Then he performed balancing moves that had been hard as hell to perfect for a guy his size, but he’d worked on them for years until he had them down. Now running through the set was a reminder he could do anything he put his mind to.
Which made him wonder if this situation with Shiori was something he needed strength to push through.
Finally after an hour and two bottles of beer, he fell into an exhausted and dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER SIX
ALMOST a week of not working out spurred Shiori to get to the dojo and move her body. She warmed up on the treadmill for half an hour, then switched to weights. During workouts she blocked her mind to everything but maintaining proper form, breathing correctly, and counting her reps.
Except today her head kept replaying last night at Twisted.
Knox flirting with her, but respectfully within the parameters of club etiquette. Knox asking specifics of what she meant as far as the drink order. A small thing perhaps, but he grasped the difference between the options she’d given him. Knox admitting his confusion.
And then Knox leaping over the bar and chasing after her when it appeared she’d gone looking for a playmate.
Of course Knox had no idea she’d seen that.
Of course Knox had no idea how much it’d thrilled her.
She had a small sliver of hope all wasn’t lost with him.
As much as she’d dreaded going to Mexico to make a buyout offer, the timing was good. She’d needed a reminder that she still could play a role in furthering the Okada Foods global brand—if she chose to.
Not that her grandfather or her mother were pressuring her. They opted to call Shiori’s time in America a sabbatical. Maybe that’s all it was. She’d agreed to help out at the dojo while Ronin was under medical restrictions and traveling in Japan. But upon his return, she’d have to make some decisions.
Shiori was so lost in thought that she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going and she tripped over the bottom support bar to the weight training machine. She went flying, sending the medicine ball in her hands airborne before she skidded across the mat like a baseball player stealing home. The momentum sent her careening into the rack that held the stretching bands, the jump ropes, and the weight belts. That rack fell over with a loud clunk. Her head smacking into the weight bench leg finally stopped her.
“Ow. Fuck.” She squeezed her eyes shut against the explosion of stars behind her lids.
Running footsteps sounded down the hallway and then closer.
“Jesus, Shiori, what the hell happened?”
She pried one eyelid open. “Knox? Is that really you?”
“Who else would it be?”
“I didn’t know how hard I hit my head and maybe I blacked out or something.”
“And maybe you were dreaming of me again?” he said in an amused tone.
“I didn’t know you were in the building.”
“I’ve been on the elliptical for the last thirty minutes. I didn’t know you were in here either, so the crash scared the crap out of me.” He frowned. “Are you hurt?”
“Is the top of my skull caved in? Because that’s what it feels like.”
“No.” Tentative fingers touched her head. “No blood either.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Let me help you up.”
“I’ve got it.” She turned her head and smacked it into the weight bench leg again. “Ow. Fuck.”
“Stay. Still.”
“Knox—”
“Jesus, don’t argue with me for a change. Let me help you.” He slid her body down away from the weight bench base. When she reached out to grab on to him, she drew her left hand back with a hiss of pain.
“What did you do to your hand?”
“I don’t know.” She used his body for support as she stood. Another spike of pain in her head sent her swaying into him. “I’m a little light-headed.”
“I’ve got you. Hang on.”
Shiori kept her eyes closed when Knox lifted her into his arms. Damp, warm skin met her cheek. He wasn’t wearing a shirt?
“Sorry that I’m sweaty.”
“Sorry that I tripped over my own feet.”
Her butt met a solid object.
“Feel like opening your eyes yet?”
She fluttered her lashes, letting in a small amount of light. When that didn’t send a shard of pain to her eye sockets, she opened both eyes.
Knox was right there in her face, his blue gaze darting from her temple to her mouth. “It’s starting to swell. I’ll get ice for it in a minute.” He picked up her left forearm and bent down to look at her hand. “These are friction burns.”
“I slid across the mat.” She raised her right hand. “But I don’t have them here.”
“You must’ve hit the Velcro strip along that side.” He set her hand in her lap. “You twist your ankle or anything? Is that why you fell?” Strong fingers skated down her thigh, over her knee and calf to her ankle. Her skin beaded, begging for a more complete touch. “You’ve got a scrape here.” He circled the area halfway down her shin. Then he gently maneuvered her ankle around and looked at her. “Any pain?”
“No.”
“Good.” His hand glided back up her leg to the edge of her athletic shorts. “I’ll grab the first aid kit. Don’t move.” He strolled out the door, and she stifled a groan.
A shirtless Knox was the very definition of temptation. He was so damn big and built like a warrior with those broad shoulders. She could write a dozen haikus about the beauty of how his muscled back tapered into trim hips and a firm, round ass.
Then he waltzed back into the conference room, and his front side was equal to his backside. Ripped arms—biceps, triceps, forearms—almost drew her attention away from the muscled slabs of his chest. He had a hairy chest, but the hair was pale blond and looked as soft as down. Did he showcase a six-pack? No. The man had an eight-pack. Eight little pillows of hard flesh she was dying to put her lips on. His baggy athletic shorts camouflaged his groin and his quadriceps, but she remembered from past peeks that he had those deep V cuts of chiseled muscles.
His eyes narrowed when he realized she was gawking at him. “We’re out of ice, so whoever was on office-supply stocking detail dropped the ball.”
“I’m fine, Knox, really.”
He ripped open a disinfectant pad, clasped her wrist in his hand, and gently rubbed over the surface. It stung, but not terribly. “Did you have fun at the club last night?”
“I had a really great drink.”
The corners of his mouth turned up. “Happy you liked it.” After he finished with her hand, he opened another wipe and swiped it across the scrape on her shin. “Did you enjoy the back rooms and private rooms?” His voice was tight.
“Knox. Look at me.”
He glanced up.
“After you told me you were confused and we needed to talk, I was done for the night. I went home. Alone.”
He scooted in closer. Then he pressed a gentle kiss to the bump on her forehead. “I’m glad.” And another one, followed by a soft whisper of breath. “So, so glad.”
That sweetness might just be her undoing.
“I’m a thirty-six-year-old man, and I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Kiss you, to start.”
Shiori tipped her head back. “So kiss me.”
His mouth landed on hers in a hard kiss, no holding back. He unleashed his male heat and hunger, his tongue searching for hers to twine and retreat. He changed the angle of his head and the tenor of the kiss. Turning it into pure seduction.
And she felt his need, his effort to turn this into something he understood.
While he was trying to break down her resistance, she set her hands on his chest and touched him just for the pure joy of it.
Eventually the kiss waned, and he rested his forehead against hers. “So . . .
we’ve got that going for us.”
She laughed.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said again. “I’d ask you to tell me what I should do, but that’s the whole issue—my issue—isn’t it?”
“Knox.”
“Please.” His lips skimmed her temple and her cheek before stopping at her ear. “Tell me what to do.”
She closed her eyes, wanting to believe he’d accepted what he was, but how could he when he’d never experienced submission? She brought her hands up to his neck. “Give me one night with you.”
He said, “Yes,” without hesitation. “As long as it’s tonight.”
“Why tonight?”
“Because this has been weighing on me for the past week. I’ve been waiting and wondering if I had the guts to follow through with it. If I don’t do it now, I may never find the guts to try it again.”
“What are you afraid of?”
He lifted his head, and those hooded blue eyes bored into her. “That you might be right.”
Shiori kissed him then. Holding him in place with her right hand around the base of his throat. Exploring his mouth with licks and nips and bites. Absorbing his stillness as she showed him the reward—his reward—in his surrender.
Forcing herself to take a breath, she peppered kisses in a straight line from his mouth, down his chin and neck to the hollow of his throat. “And if I am right?”
“Then I’ll be grateful I discovered who I am with you, Mistress.”
Hearing the respect in that term, coming from Knox, pushed her to the edge of emotion she’d kept locked away. She murmured in Japanese that he’d humbled her.
“Maybe before I agreed to a night with you, I should’ve asked how you became a Domme.”
Shiori looked up. “I’m not comfortable—”
“Me neither. Let’s stretch out in the conference chairs.” Without asking permission, he picked her up and carried her to the captain’s chair at the head of the table. He sat, settling her on his lap with her head resting between his neck and shoulder. “See? This is much better.” He paused. “Or am I supposed to be at your feet?”
“Not until you’re ready to be there. So this is fine for now.” She squirmed and noticed his hard cock pressing against her. No matter how she moved, she couldn’t get comfy.
Knox shifted her body, finding her the perfect spot, and she relaxed into him. “Tell me when you discovered what you are. Before, during, or after your marriage?”
“Does it make sense if I say all three? I’d been unhappy in every relationship I’d ever been in. Then all my friends were getting married and I wanted what they had. I thought maybe a lifelong commitment was the key to fulfillment. So I married Shin Hirano within a month of meeting him, because I’d convinced myself it was a whirlwind love match.”
“Was it?”
“No. After we’d been married six months, he told me I bored him in bed and if I didn’t figure out a way to change that, he’d start fucking other women.”
His body went rigid. “What a fuckhead.”
“I had to save face with the marriage because my mother and grandfather were both opposed to it. Sex with Shin wasn’t great—something was still missing after we’d exchanged rings—so I agreed to do ‘whatever it took’ to spice things up. Big surprise he had made some inquiries to swingers clubs.”
“How big of him to be proactive,” Knox said dryly.
“Yes, wasn’t it, though?” She traced his collarbone. “The first club was basically an orgy. The second club had an initiation for new members—you were blindfolded and fucked. You weren’t allowed to know who you’d had sex with. I said no way on that. The last one he suggested was a swinger’s type club with exhibitionism and voyeurism. I agreed to try that one.”
“What happened?”
“He got off watching others have sex. He’d fuck me as fast as possible—we rarely had an audience—so he had the night free to watch other couples. He expected me to give him a hand job when he wanted to get off. Once, he forced me to my knees to blow him. My resentment built because it was all about him, never about me.”
“So he didn’t drop to his knees and get you off with his mouth?”
“No. Not at the party or at home. After our third visit, another couple asked if we wanted to go to a ‘real’ sex club. We went, and it was my first foray into kink. Of course, the scenes that interested me didn’t interest him. When I voiced my opinion, he decided being submissive would teach me my place.”
“Jesus.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
“I tried being his idea of a submissive, and I hated every second of it. There was no give-and-take. It was all take on his part. Around the same time, I got put in charge of a huge new food line at Okada—a real coup for me. More hours, which, now that I think back, I have no idea how I worked more than I’d already been. I found out that my husband had been going to the sex club without me. So he’d ended up doing what he’d threatened in the beginning—fucking different women.”
Another soft kiss brushed her crown.
“I went to the club during the day to . . . I don’t know what my intent was . . . but to take out my frustration on someone. Mistress Keiko, the owner, listened to me vent. When I finished, she stared at me for the longest time. She said she’d been watching me because I looked so unhappy at the club. The only time I didn’t look miserable was when I watched a Domme in a scene. Then she told me I’d be unhappy as long as I denied my true nature.”
Knox murmured, “Sounds familiar.”
Shiori elbowed him and he grunted. “But I didn’t doubt her. Mistress Keiko asked me to come to the club alone, and she started to mentor me. By then my marriage had fallen completely apart.”
“Did your ex know you’d found your . . . niche?”
“No. And even when I knew he was screwing around on me, I didn’t cheat on him. I focused on other aspects of being a Mistress—not just sex.”
“But isn’t a submissive fulfilling your need for sexual satisfaction the most important part of being a Domme?” he pressed.
She shook her head.
“Then what is it? What does your submissive get out of it since you expect full sexual control? Is it just some kind of mind fuck for you?”
Shiori slid her hand up the side of his neck, pushing on his head so she could put her mouth on his ear. “Oh, silly man. A mind fuck leads to a real fuck. I can get you so worked up that you don’t need my hand on your cock to get you off.” She blew a stream of air in his ear and he shuddered. “I can make you come by my voice alone. Whenever. I. Want.”
When Knox tried to pull away, she squeezed his neck in warning and he stilled.
She explored his ear, little flicks of her tongue, sucking air out, sinking her teeth into his lobe. Tremors racked his body, and she could feel him gritting his teeth. “Don’t test me, because I promise you I will win.”
He inhaled a deep, shuddering breath. “Please finish your story.”
“I finally told my mom that I wanted to end the marriage. When she had our attorney contact my husband, he demanded a huge divorce settlement.”
“Since you’re an heiress.”
“Yes. That’s when I found out he married me only for the money. And his way of forcing the divorce was to demand swingers clubs. When I didn’t balk at that, he pushed me into an even kinkier direction. So he ended up being married to me longer than he’d planned.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never considered myself naive, so it was a brutal blow to realize I’d been played. My grandfather agreed to pay the astronomical amount of money for the divorce under one condition. I
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