House of Payne: Steele (13 page)

At her move, a nearly soundless grunt escaped him, followed by an exhale that shook.

Aha.

Suddenly, she knew exactly what to do.

“I think I need a few practice strokes before I’m ready to play full-out.” It was as honest as she could be, because it was true. Eager student that she was, she wanted some practice in how to get him to make that sound again. “How does it work exactly? Like this?” With her heartbeat shaking her whole body, she did the most brazen thing she’d ever done and rolled her pelvis, her back arching as the swell of her bottom lifted up to stroke against him.

“
Fuck
.” He popped the button on her denim shorts, causing her to gasp audibly. “Fair’s fair, sweetness. You just took a practice shot, so now I get a practice shot as well. Nothing to get too excited about… and in case you don’t know, that’s a statement that should seriously fucking disappoint you.”

“Nothing you do could disappoint me.”

“Damn straight.” As if to prove it, his fingers stole under the loosened button, his palm nudging against her stomach to ease her back while he positioned a knee between hers. She stepped wider to accommodate the slow invasion of his leg, a natural thing to do. In a heartbeat his thigh was between hers while his hand crossed the proverbial Rubicon, and dived into her panties.

Oh, my.

“I dare you to move that sweet little ass against me again, Essie.” He whispered it against her ear at just the right time. Despite her best efforts, tension at how quickly things were escalating poured into her, chasing away the delicious heat his touch created. “Grind it hard against my cock if you mean business and you’re not just some little girl who’s fucking around with me.”

Automatically she rose to the challenge, refusing to let him believe she thought so little of him. She rubbed her ass against him, her pelvis moving in a deliberate undulation. With that movement his hand cupped her intimately, and his fingers slipped into her cleft to rub against her most vulnerable point. Until that moment, she’d been aware of that spot only in passing, but now it became the center of the universe as she knew it.

“Ohhhh.” God, her bones were melting.

No.

Her
everything
was melting.

“This is the reason we play the game, baby. This feeling.
This
.” His fingers massaged her in a relentless, circling motion, and it was such an agony of pleasure she whimpered in her throat while trying at first to get away. A moment later she fought to get closer, grinding hard into his hand with a mindlessness she couldn’t help. It was heaven and hell, this mind-blowing wet heat that surged between her suddenly quivering legs, and it was driving her insane. “This is what it should always be like for you, Essie. All the time. Every time. This is what I’ll make you feel when I’m inside you. And if I don’t make you come so hard you fucking cry, then you’ll have the right to tell the whole world what a shitty lover I am. But that’s never going to happen. Never. I’ll always take care of you.”

She lowered her head until it rested on the felt of the table, because the pleasure was crushing her. It seemed to be folding in on itself—doubling, trebling, an ever-increasing madness that she both craved and had her vaguely terrified. How the hell was she supposed to stand this without imploding?

Then all at once the tension broke, and she no longer had to worry about imploding. Exploding was her problem now—a
big
one—but it was a problem she yearned to have for the rest of her time on earth. A half-cry, half- moan escaped her as her body moved feverishly, riding his thigh as he worked her, and the pleasure was still trying to devour her when his free hand pulled on her hair to wrench her mouth to meet his over her shoulder. Her cries of sweet ecstasy vibrated against his lips, just as his moans slid beautifully down her throat.

It was the most intimate thing she had ever shared with anyone in her life.

“That’ll do it for Lights Out play for this hour, folks. Stay with us for another edition of Lights Out next hour.”

The lights flickered on overhead, and with it came a stunning realization.

She’d just had her first orgasm.

In public.

And it had been freaking
fabulous
.

“I like this game.” Ripples of echoing pleasure and a lurking, greedy need for more sifted through her, and her heart broke when his hand slipped out of her panties. She soothed herself by focusing on the sensation of his hardness still straining against her, feeding the edgy need that still growled inside her. “Thanks for the lesson, Professor.”

“It’s the first of many,” he gritted out, and the carefully leashed desire vibrating his voice made her shiver. “Tell me you’re up for that, Essie. Tell me now.”

“I am.” A strange, glowing joy blossomed inside her when his arms squeezed her to him as if he never wanted to let go. “I am.”

Chapter Twelve

“It’s not a bad gig, and you get lots of ricochet pussy, if you know what I mean. That’s a perk that’s not in the contract, I can tell you that much. This one night after a game in Orlando, there were these three bitches who fuckin’ swore they were triplets, but they looked nothing alike—at least on the top. But down below, they had the same, identical piercing…”

Standing at parade rest at the head of the House’s main stairway, Steele sent a sweeping glance over the bustling first floor and barely listened to the bodyguard he knew only as Greeley. Greeley was a big guy, and the epitome of more brawn than brains—thick arms, no neck, barrel chest, and a shaved head that showed a pair of cauliflower ears that told Steele the guy had either wrestling or boxing in his background. Too many knocks upside the head, anyway, to be healthy. But a guy who was used to hand-to-hand combat was just the sort of bodyguard a man like basketball legend Tyrell Lions needed. His fans loved him, but many, many more hated his guts for being the trash-talking showboat that he was. Without a doubt the dude needed security wherever he went, but as far as Steele saw it, Greeley was a piss-poor choice.

This motherfucker
talked
.

So far he’d found out how easily Greeley’s employer dodged the NBA’s supposedly “random” drug testing, how Lions had once been too hung over to play, passed it off as the flu, then celebrated getting paid for a night’s work he didn’t do by throwing a Roman-style orgy—something Greeley swore he wholeheartedly participated in. The topper on this shit sundae was how Lions had secretly filmed a much-hated, secretly gay teammate with his equally closeted male lover, then had Greeley sell it to the highest bidder, with Greeley happily pocketing a portion of the sales.

Steele wanted to tell the idiot that he’d better hang onto every penny of it since his terminal diarrhea-of-the-mouth was going to land him in the unemployment line. But he remained silent and tried to calculate how long Greeley and Tyrell Lions had before their careers blew up in their fucking faces.

He could only hope it’d be sooner rather than later.

Movement toward the stairs brought Steele’s attention back to the floor below. House Of Payne’s manager, Scout, led Dizzy Izz and Olivier in the direction of the stairs, her expression diligently blank. Bringing up the rear was Essie. Like a switch being thrown, he went deaf to Greeley while the rest of the world suddenly brightened. Once again, her old uniform of layers of shapeless clothing had been replaced by a wine-colored wispy skirt that hit above the knee and a black crocheted kind of light sweater over a black tank top. No scarf hid her scars around her neck, something he knew had to feel good in the summer heat, and she even wore her hair up in a low knot to show off a dangly pair of earrings that sparkled with her every move.

Right before his eyes, the little butterfly was emerging from her cocoon.

As he watched, she glanced in surprise over at Maximo Kulagin when he appeared out of nowhere to fall into step beside her. Steele’s eyes narrowed, his smile fading as he watched the man lean into Essie’s personal space to murmur something that made her smile, before he flicked a finger at the dangly earring.

What the fuck.

That asshole. He looked ridiculous, like a cat batting at a tree ornament.

And he was in Essie’s space.

That was unacceptable.

Shit, Maximo Kulagin breathing her air was unacceptable.

“Steele.” Scout made it to the landing and gave the bodyguard a small nod. “The designers have arrived for the meeting. Since Mr. Greeley’s employer is still in a session, how would you like to go about this?”

“Greeley’s got his employer covered here, and as my team’s sitting on every entrance into the building, I don’t see why we have to change plans.” Until that moment he hadn’t been sure where his presence would be most needed. But Kulagin locking onto Essie made up his mind. He wasn’t about to let her out of his sight when the likes of the Mad Russian was busy sniffing around. It didn’t matter that Kulagin wouldn’t be a part of the meeting that had been called. It just pissed him off that he’d zeroed in on Essie the moment she entered the building.

Asshole obviously didn’t know she already belonged to someone else.

Scout’s brows arched up. “You sure you don’t want to give this meeting a skip? That’s a pretty controversial client that Twist’s working on.”

“Ooh, who is it?” Dizzy wanted to know, while Olivier wore the disdainful look of a man who was surrounded by idiocy and had no hope of being delivered from his wretched fate. Essie, on the other hand…

Was watching him.

The moment his gaze ran into hers, she blushed brilliantly and bit her lip, but she didn’t look away. That broke his duty to professionalism in two. She was such a quietly brave little fighter, he marveled, and that refusal to back down was irresistible. A corner of his mouth curled, and he waited until she smiled in response before speaking.

“I know where I need to be,” he said, not taking his eyes off of Essie.

His head nearly exploded when her blush got worse.

“Seriously, who’s getting a tattoo?” Dizzy Izz demanded again.

“Sorry ma’am, we can’t say, and blabbing about it like Miss Loose Lips over here is no way to keep a low profile,” Greeley announced and shot a disgusted look at Scout.

That hypocrisy just earned Greeley a Karmic bolt of lightning somewhere down the road, Steele was sure of it.

Scout stepped up to Greeley like she was bulletproof with a side order of invincible. “Try telling me how to do my job again and I’ll find a way to make sure your employer knows that for the first hour of his tat session, instead of guarding his valuable ass like he’s paying you to do, you went across the street and fed that noise hole you got going on in the middle of your fat fuckin’ face. Now step aside, before I get Steele over here to give you a flying lesson off this balcony.”

“You fuckin’
bitch
.” Steele tensed, ready for Greeley to prove that he was exactly what Steele thought he was—a guy that had more brawn than brains. Then he took a measuring look at Steele, decided he didn’t want to take up flying as a hobby, and stepped aside. And only then did Steele realize that Essie had come up behind Scout to either brace her or get her out of harm’s way. Dizzy Izz and Olivier, on the other hand, had scurried halfway down the stairs as if they were a bomb about to go off.

Not Essie, though.

She wouldn’t dream of leaving Scout all alone when things turned ugly.

Then he blinked as the wayward thought caught him off-guard.

Essie didn’t leave when things turned ugly.

If Apolline had been like that, even a little, they’d still be together.

But they weren’t. They weren’t together because Apolline had left when things turned ugly.

No. That wasn’t quite right.

Apolline had left when
he
turned ugly.

“Right this way, folks.” With a sweep of her hand, Scout moved the party toward the double doors leading to Payne’s office. Dizzy Izz, Olivier and Essie followed, but when Maximo went along as well, Steele took an almost obscene amount of pleasure in stepping into his path.

Oh, yeah. Cock-blocking at its finest.

“You seem to be confused, Mr. Kulagin.” He kept his voice coolly neutral, despite wanting to tell Essie to get her lovely heart-shaped ass in gear when she paused to look back at them. “You’re not a part of this meeting.”

Maximo’s eyes iced over. “No law against walking a pretty lady to the door.”

“This isn’t a date.”

“And this isn’t a police state. I go where I wish.”

“Then I hope you wish to go to your tattoo booth, because your client’s already waiting for you,” Scout said without breaking stride. “Everyone’s got a job to do here, so let’s all do it, shall we?”

“Sounds good to me.” And it did, since Steele’s job kept him in the same room with Essie. With a smile he couldn’t control, he turned and laid a hand on Essie’s back, presumably to guide her toward Payne’s office.

But every man on the planet knew what that gesture
really
meant.

It was a silent staking of a claim.

As Essie settled into her usual seat in Payne’s office, she glanced over her shoulder at Steele. To her surprise she found that he hadn’t taken up his usual spot at the door, but now stood at the wall near where the sofa and her chair sat at right angles from each other. The aura he gave off was one of calm professionalism, but she couldn’t help but notice that his watchful eyes focused on her.

Hmm. Maybe he wanted to frisk her.

Her belly swooped and the juncture of her thighs got all warm and tingly at the thought, and with a huge effort she managed to force her gaze away from him. This whole tingling business hadn’t stopped since last night, when he’d shown her just what the hell everyone was talking about when they said the word
pleasure
. Before last night, she’d been like a motor that had been broken right out of the factory. But thanks to a skilled touch—a very,
very
freaking skilled touch—she’d become a purring engine that didn’t seem to have an off switch.

She’d never been happier.

“We’re now one month from the fashion show that will decide who’s going to be House Of Payne’s official fashion designer.” As usual, Payne was on his feet, pacing in front of them. “I need to know how you’re doing on your lines.”

Dizzy Izz gasped as if stabbed. “Surely the great Payne doesn’t want everyone to display their unfinished works a month before the show? Dizzy Izz only reveals completed projects.”

“You don’t have to drag everything you’ve got all the way down here just to prove you’ve been doing your homework. I just want to know what lines you’ve chosen to do for your collection.”

“I refuse to reveal a thing in front of my competitors,” Olivier announced, the corners of his mouth pointing sharply downward. “A general doesn’t give away troop movements to the enemy. You should know this.”

Good grief, Essie thought while she dug her phone out to check her notes. At times like these, she missed her sketchbook like she’d miss a part of herself, but the notes she kept on her phone would do in a pinch. So far, she had pretty much completed the daily wear portion of her collection, though she did want to throw in some snazzy retro bowling shirts for both men and women, and she was halfway done with the activewear. The baby clothes line was being saved for last, like dessert. She was going to have so much fun with that, she should pay Payne for letting her in on such an awesome project.

Payne’s sigh was almost a groan of pain. “Why is it I instantly get a headache when I meet with you people? What about you, Essie? You want to tell me to go to hell as well?”

“I’m done with the minimum requirements for the daily wear line, halfway done with the requirements for an activewear line, though I’m hoping to wrap that up by the end of the week. Technically speaking, I have some outerwear stuff as well, but not enough to call it a
line
, so I’m lumping all of that in with the daily wear. On my agenda next week is the kid stuff and if I have time I want to tackle loungewear, not because it’s needed, but because that’s my personal uniform for like,
life
. So unless I’m hit by a bus, I should be able to make the deadline, no probs.”

“What about the hoodie?” To her surprise Steele spoke up, bringing her attention to him. Everything inside her melted when she found his gaze already trained on her, and she turned completely around in her seat so she could make herself all the happier by taking him in at her leisure. “You have the two leather jackets, one for men and one for women, and that men’s hoodie, so why not make a hoodie for women? That way you’d have the minimum requirements for a complete outerwear line as well as everything else.”

“It’s a great idea, Steele, but I don’t know if I have enough money in the budget to do that, plus everything else that’s in my head. Though I really would love to see that hoodie in some plushie baby pink and magenta,” she added with a sudden grin. “My brother’s head would freaking explode if he ever saw any of his vaunted artwork represented in
pink
.”

Steele grinned. “I’ll lend you the money.”

She let out a little squeal of delight. “Done.”

“That’s against the rules, we can’t have someone going over-budget.” Olivier got to the edge of his seat while Dizzy Izz stared pure death at her from her spot on the sofa. “That’s in the contract you insisted we all signed, remember? No going over-budget.”

“Yeah, I did have that as a stipulation, didn’t I?” Payne rubbed the back of his neck while staring at Essie and Steele thoughtfully. Then he nodded, as if he’d come to a decision before he turned to Scout. “Is there anything in the contract that says I can’t kick in some extra scratch to cover everything? The point of this whole contest was to get quality shit made for the House, not to trip everyone up with fucking rules.”

“That rule was put in there so no one could outspend anyone else,” Scout intoned with a long-suffering sigh. “You can make the budget for the contestants whatever you want it to be, as long as it’s equal.”