Kristen Ashley - Knight

Knight is a departure from my usual novels in so far as it is shorter as well as more erotic, exploring the building of trust and connection between two people falling in love. Head’s up, there are heavy elements of control and erotic punishment in this novel.

It is my goal as a female writer to send a message through my novels that no matter how whacky, zany, shy or wounded you may be, you need to stop listening to that demon that sits in your head and start to pay attention to those around you who love you.

Embrace yourself, even your faults, and understand you have something to contribute and more, people want it, love it, crave it.

Further, baby can have back, an awesome rack and a Buddha belly and still find a wonderful man who makes her melt because she has all she has and is all she is. The media bombards us with images that we take in as desirable, our inner demon absorbs these and tells us that is what we should strive to be.

And it is impossible.

This is damaging.

And I don’t like that. Because my inner demon tells me the same thing and I fight it all the time. And my work is one of the ways I do that.

My books won’t change the world, I know. But if they inject just a little bit of steel in your spine that lets you go forth into the world as you, only you, and expect what you should expect, that you are beautiful and worthwhile and people see that, my job is done.

Further, if you’ve read any of my books, you’ll know I feel that a healthy sex life with a compatible partner is crucial to a relationship. In this book, I explore this further.

All of it.

Just as every woman should feel beautiful and worthwhile, she should feel desirable and explore her sexuality with a partner who makes this safe and protects her and their relationship along the way. This, too, is a theme in all my books but especially this one.

Writing is my passion. It is also my livelihood. So I was understandably anxious about making my already racy books even racier. In an effort not to offend my readers, I reached out to a posse of women, readers and friends, to read this with me as I wrote it. The pouring forth of support, encouragement, excitement, friendship and love was un-be-freaking-leivable. They gave me the strength to tell Knight and Anya’s story to its fullest. It is not erotica, it is a love story. But it is an erotic one.

So I would like to thank these women who took my back. They know how much it meant to me but you should too. So Jenny Aspinall, Sali Benbow-Powers, Gitte Doherty, Shelley Egerton, Lori Francis and Nikki Griffiths, thank you, my Secret Project Action Team. You made this fun and beautiful. Love you, my girlies, straight to the bottom of my heart.

And lastly, to Chasity Jenkins-Patrick who was my first cheerleader in this project and who always takes my back, if you don’t know already, God shined his light on me when you hit send on those emails. Know it.

To everyone else, I give you Knight. I hope you love it as much as me and my girlies.

I was standing in the corner.

I didn’t want to be there, I hadn’t wanted to be there for a while and I was considering making a move not to be there anymore when he walked in.

But these thoughts flew from my head, in fact, every thought flew from my head as I caught sight of him and blinked.

Then I stared.

He was tall. I had no idea how to describe how tall he was but the only word I could think of was “very”. Very tall. He was wearing a nice, tailored, black wool overcoat. With the lighting, all I could see was that he had on trousers, not their color or style, just that they weren’t jeans or cords. I could also see he had on nice shoes. Those could also be described as the “very” variety of nice. They were shiny and clearly expensive. Other than that, with his side to me, I couldn’t take anything else in.

And I really didn’t try.

I was fascinated by it all but my attention was taken by his face. His features, even mostly in profile, were striking. Not perfection but so intensely masculine I’d never seen anything like it. It was almost unreal.

But his hair surprised me. He had on an expensive overcoat, expensive shoes and he was here, at this party, in this lavish apartment in a way that I knew, unlike me, he belonged here. But his very dark, thick, slightly wavy hair needed a cut. It wasn’t long and unkempt, it was simply longish and unruly. Like he had better things to do than to get regular haircuts and those things weren’t clubbing, hanging with his crew and taking fastidious care of his body, clothing and all other parts of his physical being so that he could play and then nail every female who threw herself at him.

Then again, if he did that, he’d never come up for air.

His height, his clothes, his looks, his hair were not all that fascinated me.

He was angry. It was not only etched in the hard line of his strong jaw, his lips pressed together in unconcealed annoyance or his gaze sharp on the scene that lay before him.

It was physical. A swell of vibrating heat that filled the room.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. With some effort, tearing my eyes away from him, I saw those closest to him had turned to look at him, some were even taking a few steps away to retreat.

I didn’t blame them. I was all the way across the room in the corner and I still felt it. But if I was close, I, too, would shift away.

It was terrifying. Utterly.

I wondered if Nick had a roommate and my guess was, he did. My other guess was, he had no idea Nick was having a party.

My eyes swept the space. The sunken living room and the elevated areas surrounding it were cluttered with bodies. There was a bottle of champagne that had overturned on the coffee table and it clearly had been at least half full considering the wet stain on the carpet and the puddle on the table. I knew two people had broken glasses, I heard them. One, some girl cleaned up. The other, the pieces had been kicked around and likely smushed into the kickass furry carpet or ground into the dark wood floors luckily not causing any injuries (yet). There were beer bottles, liquor bottles and glasses everywhere, even sitting on the floor or having rolled under tables. There were overfull ashtrays, ashes on the floor, even butts. The music wasn’t ear-splitting loud but considering it was after one in the morning, it was still too loud. The neighbors in this swank building definitely could hear it not to mention the noisy buzz of conversation and they probably wouldn’t like it.

I knew I wouldn’t and I didn’t.

And neither did Nick’s roommate.

My eyes went back to where he was standing and they did this hesitantly. Part of me wanted to see him again. I was a woman and he was the kind of man a woman would look at. Any woman. No matter what their tastes ran to. He just attracted female attention and any woman would want a second look. Part of me was scared to look mostly because he was pretty scary. This was because a man who could walk into a room wearing an overcoat, be there a moment and fill the room with a searing, angry vibe was pretty scary.

But when I looked back, he was gone.

And I took this as my cue to be gone.

I didn’t want to come anyway but Sandrine had her sights set on Nick for a while now. Viv and I had told her time and again he was a player and we knew this because we knew a number of girls he’d played. But Sandrine saw him as the golden goose. She spent a goodly amount of time on the hunt for the golden goose and the minute she laid eyes on the handsome Nick Sebring, she decided he was The One.

The minute I laid eyes on him, my stomach turned. He was good-looking, this was fact. He was also a jerk. This was impossible to miss. And he was something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on, something I didn’t like. Not at all.

But to Sandrine, he had it all. Flash, dash, beauty…

And money.

Yes, my friend was a gold digger.

Still, call me crazy, and I called myself that more than once over my years of knowing her, I loved her. She was a pain in the behind a lot of the time and I had to say her single-minded pursuit of The One, just as long as The One was gorgeous, built and loaded, kind of freaked me out sometimes, alarmed me others and flat out scared me on occasion. But at least she knew who she was and what she wanted.

And this, I thought, surveying the scene, was what she wanted. She wanted to reign as queen at exactly this kind of scene. Free-flowing booze and champagne. Well-dressed lackeys. Sumptuous apartments with sunken living rooms, state-of-the-art kitchens and wraparound balconies. And we’d put our coats in Nick’s bedroom so I’d had a quick look. Seriously, one look at Nick’s bedroom and even I nearly reconsidered his jerk status, it was that gorgeous.

Then, approximately a half a second later, I remembered nothing was worth putting up with a jerk. Not even a beyond gorgeous bedroom. Especially not a jerk like Nick.

I put my mostly unconsumed drink on the black marble countertop that adorned the long bar that separated the kitchen from the living room and started to make my way to the balcony.

I didn’t want to do this and this was the reason why I was hiding in a dark corner. I’d tried mingling but this wasn’t my scene and the people there knew it just as well as me. Sandrine told me I should buy a dress and keep the tags on, just tuck them in to hide them. She also told me to buy a pair of shoes and she’d go with me to make a scene if they wouldn’t accept the return because they were scuffed. But I thought this was uncool so I refused like I did all the other times Sandrine suggested this.

She didn’t mind doing this and did it all the time. Sweat stains, martini stains, it didn’t matter. Once she’d even returned a pair of shoes whose strap broke while she was dancing. And it was the fourth time she’d worn them.

Not me.

So I was wearing a pair of high-heeled sandals I bought two years ago. They were cute, even, I thought, sexy but they were cheap, not even real leather. I’d taken care of them but still, they looked what they were. Same with my dress. TJ Maxx and not even a way out of season designer, just a no name. I thought it was pretty, it showed just enough skin, not too much, it fit like a glove and it was the perfect color for me but it wasn’t silk, satin or labeled. It was polyester and even at TJ Maxx I bought it on sale.

And the eyes came to me, moving up and down, lips curling, noses scrunching, eyes rolling.

This was the girls.

The guys, eyes right to my breasts, hips or legs. At this point of the evening, they didn’t care if they banged class or someone who thought they could buy it. They just wanted to bang anything and would take what they could get.

Sandrine had headed out to the balcony about half an hour ago with Nick. She’d not returned so this was my destination. Therefore, my journey was a long one, weaving through bodies, avoiding crossed legs or stepping over straightened ones of those sitting on couches, feeling gazes following me the entire way.

It seemed to last an hour but probably lasted around two minutes.

Then I was through the glass door and outside.

It felt good out there, cold but good. No smoke, the stuffiness of too many bodies in a space gone, I allowed myself a moment to drink it in.

Then I looked around.

A couple to the right in a clinch. Not Sandrine.

I turned my head left and nearly at the corner of the balcony I saw Nick had Sandrine against the floor to ceiling window. They were also in a clinch.

Ugh.

I clicked over in my inexpensive (but cute) sandals and when I got somewhat close called, “Uh… sorry to disturb.”

Nick’s head came up and both of their eyes came to me. Otherwise, they didn’t move a muscle.

Nick’s eyes dropped to my breasts.

Sandrine’s eyes widened in a clear but nonverbal, “What the fuck are you doing here?” She finally had him where she’d wanted him for a long while and she wasn’t happy to be disturbed.