Happy 2008!

Hanging by a Thread

Chapter Nineteen

x x x

By the time Kylie had washed the sweat off her thoroughly exercised body, donned a simple black dress, and dried her hair so that it curled and shone the way it was supposed to, there was an hour left until Adrian had dinner. Just long enough.

She knocked on the door to his study, two solid raps against the hard wood.

"I'm busy!" He called irritably.

Which she had known he would. In fact, Charlotte had warned her that he was sorting through piles of paperwork relating to his wedding, a subject which they had all quickly learned put him in a bad mood.

Kylie opened the door and stepped inside.

His browns eyes leapt to the doorway, surprised at this direct insolence. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Especially after the warning he'd given her a few nights ago . . .

She gave him no answer but smiled, leisurely walking towards his desk.

"Did you not hear me? This is the last time I'm telling you: get out!"

Oh, he was angry all right. She liked him best when he was angry, because then she could be angry back. She stood across the desk from him, resting her hands on the desk and leaning towards him. "I want you."

He leaned back in his chair and looked up at her, his brown eyes daring her to challenge him. "You just don't seem to understand," his dark hair was pushed back from his face where he had just run his hand through it, "but I don't care what you want."

"I don't think you understand." She countered, walking around to his side of the desk and leaning against it casually, "I come to your bed whenever you call me to it; I do what you want done. I've never wanted it, and I certainly never wanted to feel like this."

He looked up at her from his seat, his expression unchanged.

"You may have your pick of women, you may have tired of me, but I hunger only for you. And since that's your fault, and your fault alone, you can have as many women as you want but you will have me as well."

"If you're not out of here in ten seconds, I'm going to pick you up and throw you out."

She knew that he was strong enough to carry out his threat, but she sat down anyway, one leg on either side of his lap, their faces close together and her breasts barely grazing his chest. "Well, if we've only got ten seconds, then you'd better hurry up and make it fast."

"What the hell has gotten into you?"

"Need." She let her fingers wander up the inside of his shirt. "Want, desire, lust. Can you think of any other words for it?"

"Love."

She laughed, and the laugh was deep and rumbling and spoke of something that had nothing to do with joy. "I'd say it's more of a very physical, demanding hate."

"Fuck you." He cursed her, but didn't push her off his lap. She was attracted to him, she realized suddenly, and it caught her off guard. With his hair disheveled and his shirt wrinkled and his body trembling and his eyes angry, she realized why the other nam-sa called her lucky.

"Fuck me." She moved to unbutton his pants and then paused, letting him tremble underneath her. "Unless of course, you'd rather write a letter to your wife-to-be."

He stood up quickly, but instead of throwing her out the door he pushed her roughly against the wall.

"Have you two decided where you're taking your honeymoon?" Her voice was mocking as red-hot anger that had come from nowhere boiled up her body and burned out her mouth. He held her pinned to the wall with one arm, unable to tear his eyes away from her face. "You could rent a villa down south—it'd be so romantic."

"Shut up."

"And then, as a happy couple, you could take long walks through the countryside, and maybe, if you're lucky, she'll even let you hold her hand when no one's around." Her words were so heavy with sarcasm that they hung, resounding in the thick air. Adrian's eyes had turned dark with a mixture of lust and rage.

"I will have you beaten for speaking to me like this."

She ignored him, entwining her fingers with his own although his arm remained firmly across her chest. "Holding hands," her words were heavy with lust, "now that's hot."

"You're a crazy fucking—" He swore, angry beyond belief, but before she realized it that anger was inside of her, thrusting against her and pounding her back into the wall, again and again until her breath was short and heavy and he was screaming her name, with anger, with awe, because those two syllables were the only two that he could think. Kylie. Kylie.

Kylie.

And then it was over.

He stood with his hands against the wall, his head supported by the wall and her shoulder, too heavy for his neck. She took a moment to breathe.

"I'd better let you finish your work." She said sweetly, ducking under his arms and walking out the door, leaving him standing alone in his study, exhausted and confused and ready for more.

He did not get any more work done that night.

x

She could see her reflection in the doorknob, a blur of peach skin and black satin, but she could not move her hand to turn it. She stood in the hallway outside the nam-sa's rooms, dangerously close to falling apart.

What was she doing? What was she becoming? Part of her hated what she had done, the act she had put on for Adrian, the way she had teased Kade.

She told herself that she was different then the other nam-sa, but in the end she was doing the same as all of them: reaching for the top. Half of her hated herself for it, but the other half knew that she wouldn't stop.

Her hand reached the doorknob.

She opened the door and walked inside.

x

Adrian had never sat through a longer dinner. An older couple, close friends of his parents, were staying for the weekend, and in the presence of company so adored he couldn't very well just get up and leave.

And so he had to wait, through course after course, and although the guests exclaimed over the incredible flavor over everything from the vegetables to the deserts, Adrian could have been eating the tasteless slop they served the slaves.

He tried to pay attention to the conversation, but his thoughts remained wrapped around a little copper-haired minx who was at this moment probably . . . probably what? He had no idea what she was doing. She could be doing anything. Waiting for him? Looking for him? Drowning herself in liquor again? (He hoped not). Asleep without a single thought of him on her mind?

When the party retired to the parlor for after-dinner drinks and gossip, Adrian was still burning for her. He knew he should be angry at her insolence; what had she been thinking, acting as though he should be doing what she wanted, and not the other way around? But he couldn't be angry, because no other girl had ever treated him like that, as if they were equals, as if she had a right to him.

He couldn't be angry because he wanted her too fucking badly.

Another painful hour went by as Adrian nodded while the woman next to him talked, as he smiled and laughed although he could barely remember what she had said a moment before.

Finally, when the clock let out nine resounding beats, his mother gave him the nod that meant he could leave, and Adrian was quick to do so, practically running down the hall as soon as the door had shut behind him.

Calm down. He told himself when he reached the stairs. You're not some love-struck boy; the girl will be there waiting, just as she always is. It took all of his efforts to climb the stairs calmly, to convince himself he was in no hurry to get to his rooms.

He expected to see her in his sitting room, waiting on her usual couch, but when he threw the door open he found the room deserted. The other nam-sa, of course, would never invade his personal rooms without an invitation.

A smile crept across his face when he imagined her in his bed, soft skin beneath the sheets, her green eyes greeting him with desire. Yet when he marched across the sitting room and opened the door to his bedchamber, he found it empty as well.

Blasted girl! For all this talk about needing him and wanting him, she didn't seem to be around him very much.

Entering the nam-sa's apartments, two eager faces greeted him, but neither were the one he was looking for.

"Good evening, my Lord." Marissa purred, but her seductive voice only annoyed him further.

"Where's Kylie?"

"Well, I don't know!" The dark haired woman fumed. "She's probably in her room or something!"

Of course. Adrian always forgot she had her own bedroom, since she seemed to use his so much—she claimed his quarters were more comfortable, which of course, they were. They were designed that way, after all; couldn't have a man's nam-sa dreaming of their own beds, now could you?

Yet in her own bedroom she was. He closed to the door behind him, leaning against it with his arms crossed over his chest. She was lying, fully dressed, on her own bed, reading (reading! It never ceased to amaze him that one of his slaves could read), and only when she came to a pause in the narrative did she raise her eyes to look at him.

He looked good. Very good. His face was a little flushed from the port and the run down the hall, his hair was disordered, his eyes were deep and his smile was dangerous. Although she tried to stop it, Kylie couldn't help but start to feel the desire she had only faked before.

"Adrian." She greeted.

"You know, you're supposed to address me as 'My Lord.'" He told her, the tone of his voice letting her know he was teasing. "The other girls don't seem to have trouble remembering."

"It's not the remembering that's the trouble." She explained, echoing his tone of voice. "It's just that 'my lord' sounds so cold and we've always been rather . . ."

"Warm?"

"I was going to say intimate."

He shrugged. "Adrian it is then. Now tell me what you're doing in this cold little room when there's a fire and a nice soft bed next door?"

"Reading."

"I hope you're done reading for the night." He said, his voice heady and filled with promise.

"I don't know." She said, eyes returning to the page in front of her. "I'm awfully comfortable."

With two steps he was beside the bed, pulling the book from her hands and throwing it across the room. "You make me crazy!" He cried out. "You do realize that, don't you?"

"Well, someone has to." She teased, not moving from her spot on the bed. "Everyone else just gives you whatever you want."

"You're impossible!" In one motion, he scooped her up from the bed and carried her to the door, kicking it open with his foot.

She yelped and threw her arms around his neck tightly. "You'd better not drop me!"

"Like this?" He loosened his grip so that she startled to slip out of his arms.

"Adrian!" She cried, holding on to him even tighter, not caring if the other girls were staring at the spectacle in front of them. "Put me down!"

"If you insist." He said, still holding her firmly in his arms. "But I rather thought you liked it standing." She turned bright red under his gaze, embarrassed by the way she had acted earlier, wondering if she would regret throwing herself at him like a country whore.

He laughed at her blushing face, and then she threw back her head and laughed too, because there were two other girls in the room and he hadn't looked at them once, because her plan was working exactly as she wanted it to and he was completely enamored with her all over again.

"Only sometimes." Her green eyes danced. "Now can we get out of here before I'm forced to take you in front of them?"

"Oh, so you're taking me now, instead of the other way around?" He asked, brown eyes dancing.

"I suppose we could come to a compromise, soon as you put me down and I stop fearing for my life!"

He laughed. He didn't know why he was so giddy, but instead of putting her down he ran about the room with her in his arms, laughing as she shrieked at him to stop.

"G'night ladies." He tipped his head to Marissa and Charlotte as he turned to push the door open with his back, Kylie still in his arms.

They didn't have time to respond before he had slammed the door shut again. He spun Kylie around once more and then tossed her onto the huge, soft bed that dominated the room.

"Tell me this isn't more comfortable." He crawled onto the bed, lying above her so that their faces barely touched.

"It certainly is." She agreed. "But I seem to have left my book in the other room."

"You won't be needing that." He growled, capturing her lips with his own.

She let her lips reply, she let her body melt, she let herself respond to his touches and his kisses because she had finally realized that this was it. This was the life she was stuck with, and she was going to enjoy it if she could. After all, couldn't she hate the man while loving what he did to her?