Kristen Ashley - Knight

“Hand, babe, palm up,” he muttered.

I lifted my hand, palm up.

His hand came out and he dropped a set of keys into my palm.

My breath left me as I stared. Then I stared harder.

I thought they’d be for a car which I couldn’t accept, I loved him but he’d already done enough for me. But they weren’t.

I already had the keys to his house.

I felt my brows inch together as my eyes went from the keys to him.

“What –?” I started and he turned fully into me. I had to close my hand around the keys and put it to the chest as he pulled me to him using both arms.

“Notice,” he stated confusingly then went on. “Monday. The bossy bitch who likes to spend money is on stand-by. I’ll give you her card, you call her, sit down with her, tell her your vision but if you don’t want black, don’t mention red.”

I shook my head, still confused. “Pardon?”

“Once she does her gig,” he continued, not answering me but still talking, “she’ll inform me. The firm who does my marketing for the club will pull together a strategy. You want a one-woman show, it’ll be small. You wanna hire staff, they’ll do it up.”

“Knight, what are you talking about?”

“Own most of this block, babe, had a shop close down. Opposite corner. Those keys open the front door. That’s your new spa.”

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

My chest seized, I pulled out of his arms, hard, heart beating, harder.

“I can’t accept that,” I whispered then finished, “And I won’t.”

His brows snapped together.

“What?”

I shook my head. Overwhelmed. Happy he’d want to do that. For me.

But it was not going to happen.

“I’m sorry,” I said louder. “That was rude, honey. What you’ve done is sweet. I appreciate it. But I can’t accept.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Why the fuck not?”

“I just…” I faltered. “I just can’t.”

He studied me then he crossed his arms on his chest.

“Why, Anya?”

“I… you wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me,” he ordered.

I pulled in a breath and looked across the room.

Then I thought maybe he would understand.

I looked back at him.

“It has to be me. It has to be mine. I have to do it on my own.”

“Love you, babe,” he said, throwaway. My stomach clenched and dropped and my heart squeezed because he meant it but said it in a way like I already knew it. “Love you,” he repeated. “But that’s fucked.”

I powered through the fact that he loved me.

Loved me!

And I stuck with the current matter at hand.

“Knight, honey, you did this all on your own.” I flicked a hand out to indicate the club. “Can’t you get me?”

His head cocked to the side and he said, “I did not fuckin’ do all this on my own.”

I blinked.

Then I asked, “What?”

“Babe, do you have any clue how much it costs to set up a place like this?”

I totally didn’t.

“No.”

“A fuckin’ lot,” he told me. “I had a silent partner. He was the capital, I was the face. He existed to drive me up the fuckin’ wall. I did all the work. He shoved his nose in, fucked things up. Repeatedly. He did not get the concept of ‘silent’ no matter how often or what tactics I used to explain. Couple of years in, I was done with him drivin’ me up the wall. I made moves, took over, forced him out. Hostile. Though, I was thorough and he was half asshole, half idiot. Didn’t put up much of a fight. Now I own the club outright and he lives in Costa Rica with three local women who, sources say, regularly get in catfights not for his attention but for his generosity ‘cause he’s still got more money than sense. One of his bright ideas for this place was female mud wrestling. He’s havin’ the time of his life.”

I felt my lips quirk and I asked, “Female mud wrestling?”

“Like I said, the dude is half asshole, half idiot.”

I started giggling.

Knight didn’t find anything funny.

“I’m tired of you crawlin’ out of bed three hours after I joined you in it. I’m tired of classes and client nights and Saturdays which means I cannot have dinner with my woman but once a week. And bottom line, I’m not gonna sit back and watch my woman work her ass off when I can do something about it. You need to lose the day job.”

“Knight –”

“You can’t not accept because that’s unacceptable,” he cut me off. “You put notice in, no more than two weeks, Anya. And you spend your time with that bossy bitch who likes to spend money and move your clients to days. And your nights, before I have to take off, are spent with me. You design the spa you want. You decide how you’re gonna play it. We market it to get you clients. And I cover all that and your rent and living expenses until you get that show on the road.”

“Knight –”

“This isn’t a discussion.”

“Knight!” I shouted.

“What?” he clipped.

“Okay, but I have twenty thousand dollars saved for when I was gonna start my spa and I handle my rent and living expenses until I get that show on the road. And you keep track of what you spend and when I start turning a profit, we’ll set up a schedule for me paying you back.”

This was the wrong thing to say and I knew by the hard look that settled on his face.

“You don’t pay someone back for a gift, Anya.”

“But this is too much,” I replied carefully.

“When a gift is given, isn’t that for the person who’s giving it to say?”

Damn, he had a point.

“I –”

He interrupted me again to rap out, “You happy?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“In a way you know it’s gonna last?”

He asked that because he was happy in a way he knew it was going to last.

My heart turned over and I stared at him. Then I looked over my shoulder at his window, not able to see my party but knowing it was there.

A party he gave to me.

Mr. Sebring.

I looked back at him.

“I’m in love with you, so yes.”

He closed his eyes and he did it slowly, dropping his head.

That meant something to him.

I stared at him. Tall, broad, strong, scary, dude you don’t mess with Knight Sebring, head bowed, overcome.

No, I was wrong.

It meant everything to him.

My nose began to sting.

He opened his eyes and looked up, catching mine.

“Come here, baby.”

I moved back into his arms.

“Please let me give this to you,” he whispered.

“I can’t now nor will I ever be in the position to give you –”

He squeezed me quiet and his face dipped close. “Toasted almond pancakes. Sweet soft ‘okays’. Makin’ me laugh more in a few weeks than I have in decades. ‘Yes, Daddys’ I feel in my dick. The first voicemail you left me, babe, I saved it and I listen to it once a day. If I lose focus, I see you on your back, knees high, legs wide, offering your sweet, wet pussy to me. You smile at me in bed every time you wander outta my bedroom in my shirts, my tees or your work clothes and honest to Christ, it sets me up for the day. And no matter what shit goes down, I get through it knowin’ whichever bed I climb into at night, you’re in it ready to snuggle into me or give me what I wanna take. Your girl, a headache. You, never. And in a life that’s been full of headaches, babe, having that, there is no price tag. You gotta get it and do it right fuckin’ now that there’s a lotta different kinds of give and take. And you give as good as you get, baby, trust me.”

“We haven’t been together very long,” I reminded him.

“You love me and I love you. How long does that need to be?”

Another excellent point.

“I don’t want you ever to think I’m using you,” I whispered.

“You ask for a Maserati?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“You ask for anything?”

“No. But –”

“You start takin’ what I don’t offer, babe, or askin’ for the moon, we got a problem. But I’m tellin’ you right now, and mark it, Anya, I’m fuckin’ thankful your cell phone was jacked. Because if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have wandered into my bedroom that night and I wouldn’t go to bed at night with the scent of your hair all I can smell and the taste of your pussy still in my mouth and your sweet body close to me and know I’ll sleep easy and wake up happy. And I wake up happy, baby, because I possess beauty and I own that beauty in all the forms it can take and the least important of those are physical.”

Oh God.

“Knight –”

His arms gave me a squeeze. “Let me give this to you.”

I fell silent, not that I was saying much of anything.

His face got closer. “Let… me… give this to you.”

I held his vivid blue eyes.

Then I whispered, “Okay.”

It was then his vivid blue eyes held mine.

Then he whispered back, “Okay.”

I closed my eyes tight then opened them and asked softly, “You love me?”

“Baby, you were made for me.”

Oh God.

My face started scrunching up again and his hand wrapped around the back of my head and shoved it in his neck.

I held on but muttered a broken, “Thank you.”

“Fuck, you’re the hardest bitch I’ve ever met to give shit to,” he grumbled.

My emotions careening all over the place, I pulled back and narrowed my eyes on him.

“Oh, so, you were also generous with your smorgasbord of pussy?”

He grinned. “Baby, don’t ask me that but I will say I never gave any of them a spa.”

“Good,” I snapped.

“Or a phone that cost a G,” he went on.

“Excellent,” I snapped again.

“Maybe a dress or shoes but not both and definitely not three,” he muttered then finished musingly, “Or even two.”

“It might be a good idea to shut up now, Knight,” I suggested.

He grinned again.

Then he noted, “Now who’s bossy?”

“I’m allowed to be bossy. I’m about to be the owner of Denver’s most kickass spa.”

Knight’s arms got tight around me and he burst out laughing.

I watched.

I did it smiling.

And I did it in love with Mr. Sebring.

On Knight’s black, marble counter my phone rang while I was at the stove, boiling water for spaghetti and browning hamburger for sauce. I left the meat, grabbed the phone and saw on the display the call was from Viv. I took it while wandering back to the stove and put it to my ear.

“Hey, honey,” I greeted.

“I was a bad girl.”

I blinked at the hamburger.

Then I burst out laughing.

Through my giggles, I asked, “Were you now?”

“Very,” she said through her own giggles. “Have I told you today I love Knight Sebring?”

I pushed the meat around, smiling at it and said, “Not today. Yesterday you did. Not today.”

“Well I do.”

“I take it things with Rhashan are going good?” I asked softly.

It had been just over a month since my party. I was no longer a file clerk. All my nail clients, and I lost only one, were able to move to days. But losing the one was okay because two of my clients took on six-weekly facials, Kathleen added a monthly facial, so did Sandrine and Viv and Kathleen got her girlfriend Louise to bring her acrylics business to me. So I was actually ahead.

I spent part of my days talking to Mahleena, the bossy bitch who liked to spend money who actually didn’t seem bossy to me but she definitely liked to spend money. We were now implementing the plans to deal with my gonna-be kickass spa. I was also taking an online course in small business management that Knight suggested.

So even without the day job, I was still busy.

But my nights were at Knight’s. In fact, the last two weeks since my last day at work, my apartment felt like my workplace since I’d go there to work and come home to Knight. We had dinner together then he left for work. I rambled around for a few hours, reading, watching television, talking on the phone, doing my coursework at his computer in his study and I went to bed in satin sheets. I woke up in them too. And without having to be at work at eight, I woke up later and got to sleep longer with Knight.

It was the bomb.

Life was good.

And now it seemed it was good for Vivica too.

“Hun… nee,” she whispered as an answer to my question and said no more.

Surprising both Viv and me, Rhashan had started things out with only dating and this had lasted three weeks. He was feeling Vivica out. She was my age, he was thirty-six. A nine year gap which concerned him, because as he told Viv, when he first saw her, he saw her clubbing. He was in settling in mode and looking for The One. And he wasn’t fucking around, not even literally. It wasn’t about getting off. It was about finding a partner for more than spanking.