KNOCKOUT (16 page)

Gwendolyn Pierce was staring up at me with her wide, soulful eyes and her pretty pink lips all agape, her heart beating so hard if I listened closely, I swore I could hear it. I was close enough to feel it, too, pounding through the thin fabric of her camisole, making her pert nipples quiver against my chest.

I’d caught her in her nightclothes, a modest ensemble of flannel pajama pants and a lacy top with no bra underneath. The latter clung to her small frame, the full, tender globes of her breasts outlined in delicious shadow.

I slid my fingers up along her ribs, returning her gaze, the bare skin of my chest grazing her trembling arms. “Nobody needs to know, Gwennie. It’s just you and me.”

Gwen took in a sharp breath, and for a moment, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t call me that,” she whispered, but trailed off when I began inching her cami up her stomach, revealing more of her pale skin than was appropriate, given who we were to one another.

Gwendolyn was my stepsister. And I was her stepbrother, and heir to a duchy. We were both hot and barely past eighteen and pumped
full
of hormones. We were dangerous. A scandal waiting to happen.

And I wanted it to happen. I was sure Gwennie did, too. No matter how hard she’d dug her heels in about adapting to British culture—something her mother had insisted upon, accent and all—my stepsister couldn’t shake that rebellious nature of hers. She wasn’t meant for the aristocracy. Then again, neither was I.

“We can’t,” she breathed. God, I could taste her on my lips. She tasted like desire, betraying her words, which came out almost like a squeak. It made my cock hard to no end. She was such a little mouse, but I got the feeling she would turn into a wildcat in bed, once somebody popped that sweet cherry of hers.

Somebody who would, hopefully, be me.

“We can,” I insisted. “See?” And I ever-so-lightly brushed the pad of my thumb over one of her nipples.

“God!” she hissed a little too loudly, and I leaned down to cover her mouth with my own, to stifle the seductive sounds dripping from her mouth. Gwendolyn turned her face away at the last second, panting hard as I teased the nub of puffy, sensitive flesh beneath the fabric of her shirt.

“Let me do this for you,” I whispered in her ear. Her back arched, forcing her hips against my hard-on. “I want you so badly, Gwennie. And I know you want me.” I took one of her hands and placed it on my cock; in response, it lurched toward her, desperate for more contact, so full of want and need that it physically hurt. “Do you feel what you do to me?”

“Tristan,” Gwendolyn said, her doe-like eyes somehow growing even wider. “You’re…
pierced?
Down there?” She touched the surgical steel embedded in the head of my cock.

“Do you want to see it?” I asked her, shivering as she stroked it. Oh, God, I wanted her to keep going, and to never stop.

“I…” She looked up at me through her lashes, her gaze so curious, so full of wonder. “Um…”

“Come on, Gwennie. Live a little.”

“I can’t,” she said, pushing me away by my chest. My dick slipped from her hand and I groaned. “Not like this, Tristan. Not… here. When you’re only doing it to make your father…
our
father… mad.”

I leaned against the pantry shelves and rubbed my face, trying to scrub away the frustration boiling in my nuts. When I looked at Gwen again, there was such sadness on her face. I thought that, even in the darkness, I could see the glint of tears in her eyes.

I realized then that, for her, this was so much more than youthful desires. I realized that she might even have feelings for me—genuine feelings, ones that transcended a mere compulsion to be naughty. For me, this was just a passing interest, one of many I’d had since I realized girls didn’t actually have cooties—well, most of them, anyway.

I wanted to fuck Gwen and get her out of my system. She wanted to fuck me, too, but then she wanted to live happily ever after. I was
not
the man to do that with. She needed to lower her expectations.

And why not? Everyone else had.

“I see,” I sighed, shaking my head. “Bloody hell, Gwennie. I thought you were an adult now. That you’d grown up a bit. But you’re still clinging to that Mickey Mouse, lovey-dovey horseshit, aren’t you?”

Gwendolyn blushed. “I just want it to… mean something. Is that so wrong?”

I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t a Disney movie, Gwennie. You’re not a princess, Gwennie, regardless of who your mother married. And I’m not your Prince Charming, your knight in shining armor, or whatever the hell else you expect me to be. But I
am
hot, and I
am
good in bed, and I
am
willing to teach you a few things you can use to snag a husband later on in life. It’s a good deal, love. You should take it.”

I waited, my cock thrumming to the beat of my heart as Gwendolyn stared at me. Only this time, there wasn’t a war waging behind those pretty eyes. She wasn’t struggling between propriety and desire. This time, she was hurt. Pissed. Shocked that I’d ever speak to her that way.

Good. Somebody had to bring her head down out of the clouds.

“You’re an asshole, Tristan,” she whispered. “A real prick.”

“
Royal
prick,” I corrected her. Then I shrugged. “Anyway, the offer stands. You know where to find me.”

I opened the pantry door and stepped out, leaving Gwen huffing and puffing behind me. This was exactly why I didn’t go for the innocent types. They always wanted something they couldn’t have, something I couldn’t give. They watched too much TV and read too many books. Real life wasn’t
The Princess Diaries.
Real life was more like
The Bachelor,
where you ended up with someone based on prior arrangements and how good they were in the sack—after you’d test-driven all your options, of course.

This was the reality check Gwendolyn needed, and I was confident she’d come after me. After all, I was leaving for Afghanistan tomorrow, a newly enlisted member of Her Majesty’s Royal Army. She wouldn’t let me go off to war without something to remember her by—she was, as I’d said before, a
romantic.

I chuckled and shook my head.
Virgins…

One

Chapter 1

F
our years later
…

I
t was a well
-known fact that driving your own car in London was, above all things, a very poor decision. Even among the aristocracy—who seldom touched the wheel of their own vehicles, save for an odd sense of personal enjoyment—you never drove yourself through the streets of London town. In fact, such a thing was widely accepted as the key to a stress-induced heart attack—or at least, a minor brain aneurysm.

I, thankfully, had never needed to worry much about the perils and stresses of London traffic aside from a slight sense of inconvenience, what with the readily available use of my own driver on hand.

That might have sounded snobbish, but to say that I ever took dear Franklin for granted would have been a gross injustice—I prized that man almost as much as my own family, sometimes even more. In fact, if it were to be put in order of people I could count on more, it would be my beloved Franklin who would have to sit squarely on top, my own parents residing somewhere abysmally lower. It wasn’t uncommon for women such as myself to have a—shall we say—distant affection for their parents, but my feelings about my family often bordered between apathy and sheer disdain—and that was on a good day. I grew up with all of the perks of a wealthy upbringing, as well as the minimal parental appreciation.

The life of a young woman living among the upper echelons of British society was, without a doubt, one of privilege and often a great deal of to-do that hardly seemed to mesh with the modern age. For instance, many among the aristocracy still scoffed at the idea of work, aside from a few select professions: lawyer and politician being the most agreeable to the senses of the “old blood.” Men were, more often than not, still expected to hold down respectable careers while women were expected to take up one or more charities to help boost their popularity among the people. I, being only the stepdaughter of a lord, was afforded certain freedoms, most of which came from not bearing the name of his house upon my shoulders. The greatest of these freedoms, I felt, was the simple option of actually choosing my own profession, something few of my fellow members of the nobility shared.

My job, which many would not qualify as “acceptable” or “respectable,” was something that many among the upper class still desperately needed, especially in a day and age where “good breeding” was hard to come by. When the country’s nobility needed to find their sons and daughters matches, I was the one who found the most compatible options. Matchmaking was my specialty, and I was one of the best in Britain.

I always laughed at the old saying that “those who can’t do, teach,” but the longer I stayed in my profession the longer I came to realize that the same was true for a great deal of people like me. “Those who can’t find love, find it for others.”

Thoughts like that brought me back to days before I was the confident woman I am now, back when I had been spared the misfortune of the attention of men—back when I’d not yet grown fully into myself. It was those thoughts that made me think of Tristan.

For all the years he had been away I still found my mind drifting back to that pantry, to the way his hands touched me. I closed my eyes and tried my best to push those intrusive images away. And were it not for my driver, I don’t think that was a battle I would have won.

“Where to this morning, Ms. Gwendolyn?” came Franklin’s deep, heavily accented baritone from the front seat as I shut the door and buckled myself in. I’d always liked Franklin’s Scottish drawl, ever since I was a much younger girl.

“Straight to the office today, I think, Franklin,” I sighed. “No time for our usual stops. And besides, it looks like rough seas today.”

“That it does,” Franklin said, his voice taking on a dark, mocking tone. “Lucky for you, then, that you’ve got yourself a fine sailor at the helm of this ship then, isn’t it?”

“Aye, aye, captain,” I said, smiling as I relaxed back into my seat. I watched as Franklin pulled my car out into the sea of honking horns. It almost felt like we’d joined a herd of angry wildebeests with an exceptionally colorful vocabulary.

“Must be a big to-do if you’re skipping your morning cuppa, Miss,” Franklin said, clucking his tongue. “Does some big fish need to find their soulmate so fast the breakfast had to wait?”

“Afraid so,” I said, shaking my head at his motherly concern. That had always been his way, especially in my younger days, looking after my best interests and always making sure that I was fed. I always joked to myself that Franklin doted on me like an old fishwife, especially with the lack of his own children at home. “At least, that’s what Tina made it sound like this morning.”

Tina, my personal assistant—and probably the person I could rely on just as much as Franklin—handled much of the running of day-to-day aspects of my business including acting as the buffer between myself and the multitude of pompous nobles who all demanded that they be first and last priority when it came to my time and energy. There was no one so demanding of quality work as those who had never done a day of it in their lives.

“Must be, if Ms. Tina is calling you so early,” he said, glancing back at me through the rearview mirror, his crinkled blue eyes creased with no shortage of empathy. I wasn’t sure what I ever did to deserve Franklin, especially on stressful days like this.

“I’m just hoping that I don’t walk into another one of Lord Adderby’s explosions like the last time she called me so early.” The infamous Lord Adderby was one of my more usual clients, being a man in his late sixties, finding him a proper match had proven to be more than a little challenging, even for my considerable talent. It had been over a year since he had engaged my services as a matchmaker, and the entire time he had either offended or rejected every single woman that I had set him up to begin courting. This, in part, had been due to the lord’s rather grating personality, and the fact that he was probably the most inappropriate man that I had ever had the misfortune to do business with.

I could only hope that my luck would hold out and I’d have a quiet day at work, with minimal instances of undesired screaming.

***

“
S
he slapped me
!” Lord Adderby declared, his jowls wobbling as he raged, reminding me in no small way of a flustered walrus. “That woman is lucky I haven’t called the police! The nerve of that girl, laying her hand on one of her betters like that!”

“Calm yourself, Lord Adderby,” I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose. It took every ounce of my self-control not to slap the man myself. This was true for any unfortunate instance where the two of us had to occupy the same space, let alone have his spittle threatening to land right on my glasses whenever he spoke. “I’m sure we can work this all out.”

“I’ll tell you what we’ll work out,” he said, his face reddening with every word. “I want another match! A
respectable
match! And you’ll have her name to me today before I set foot out of that door, young lady!”

“My lord, your tone isn’t helping this situation,” I said, my patience already worn thin by his lordship’s inability to mind the expulsions from his mouth. It was exactly this kind of situation that made me lament giving up coffee only a week before. “I’m sure we can talk to Miss Fairchild and sort all of this out, if you would perhaps only apologize to her for whatever offence—”

“
Me?
Apologize to
her?
Absolutely not!” he spluttered. “And as for my tone, I will not have a girl of your station—no matter the breeding of your stepfather—tell me anything to do with
tone!
I’ll have that little bitch brought up on charges!”

I clenched my fists, tightening my lips into a thin line as I felt the limits of my tolerance breaking like a levy in a storm. If there was one thing I disliked—no,
hated
—more than anything it was the word “bitch,” especially in regards to a fellow woman. Second would be the implication that my own authority was somehow determined by the marriage of my mother.

“Get out,” I said, my voice coming out much louder than I had imagined that it would. I could feel my heart pounding like a drum, thudding in time to the bubbling anger that was given my voice its steely tone.

“I beg your pardon?” Lord Adderby said, blinking with incredulity. He seemed to regard me fully for the first time since I had walked into my office and he had started his insufferable tirade. “Just who do you think you are?”

“I think that I am the proprietor of this business, Lord Adderby,” I said, my jaw set as I looked the old fossil directly in his drooping eyes, “and that I have instructed you to leave this instant. From this moment forward, you will no longer be receiving my services in your romantic endeavors.”

“How
dare
you?” the blustering tub of lard asked, stomping his foot like a spoiled child. “I have never received such disrespect in all my years! Do you even realize the repercussions that this will have on you, young lady? Why, by the time I’m done with you, you’ll never be able—”

I held my hand out in front of his face, silencing him almost immediately. His mouth closed with a snap and I watched as his face turned from a deep scarlet to almost bruise-like purple around his cheeks.

“Leave, Lord Adderby, before I have you removed by building security.”

“This is an outrage!” he cried, mouth agape and face contorted, as though he could hardly believe that I’d make such a threat. He turned on his heel and wobbled toward the elevator with his considerable girth, shouting the whole way. “You’ll pay for such insolence!”

Once his sagging, scowling face had disappeared behind the elevator doors, I turned my attention toward my assistant, doing my best to curb my already considerable frustration. I took a deep, slow breath through my nose before I slowly let it out through my mouth, trying my best to even out my tone before I opened my mouth again.

“What happened?” I asked, my words crisp, though considerably less sharp than they had been with Lord Adderby. Tina didn’t deserve my ire, as I was sure she got more of the brunt of that walrus’s screaming than I had.

“It appears that his lordship made untoward passes at Ms. Fairchild on their… ‘date’ last night,” Tina said, a frown affixed to her face. “When his lordship didn’t relent, Ms. Fairchild struck him across the cheek with her open hand, picked up her belongings, and left.”

“I see,” I said, once again attempting to keep my frustrations in check. “Make sure that Ms. Fairchild is sent flowers as an apology from us, and a letter apologizing specifically for facilitating her unfortunate encounter. I’ve had enough of cleaning up that old bastard’s messes for the past year.”

“Yes, marm,” Tina said, nodding as she tapped on her tablet.

“Thank you,” I sighed, brushing a strand of hair away from my face. Tina was undoubtedly the only person on the planet I could trust to keep her composure in the face of men like Lord Adderby, and the only person I trusted to handle the minute details of what amounted to my entire life’s work. She was a godsend, and more often than not it was me who had to force her to go on vacations every few months.

“You have one more thing lined up this morning,” she said, swiping her finger across the screen in her hand. “Though I’m not sure if you’d like to put it off until later this afternoon.”

“It can’t be as bad as what we just endured with his lordship. What is it?” I asked, motioning for Tina to follow after me as I headed into my office proper.

“You mother would like you to call her,” Tina said, and I noted the pained grimace on her face.

“I was wrong,” I laughed as I sat down at my desk. “That is so much worse.”

“Shall I tell her that you’re engaged until later this afternoon?”

“No,” I sighed, resting my head in my hands. “I’ll call her now. No point in putting off the inevitable, is there?”

“No, marm,” Tina affirmed.

“Would you do me a kindness, though, Tina?”

“Of course,” she said.

“I would kill for a cup of coffee.”

Tina nodded wordlessly, moving out of the room, her clacking heels echoing out into the hallway beyond, leaving me alone with only myself and the looming prospect of having to talk to my mother to keep me company.

Lady Wolfe, otherwise known as my mother, was not always my favorite woman in the world. That was not to say she was a bad person… though perhaps she could have been described as a
bit
power hungry. My mother was one of those people who craved authority and recognition, though not always at the expense of others. She was motivated, determined, and at times, a little pushy. I didn’t blame her for the way she was—my mother was an impressive woman and one that I’m sure that many others girls could look up and aspire to be like. Just not me.

I reached toward the phone with a sigh, putting the receiver to my ear as I dialed her number. While both my mother and I were of a similar cut, sans the moderate lack of empathy on my part, I had a hard time holding a conversation with her that didn’t infuriate me. Everything from my sense of style to my choice in clothes was exactly the opposite of what she’d ever have chosen for me, something she never failed to comment on whenever we had the chance to speak, much to my chagrin.

The phone began to ring. Once, twice, three times before I heard the clatter of someone on the other line.

“Good morning, Gwendolyn,” my mother said in her usually cool tone. “How are you, dear?”

“Just fine, Mother,” I answered, leaning back into the comfort of my high-backed office chair. “And yourself? Tina had mentioned you wanted to speak.”

“I always wish to speak to my daughter, dear, when the time permits.”

I closed my eyes and fought to keep my tone even. While my mother might
wish
to speak to me, that was never the same thing as actually doing so. The time, as she said, never seemed to permit. I’d grown up dealing with this sort of behavior for years, and had always come to expect never actually being the kind of priority I’d always wanted to be in my parents’ lives. I wasn’t my father’s blood relation, and therefore was not in line to inherit any of his estate or a title—not that I was sorely missing it, to be honest.

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