as I shamelessly grind against him, wanting to increase the pressure against my clit even as I silently beg him to just please fuck me.

  We’re both wild. Crazed. This isn’t about sex or love or even passion. It’s about need. It’s about release.

  It’s about taking what we need from each other. Hard and fast and very, very thoroughly.

  His hands are on my skirt and he is shoving it up until it is nothing more than a linen ring around my waist. He rips my shirt the rest of the way open, and the muscles of my stomach tighten as cool air brushes my overly heated flesh. His mouth settles again between my breasts, and I writhe beneath him as he kisses his way down my abdomen, my skin tightening and tingling with each erotic touch.

  When he reaches my navel, his tongue dips into the indentation, and I suck in air through my teeth even as my body clenches in response to this unexpected erogenous zone. He continues down, breaking contact only to slide over the bundle of material that was once my favorite skirt but is now a hated barrier between my flesh and his mouth.

  For a moment I feel nothing except the gentle press of his hands on my hips to hold me in place. I start to lift my head, but his simple “No” halts me.

  “Please,” I beg.

  “Please what?” I hear the tease in his voice and can’t help my answering smile.

  “Fuck me. ” Just saying the words makes me even more wet. I’m certain my panties are drenched—more than that, I am certain that he can see just how aroused I am. Rather than embarrass me, though, the thought only makes me more excited, and I spread my legs just a bit more in a silent admission. I want you, Jackson. And oh, dear god, I need you.

  He exhales, and the noise he makes is both a confession and a seduction. I melt in response, mind and body relenting fully to his touch. He kneels between my legs, his mouth even with the lowered edge of the table—and with my cunt. His soft breath teases me, like the most sensual of promises. And when his lips tease the soft flesh of my inner thigh, I have to turn my head and bite my lower lip to hold back the wild current of desire that threatens to shake me to the core.

  While his mouth is busy on my leg, one hand has slipped to my panties. He teases aside the thin, damp patch of material that forms a negligible crotch, then glides the pad of his thumb over me. He doesn’t penetrate, and my body clenches in protest against that denial of sensation.

  His mouth moves closer to my core, and without any warning, he takes my legs and lifts me so that I slide down a bit on the table even as he hooks my knees over his shoulders so that his mouth is right there, and I am spread out on his work table, my skirt hiked up and my hands clenching the side of the desk in a futile defense against this assault on my senses.

  I am still wearing my
shoes—an expensive pair of heels that I bought on a recent shopping spree—and somehow that one detail drives home to me what it is we’re doing. And where exactly we’re doing it.

  “Jackson—oh, god, Jackson, stop. ” His tongue teases me along the band of my panties. “The walls—the glass. Anyone can see. ”

  “Let them. ” His words are little more than a growl, and as soon as he’s spoken them his mouth is back on me. He uses his finger to pull the crotch aside and attack me with his tongue. I shiver with excitement—both from the way he is so wickedly teasing me and from the possibility of getting caught. Slim, I know, considering this floor is Jackson’s domain alone and isn’t even fully built out yet. But even had the floor been bustling, I don’t know that I could have moved away. Or that I would have wanted to. I’m too far gone. Too lost.

  I don’t care about anything but having him. Submitting to him. To giving myself entirely to Jackson, this man who has always been able to take me where I never even knew I wanted to go … but never so far that I can’t find my way back to the familiar.

  And now I am so sensitive and close that I hook my ankles together and pull him in, wanting him harder. Deeper.

  He takes me right up to the edge—my mind swirling, my body writhing—and then he pulls gently away.

  “Jackson—what—no. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop. ” Page 11

  He chuckles, the sound very knowing and very sexy. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I have no intention of stopping. ”

  Gently, he moves my legs off his shoulders as he stands, then gestures for me to hook them again around his hips. I do, and am rewarded by the erotic sound of his zipper lowering.

  “I have to be inside you. ”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. ” I spread my legs, welcoming him. Needing him to fill me up. To complete me.

  He is hard and thick, but I’m so damn wet he enters me easily. His hands are on my waist, and I push against him, then hook my arms around his neck so that my ass is against the edge of the table and my breasts rub provocatively against his chest as we move together in a wild and primitive rhythm.

  He opens his mouth as if to say my name, but I don’t want words. I only want him, and I claim his mouth in a violent kiss, filling him with my tongue as he fills me with his cock.

  I need this, and I know that he does too. This connection. This union. It’s power and strength and solidarity. It’s proof that we can get through everything that has and will happen. That we can weather the gathering storm.

  It’s torment and treasure.

  And I dread when this interlude will end and I must unleash another kind of tempest.

  He is deep inside me, gravity working with his every thrust, and his thumb teasing my clit in time with his movements. I am lost—I am melting. Aware only of the way he makes me feel—wild and lost and so goddamned insatiable.

  But even as he pounds into me—even as euphoria spins me higher and higher and I know that this is a coming together that we so desperately need—there’s something counterbalancing it all. Drawing me down. “Jackson. ” I gasp out his name. “Jackson, stop. I have to—oh, god. ”

  He has shifted, and now he pushes me back onto the table. As he does, he lifts one of my knees up toward my waist so that I am even more open to him and he is even deeper inside me. He bends over me, shifting the angle from which he is entering me, so that his pelvis rubs my clit with each thrust, leaving his hand free to cup my ass and hold me steady as he drives into me over and over, so hard and so fast that whatever foolish notion I’d had of making him stop is very soundly knocked out of my head.

  “Come with me,” he growls. “Dammit, Sylvia, I want you to come with me. ”

  I arch up, one hand clawing his shoulder as I clutch the edge of the drafting table with the other. He pounds into me, his body going rigid with release. But it is his face, open and savage with undisguised need, that pushes me over the edge, and I cry out as the orgasm crashes over me again and again like a battering sea in a storm.

  I am still breathing hard, still trembling from the aftershocks of passion, when he falls on top of me, his face buried against my breasts. I hook my legs more tightly around his waist so that I don’t slide down, but the truth is that I want to move. I am antsy now. Guilty.

  I’ve taken this moment—this pleasure—under false pretenses, and I don’t know what to do now or how to make it right. All I know is that I have to move. That I have to get him off me, because our position is too intimate and far too fragile to support the weight of my guilt.

  “Jackson. ” I lift his head. “I need to get up. My back. ” The lie comes easily, and I feel another twinge of guilt when his brow furrows with concern and he helps me off the table, and even tugs my tattered shirt closed for me as I yank my skirt back down.

  “I’m glad you didn’t give up,” he says. “I’m glad you came looking for me. ”

  “I—” The words seem to catch in my throat, but I have to go on. I have to get this out. “There’s something I should have told you before. I should have told you the moment I found you. But I didn’t,” I say as I look down at the floor. “I didn’t, and I’m sorry. ”

  I’m rambling. And as I rattle off these meaningless words, I realize that Jackson and I are in the same predicament. I should have delivered the blow at the first opportunity. And he should have done the same with his revelation about Damien.

  “What?” He takes my chin and gently tilts my face to his so that I must either look at him or deliberately avoid his eyes. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s Damien,” I say, then watch as his expression hardens in front of me. “And it’s the resort. ”

  He says nothing, and for some reason that makes it harder. But I have to do this and so I press on, taking a deep breath for courage, and then just blurting it out. “You’re fired, Jackson. Damien said I have to fire you from the project. ”

  The bastard. Page 12

  The goddamn, fucking, holier-than-thou bastard.

  “Fired?” Jackson repeated, even though he knew damn good and well that he’d heard her exactly right. “And, what? The great Damien Stark didn’t have the balls to do it himself? He has to put that on you?”

  She took a step toward him, her hand outstretched. “Jackson, he—”

  “No. ” He shook his head. “I don’t even want to hear it. ”

  For Jackson’s whole life, everything that Damien wanted, Damien got. And more often than not, he got it at Jackson’s expense.

  Damien wanted a father? Fine, he took Jackson’s.

  He wanted time? No problem there, either. Because Jeremiah sure as hell couldn’t stick around when little Damien needed him.

  Opportunity? Why not just play grab-ass with whatever came along, just like he did in Atlanta, and why the hell should he give a flying fuck if his underhanded manipulations screwed over anyone else?

  And now Damien wanted him gone, because god forbid Jackson’s revelation caused him even the slightest bit of inconvenience.

  “Fuck. ”

  He grabbed the first thing he saw—a plastic cup full of pencils—and hurled it across the room. It slammed into the window and the pencils went flying, bouncing off the glass like tiny spears.

  Beside him, Sylvia pressed up against the drafting table where he’d buried himself in her just moments before. Her eyes were wide and he could see her chest rising and falling as she watched him warily, as if fearing that he might suddenly explode.

  Then again, hadn’t he already done that?

  He sucked in a breath, then dragged his fingers through his hair. Christ, he was an asshole.

  “Syl,” he said, then felt his gut twist into knots when he saw the single tear snake down her cheek.

  Oh hell. Oh fuck.

  He’d done that. He’d scared her. He’d hurt her. And before that, he’d fucking used her.

  And he was standing there and cursing Damien for being an
asshole?

  What the fuck was wrong with him?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Christ, I’m so damn sorry. ”

  Her mouth moved, as if to say his name, but no sound came out. Just as well, because right now his name on Sylvia’s lips had the power to shatter him. And he was already too shattered by half.

  For a moment, he just looked at her. She stood there, her mouth slightly open as if she was searching for a single magic word that could put everything back to right. Her lips were swollen, her hair mussed. She held her shirt together with one hand, because of course he’d been asshole enough to rip the garment to shreds.

  Goddamn it. Goddamn it all to hell.

  He still wore his suit jacket, and now he shrugged it off and dropped it over the back of a nearby chair.

  “I’m sorry about your shirt,” he said. “I’m sorry about everything. ”

  And then, without looking back, he turned and left the room.

  five

  I grab hold of the drafting table and suck in air, trying to gather myself as Jackson disappears down the hall.

  Part of me thinks that I should follow him—that I should go after him and enfold him in my arms, then hold him like a child, kissing him and murmuring soft words until the pain goes away.

  But we have just been down this road, and I know that when he ran from Damien, I brought him comfort.

  Now, things have changed. And this time it is me that he is running from.

  Dammit, dammit, dammit.

  I pace the office, my emotions too riled to allow me to stand still. Back and forth, again and again, not seeing the room. Not seeing anything. Just moving. Just feeling the blood in my veins and the contempt that now flows as well.

  Because right now, I hate myself. I hate myself for what I did to this man I care so deeply for. For that matter, I hate Damien, too, for forcing me to be the hatchet man.

  I understand why he did it—I’m the project manager and that means that hiring and firing are part of my job. But it wasn’t my decision to fire, and now the two best things in my world—Jackson and my job—have been tainted.

  And, yes, I hate myself because despite what has happened—despite knowing that Jackson is in pain—I don’t want to quit this job that I love.

  “Goddammit. ” I grab an eraser off the table and hurl it across the room. It hits the window just inches away from where Jackson’s pencils had struck. It makes no sound, then drops to the ground.

  All in all, pretty damn unsatisfying, and I fall back into Jackson’s chair, close my eyes, and lower my head to his desk.

  I’m lost and I’m angry and I’m confused.

  Most of all, I’m impotent. Because I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know where to begin. Page 13

  Don’t you know by now that I always need you?

  His words echo in my mind, and I can’t help but wonder if he really meant them. Does he need me?