The Token 8: Kiki: A Billionaire Dark Romantic Suspense Read online

  I tell her about the flowers and the cell.

  She whistles. “Huh. Maybe he won't take a no easily.”

  The cell dings, skittering slightly against the table like a black Mexican jumping bean.

  Her eyes meet mine, and she picks it up.

  She reads the text before turning the screen toward me.

  It reads simply: Seven tonight.

  I feel my jaw tighten. “Now does that look like casual to you?”

  Faren slowly shakes her head.

  “What do I do?” I ask.

  She grabs my hands with her one good one. “I don't know.”

  TEN

  Chet

  I tap my cell against my thigh.

  It's been half an hour since I sent Kandace the text of my impending arrival.

  I anticipate tasting her swollen pussy again, and my mouth waters like the promise of a ripe fruit is just out of reach.

  Instead of panicking because she hasn’t responded, I simply pour a shot of whiskey.

  I sip at the amber liquid. It burns a trail of fire down to my gut.

  I set my cell on top of the glass table beside my easy chair. I spin it with one finger, my mood turning contemplative.

  I lift my fingertip and stand, walking away from the cell with the cut-crystal tumbler in hand.

  Eugene steps into the doorway and nods. “Mr. Sinclair? Your parents have arrived.”

  I turn my head slightly and give a curt nod to my long-term butler. My stomach turns at having to survive the next hour or two.

  Eugene, a rugged and virile sixty, strides out the door of the library. I hear the entrance doors open and close. Muted voices reach my ears.

  My stepmother glides inside the library without Father.

  I take her in with my usual indifference. Most would find her beauty breathtaking. It just makes me want to disgorge my long-ago lunch.

  Instead, I take another sip of whiskey. At ten thousand a bottle, it isn't something I gulp.

  Clarice Sinclair creeps toward me with a not-so-subtle sway of hips. I see only the prowl and the clear machinations of what she has in mind. She wears her malicious intent like a suit. Her naked evil lies beneath.

  “Where's Father?” I ask with a casualness I don't feel.

  She runs a bejeweled fingernail over the rim of the high table that anchors the center of the library. The icy white of the Carrera marble contrasts with her scarlet tip dusted with real diamonds. Blood against purity.

  I swallow. My Adam's apple makes a painful plowing journey.

  Clear blue eyes, strikingly like Chloe's, meet mine. Her lips curl into cruel amusement.

  “You don't visit anymore, Sin.”

  She pouts.

  I glare.

  “Don't call me that.” A flutter in my jaw takes up permanent residence.

  Another sip of whiskey trails liquid fire to my simmering stomach.

  Her eyes fall to my tumbler. “A tad early to drink, Chet.”

  “It's four o'clock somewhere—at least, that's what you always told me.” I raise the tumbler. Prisms fling across her face like shards of colored glass.

  We gaze at each other in silence. The little boy that I was runs around in my skull, screaming.

  The man I am protects him.

  “Too true.”

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “Elanor has come bearing tales. Disturbing ones.”

  I smile my first real one of the day.

  A troubled expression skates across Clarice's face like a storm cloud.

  Elanor is Chloe's mother.

  I shrug, taking another sip of molten fire. My eyes meet hers again. “I'm not sure what she could be saying.” I lift a shoulder, feigning nonchalance like a champion.

  Clarice's beautiful, full lips flatten. It's the least of what makes her ugly. I find it suits very well what I know lives inside her.

  “She says, you—you had intercourse with Chloe in the back of your car. Outside the Christmas luncheon. In the parking lot, Chet.”

  I take another sip. “So?”

  Her shock is wonderful. Sharp joy stabs me in the best way.

  Clarice's hands drop to her sides. The rage in her expression sends a thrill of fear through me, though I know she can't hurt me anymore.

  “I know you're not normal, Chet.”

  Yes, and that proclamation used to work.

  I pivot and stride to her. She glances up, fear and arousal warring on her expression.

  I want to hit her so much my palms sweat with it.

  Her pupils dilate, eating up all that blue iris like ink spilt on water.

  “And who is responsible for that?” My hands shake, and I clench them into fists.

  “Please, Chet, I miss you.”

  “Fuck. Off.” I say the two words through my teeth. I set the empty tumbler down and hear the crystal chip.

  She rubs against my front, the silk of her dress sliding easily against my clothes. Her fingers stroke the lapel of my suit jacket.

  My dick twitches.

  I'm conditioned like Pavlov's dog. It doesn't matter that she raped me, that she wants me to perform things against her person that even I find vile.

  My body remembers the punishment for not being ready.

  Clarice's presence is the trigger.

  I shove her with my palm. I'm expert at not leaving marks if I don't wish to.

  Clarice stumbles. The beautiful, rich wife of my natural father. Her spiked heels carry her a few staggering backward paces through the plush pile.

  Her chest heaves as she catches herself on the back of a heavy, leather-studded chair. I stare at the wrinkle I made in the low V of her periwinkle silk dress.

  “How dare you?” she seethes.

  I smile like a shark smelling blood. “Oh, I do dare. I dare very much.”

  She huffs, indignant. “I can't get the thought of you fucking Chloe out of my head. You using her.” She licks her lips with barely contained lust.

  I turn away from her and close my eyes.

  “I don't know why Elanor felt it necessary to discuss details of my... interlude with Chloe.”

  “She didn't. I told her if she didn't tell me every scrap of what she knew, I'd pull my husband's funding.”

  I whirl, my eyes narrowing. “You are such a cunt.”

  Clarice's smile stretches her face. “Yes.”

  She doesn't defend herself. Admittance is key with Clarice.

  “I'm not eleven anymore, Clarice.”

  Her chin kicks up. “And I'm not a naïve twenty-five-year-old, Chet.”

  She moves toward me again.

  I put up a palm, warding her off like the grim reaper. “Don't.”

  She comes anyway.

  I hear footsteps in the hall, but Clarice is undaunted. She trails a finger down my bicep underneath my silk shirt.

  “I'll find something else... something else you care for so I can have my Sin back inside me.”

  I jerk my arm away from her.

  She's so much smaller than me now. She seemed so big in the past.

  “Stay away from me.”

  A throat clears.

  We both look at the door. “Thank you, Robert,” she says, preening. She struts toward him and Dad's hungry eyes follow his much-younger wife.

  A child rapist.

  I've often speculated that he likes all she'll do in the bedroom.

  He wants to fuck her ass?

  Done.

  Her mouth?

  Check.

  He wants to tie her up while men line up to fuck his wife?

  Double-check.

  But not this man. My eyes sting.

  Never again.

  My father meets my gaze over the top of Clarice's strawberry blonde head.

  I understand his unspoken warning.

  Keep the status quo.

  I've always understood it.

  I pour another Scotch. I'm going to need it.

  *

  Somehow I su
rvive their company. My dad's knowing looks. Clarice's obvious attempts for me to notice her as a woman.

  But there is only one woman I can't wait to take notice of:

  Kandace.

  When I'm with her, using her body, consuming it—I feel alive. For the first time in almost thirty years, I might have found something to stop the sleepwalking that's my fucking life.

  I can't ever let her meet my parents—parent. I don't want Clarice to know there's someone I like.

  I never like a woman.

  I fuck women.

  Clarice tolerates and covets my fucking every trust-fund bitch within a thousand miles of Seattle.

  But now there's something I want to protect, something that matters.

  I have six months, five days and a handful of hours until the trust in my name is mine.

  My father lives on the riches of my deceased mother.

  My real mother.

  I allow myself to dwell in that soft warm place where her memory resides. She died when I was four, so I have only snippets of memories—nothing concrete.

  But like a guarded knot of gold inside my chest is one memory of her holding me.

  I can almost remember how she smelled.

  My eyes open, and I shake it off.

  The memory, my melancholy, Clarice's continued manipulation.

  I haven't fucked her in eight years.

  She raped me for the last time when I was twenty-one.

  Can a man be raped? So many would look at Clarice and think that built-in pussy, as fine as hers, would be a good thing. But the same question can be posed, if you have no option, no matter how good it is, when choice is removed, your freedom is robbed.

  What eleven-year-old boy knows anything of choice?

  Children don't.

  But finally, I might have a choice—a choice in Kandace King.

  She just doesn't know it yet. I’m afraid I might be a little too dysfunctional to get who might be the best thing for me.

  I wet my lips, swiveling my neck to release the tension.

  I stride to the limo as Eugene watches my approach with eyes that see too much, know too much.

  I hope Kandace isn’t too sore for what I want to do, what I need.

  ELEVEN

  Kiki

  I can't believe I'm behaving like a sitting duck. I’m waiting for Chet.

  A ding sounds from my cell, which vibrates shallowly against the glass-topped kitchen table.

  Ax: Hey babe, you ever gonna text back?

  Me: Yes. Here I am.

  Ax: Why didn't you text back?

  Ax inserts a sad face emote.

  I sigh. How do I say that he was a great friend, a great distraction, when we both lived in the projects. But now? He just dredges up all kinds of bad. I'm scared to see him again. It's been what? Five years? Six? Kiki's all kind of moved on.

  Me: I—you've been there for me, true? But, I'm sad over the life, you got me?

  Ax: I got you. But I thought I was a good part of all that?

  He was.

  Me: You were. I'm sorry, I'm just going through a thing right now.

  Ax: I'll go through it with ya.

  I think of Damon Axton somehow getting a load of Chet Sinclair. Ax is all rough edges, cloth cut with a jagged blade. Chet is all finely-honed perfection. Sterling chiseled him.

  I roll my lip under my teeth.

  Ax deserves something. He hid me before.

  He helped me, and he wasn't that much older than me. He was smack dab between Thorn and me—three years older than me, three younger than Thorn.

  Me: Kk.

  Ax: Can ya meet me at Gasworks park tomorrow at noon?

  Me: Same place?

  Ax: Yeah baby, the same.

  Me: Sure.

  The screen dims then goes black. I look at the screen.

  6:57 pm.

  My other cell, the one Chet sent, is cool and silent. I pick it up, looking at the one message.

  6:59.

  The bell rings.

  I jump even though I knew—I knew—Chet would be right on time. Some chicks think guys or people who are chronically late are somehow more important, but I think that's bad manners.

  I rise, smoothing out my pencil skirt. It's cream against my coffee skin, and I paired it with a jet black blouse with only two buttons. Rich expanses of cleavage mound above an inky, all-lace bra.

  I wear high heels almost too tall to walk in, even for me, but I manage because they throw my hips in just the seductive sway I’m going for.

  My hair is a thick coil at the lowest point of my neck. Solid gold hoops, paper thin, swing lightly from my earlobes.

  I move to the door and don't open it.

  I put my palm flat on the wood and breathe deeply.

  A fist pounds once, hard, against the other side, and I yelp and jump back.

  “Kandace?”

  Chet's unmistakable gravely baritone strikes me like a chord.

  I open the door.

  His eyes sink into mine.

  I cross my arms. “Did you have to beat on the door?”

  He smiles, and my pussy gets wet.

  Damn.

  “No,” he admits.

  Chet makes no move to come in. “Have you considered my terms?'

  Ownership.

  Dominance.

  “Kind of.”

  His brows sink like golden ships above his pale eyes. “Kind of?”

  I sweep my palm inside the house and he moves just inside the threshold.

  I have to push by him to close the door and the next thing I know he's spun me against it.

  It shudders from the impact, and my toes clear the floor.

  His hand is at my throat, his arm curled around my ass as he presses all of him against me.

  The skirt's an issue, so he hikes it up. My nude cuban stockings are secured by black hooks. A line of black runs down the back of my leg, and his finger brushes over it.

  “I like definitive answers, Kandace.”

  A finger sinks inside me, and I gasp. No prelim, just savage lust.

  He slides his digit back and forth. “A simple yes”—his finger pumps to the second knuckle—“or no.”

  He crushes his lips against mine, and I whimper when his fingers leave my depths and squeeze my plump clit.

  “Will suffice,” he finishes, driving two fingers back inside me.

  “Ahh!” I yell as he enthusiastically finger-fucks me.

  “That's not technically an affirmative.” He hikes my ass against his knees and spreads me wide.

  My eyes pop open, and I have to grab his neck to keep my balance.

  Three fingers stretch me, his thumb plugging my ass.

  I grunt from the double penetration. My head falls back, my mouth parting.

  “Say it, Kandace.”

  “Yes!” I yell. “God, yes!”

  “Excellent,” he says against my neck.

  Fingers leave my flesh.

  I slide down the door, my palms slapping the sides as I stand on my own two feet.

  Chet steps away and gives me a satisfied look with hooded eyes.

  Anger and a disgruntled pussy tag team me.

  I straighten, smoothing my expensive skirt over my rump and exposed bits. A long strand of my hair has come undone and trails inside my blouse, tickling me between my breasts.

  “I hate you.” My voice strikes him like a lash from a whip.

  Chet doesn't recoil in shock. He smiles knowingly. “No, you don't.”

  I think about it. “Okay, I don't hate you, hate you. I hate that you do that shit and I can't... I don't know… You frustrate the hell out of me!”

  I stalk past him, and he does nothing, says nothing.

  My heels tap as I launch myself toward the kitchen. I don't have shit to do; I just have to get away from Chet. I'm so pissed I'm like a wet cat—all claws.

  I'm almost to the raised bar that lines the kitchen island when Chet's hand lands on my back. His other hand slaps th
e edge of the granite to halt me from breaking ribs.

  He steps between my quivering legs.

  I gasp as Chet pulls the back of my skirt up to my lower back, exposing my delicate black lace boy short panties. He grips the top and tears them to my knees.

  Chet kicks my legs apart like a cop searching for weapons, and I know he's going to fuck me.

  I groan, so aroused my thighs are wet.

  He smears his hand on my juices. He takes the flat of his palm and sweeps from my clit to my entrance before shoving two fingers inside me.

  I ram my hips back against his penetration.

  “Perfect. Tell me what you want, Kandace.”

  I stifle a sob, jerking my hips back and forth against those seeking fingers. “You.” I’m just short of begging.

  I feel his hair skate across my shoulder like silk heat.

  “Not good enough. Say it, Kandace, or I'll leave you all swollen and dripping wet.”

  “Ahh!” I seethe, keeping rhythm against his fingers as he fucks me with them.

  “Drill me!”

  Then he does.

  My breasts rest against where only teacups and silverware have before.

  Somehow Chet's pants disappear.

  His dick presses against my entrance, and I mewl as though I'm dying. He sheaths himself inside me in one thrust, and I moan from his size. It's too much. It's perfect. A breath squeaks out of me in pure relief from his torture.

  I bounce up, my tits coming off the counter, then he slams me again from behind. His hand wraps into the knot of my hair as his cock plunges inside again.

  His fingers tighten painfully against my scalp.

  “Chet,” I say. His fingers hurt.

  Then he changes the angle of his penetration, and it's deeper. The fingers that were painful now ride the edge of exquisite pleasure.

  “Yes,” I hiss.

  “Hold yourself up.”

  I put my elbows on the counter, and his hands fall to my hips.

  He moves deeper still, and I throw back my head.

  “Ung... ah-huh... oh god!” I scream.

  His dick reaches my womb, and my orgasm crashes against me without mercy. Chet sighs.

  “Yes,” he breathes against my body as his thrusts keep coming.

  He releases inside me as I pulse around him.

  I lay my cheek against the smooth cold granite and want to cry.