BoardResolution (15 page)

Fill me with what I never believed existed.
And if she was wrong and it didn’t exist, she knew whatever sense of Savannah she had outside of her father’s mold would die. She would die, in all the ways that mattered. But that was perhaps better than living with the emptiness, the lonely pain.

“Savannah, are you listening to me? Can you hear me?”

Matt’s voice penetrated the roar of arousal within her, and she jerked her head, whether in a nod or negative, she didn’t know.

“I knew we could offer you passion tonight, make you understand what could be yours if you were willing to trust and be vulnerable. You’ve given every man in this room an incredible gift. No matter what happens in the next few moments, what choice you make, I want you to know that.” He hesitated, and the raw quality of his voice, the rough desire and emotion mixed, caught more of her attention. She wondered where he was going with this, but hoped it was somewhere that would ease this craving need.
And soon.

“You’ll walk out of here as cherished and respected as you were when you walked in. Every man enjoys teaching a woman the ways of pleasure, especially a woman he loves, and every man in this room loves you. I wanted you to experience a wide range of sensual possibilities and fortunately, each man here has very individual specialties.”

What was the phrase she often heard her secretary use to describe something blatantly obvious?
Boy, howdy.
She was close to being hysterical, she realized, and tried to take some deep breaths, get a grip on her raging body.

“I wanted you blindfolded now, because I want you to search only your heart for the answer to this next question. You can go back to the reality of your life as it was before you walked in here tonight. There will be no recriminations, no sense of favoritism. It will all end here. Everything will be the same tomorrow. You’ve won the right to choose.”

“Choose?” The word felt awkward, somehow unwelcome on her tongue. She didn’t want to have choices. When she lost control, she’d been given mind-altering pleasure, made even more intense by the fact she no longer had to worry about whether Savannah Tennyson was making the right decisions. She realized in a heartbeat the significance of Rule Five.

Discipline is a 24/7 exercise. Lose a grip on it even for a moment and you could lose everything you’ve worked for.

Get out of my fucking head.

The reaction froze every system in her body, even shut out Matt’s voice and her surroundings for a blink of time. Everything tonight had been a surprise, something unexpected. But that vicious thought, targeted at her father’s memory and coming out of her subconscious like a snarl from behind the gates of Hell, was the biggest shock of all.

She
did
have choices. For the first time in her life she was aware that choices existed for
her
, Savannah, and she was free to make them. Peter, Lucas, Jon and Ben had helped her see that.
And Matt.
Matt.

“I want to see,” she said sharply.

“I want you to think,” he responded. “I need you to think very carefully about something, and I want you to have no distractions.”

When he was delivering a deal breaker, his voice would change, modulate, and just like a regular poker opponent, she recognized it. This was dead serious, no bullshit, no games.

“Here are your choices.
Choice number one.
You’re obviously in need of physical release. Jon has brought a larger invention, something that will fill you as fully as a man’s cock. Every man here would enjoy watching it give you the level of orgasm your body is ready for.

“Choice
number
two. You can choose to call it over. We’ll clear the room. I’ll untie you, help you dress, and tonight will never be referred to again, by any of us. Or…” There was a slight pause, and she waited, not sure how she felt about
either option
and hoping there was another, one that this straining need in her would recognize as the right one and eagerly embrace.

“Choice
number
three.
Your final choice.
You can choose one of us to do what Jon’s invention will do.”

It took a minute to sink in. “You mean…”

“Any one of us.”
His voice was firm, resolute now. “The rest of us will go. The man you’ve chosen will stay with
you,
meet your desires, whether they be physical or emotional. He’ll make sure you get home safely afterward. No demands after that.”

“No demands,” she said hollowly.

“None.”

Unexpected pain landed like a load of bricks on the shuddering waves of pleasure still gripping her, which made her feel like a dog that had been kicked by a beloved master, uncomprehending of why, making the pain that much worse. But the analogy cleared up the source question, and she struggled to channel the pain into fury and lash out.

It built in her, so suddenly that she felt lightheaded, all the blood rushing to her face, but at the same time she was swept by
a desolation
so exponentially fierce that she couldn’t draw breath from anger, or control the direction of her thoughts or words.

“So you don’t want me,” she said.

“What?”

It was a very rare moment to catch Matt Kensington by surprise, to the extent it could be heard in his voice.

“This was all…a nice game.
Fun…amongst colleagues.”
She managed to create a sharp laugh, like a razor blade along her own skin. “I can’t thank you all enough for devoting your evening to fulfilling every woman’s erotic fantasy.”

She was at an atavistic level of need, to the point where action could be the only communication, but Matt had restrained her so there was nothing she could do to influence events. Roused to a painful, raw state by Ben’s pearls and clever fingers, Peter’s mouth, by everything they’d done and shown her tonight, her insides were like the slopes of a California hillside under pummeling rain. Mudslides were roaring to life, revealing the primal underside of her earth, smothering her civilized façade. The images still flickering on the wall stimulated her body still, even without the benefit of her sight.

Anguish squeezing her
lungs,
she choked against the hard, relentless force of strangulation. There was nothing left but a burning ache, desire and loss come together in a head-on collision at fatal speed. She tasted tears on her lips, and knew she should be horrified by her weakness, but they had forcibly dissolved that concern
an
orgasm or two ago.

“Savannah.” Gentle hands removed the blinders, and Lucas was there, his eyes thoughtful, a little sad, but with a light that suggested he had hope for them all. “You’ve rendered him speechless. I think he’s one step from apoplectic.”

She looked at Matt through her tears and suddenly wished she was untied.
Out of a sense of self-preservation.
Matt looked more angry than she’d ever seen him. Not a cold controlled anger, either—the enraged passion of a man pushed past some boundary of restraint.

“This is your own fault,” Lucas said, unperturbed.

She glanced back at
him,
startled, realized he wasn’t talking to her.

“Just tell her straight out, for
Chrissakes
.”

“Leave us, then,” Matt said.

Savannah felt a sudden surge of fear, but Lucas laid a hand on the tender area between her shoulder and neck. He lowered the harness so she was on the table. Ben helped him free her legs. Hands straightened her, caressing her thighs, bringing her feet back to the floor. The suspension device and all its components were removed from around and beneath her. With gentle pressure, Lucas kept her upper body on the silken mahogany. He slid off her mask, though, laid it aside and smoothed her hair back, his thumb brushing over the path of a tear. He leaned down, kissed her temple. “You’ll be safe with him.”

“Lucas.”

“Going.”
He straightened, made a quick gesture with his head and they all left, melting into the shadows and stepping out the door, four men who had profoundly altered her reality in the space of an evening. Now she faced what her destiny would be tomorrow.

Despite Lucas’s not-so-subtle hint, she pushed her body up. Naked though she was, she felt less vulnerable facing Matt with her back straight. And her clothes were folded over the chair not more than a yard from her.

She discovered two things immediately. One was that Lucas had had a practical reason for encouraging her to stay down. The body she had walked in with several hours before had suddenly become heavy and unbalanced, her knees trembling, her vision blurring and tilting as blood rushed back into her torso.

The second thing was that Matt moved a lot faster and more silently than she anticipated. With her head spinning, she wasn’t even aware of his approach, but suddenly he was there, the heat of his hands on her hips, the faint scratch of his slacks pressing against the back of her bare legs, his white shirt against her shoulder blades,
the
silk of his tie a caress against her spine.

It got very quiet between them, and Savannah could only hear the sound of her own harsh breathing, the echo of her words, obviously laden with hurt, lingering in the room. She had no choice but to lean, but in truth, it was a relief to feel him there. That he was still angry she’d no doubt, but he obviously wasn’t intending to take it out on her in some frightening way. She hoped.

“I don’t know you enough to trust you like this,” she mumbled, but still she didn’t move. If anything, she settled back against him as he took a more secure, possessive grip on her waist, his hold sliding forward so his arm was over her abdomen, his palm over the opposite hip as he raised his other hand, applied gentle pressure until her head was on his shoulder, the upper slope of his chest.

“Yes, you do,” he said quietly.

He’d gotten her to admit she wanted him, not as a moment of passing lust, not to act on a curious attraction. All the desires he had roused through his men had culminated in one raging truth—that it was him she wanted, him whom she now leaned against, the only one she trusted enough to reveal such a need. From the very beginning, she had denied it in every way, that he was the culmination and solution. He’d exposed the lie by not offering what she had expected him to offer to close the evening’s deal. She’d been outmaneuvered, and now there was just the frightening truth between them. He held all the poker chips, and he could tear her to shreds. But she still had his desire for her to bargain with, shift some of the balance to her side of the table.

“So what does Lucas want you to tell me?” She leaned her head into his touch, nuzzled him with her lips deliberately. He pulled loose, lowered his grip,
closed
it over her throat. Feeling her fragile pulse beating against that powerful hand made it beat harder.

She looked up into those dark eyes, sensual lips, imagined them moving over her.
That’s it, Savannah.
Focus on what he could give her on the surface, two bodies satisfying each other. What was beneath didn’t matter.
Couldn’t matter.

“I’m sorry I was catty,” she said abruptly. “You set this up and we all enjoyed ourselves. I just went all female on you for a moment.”

“Did you?” He cupped her chin and held it so she was locked into looking up at him, into his unfathomable gaze.

“You know I did. It was a
slip, that
was all. It won’t happen again. There’s no reason we can’t enjoy each other—”

“And keep all our commitments tomorrow, meet every appointment. Savannah, I am not your bloody fucking father.”

Her body went rigid. The anger was still there, blasting her with its heat, but his eyes held something else, something close to pain, that she’d never seen in his eyes before. A part of himself he was deliberately revealing to her. He turned her, his hands closing over her shoulders.

“Well, I certainly hope you aren’t him,” she managed. “Otherwise, what just happened in this room—
”

His grip tightened further, nearly dragging her to her toes.

“Matt—”

“Just shut up, before I decide to strangle you.” He placed his finger on her lips. “Listen to what I’m saying. Look into my eyes and stop being afraid of what this is. It wouldn’t have hurt you so much, my proposal to let you choose anyone, if it weren’t real, what you’re thinking.”

“Let go of me,” she said.

“Never again.”
He shook his head.
Shook her.
“We wouldn’t want you to go all female on us, would we? Hell, don’t stop there. Let’s not be human while you’re at it. Why should you have needs, desires and, God
forbid,
express anger or pain where someone else can see it? I
want
a human woman with a healthy mixture of weaknesses and strengths, who sometimes laughs inappropriately, or gets in real fights with me. Someone from whom I beg for forgiveness, even if I know I was right, because I know making her happy is more important to me than being right.
Someone who doesn’t want to be alone.”

“I’ve been alone all my life.”

“Lonely all your life.”

“Yes, goddamn you.” She shot it back savagely, and there was a rough, tearing quality to her voice, somewhere before a shout and a snarl. She startled him enough she managed to pull away, back up several steps, and snatch up her blouse. “Yes, I have been, Matt. Boohoo for me. The princess in the tower, given everything she wants except her daddy’s love. So what? You’re going to make it all better? Is that what the hell this is all about?”

“Yes.”

“Well, tough, because it doesn’t work that way.”

“Yes, it does. It can. It should.” He took a step toward her, like a man approaching a wild and dangerous animal, not with fear, but respect and caution, not wanting to harm the creature. “I love you. It’s as simple as that. And if you’re willing to give that a try, even give it just a moment of belief in your heart, I promise I won’t let you down. You won’t feel lonely anymore.”

“You’re out of your fuck…idiotic minds, all of you.” She nearly screamed at the amusement that came into his eyes at her avoidance of cursing. “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Matt
Kensington.
” She snatched the belt off the table, flung it at his chest. He caught it, the amusement turning into annoyance.
Good.