The Token 8: Kiki: A Billionaire Dark Romantic Suspense (14 page)

“Eat,” Chet says, cramming another kernel into my mouth.

“I'm stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey!”

He lifts the pop, and I take a sip.

His hand falls to my thigh, and my pussy instantly dampens.

His eyes change. The film flickers in front of us as Chet and I look at each other.

His eyelids lower as he gazes at me. “Ride me, Kandace.”

His voice sounds desperate.

No less desperate than my desire.

He tosses the half-empty popcorn container behind us and sets the pop on the floor.

He lifts me until I'm standing in front of him.

The air in the theater is cool as he lifts my skirt to the middle of my back.

I hear the sound of a zipper.

He lays his cheek against the swell of my upper ass. “No panties.”

“No.” My voice doesn't sound as though it belongs to me.

There's no warning before his fingers are in me, pumping in and out.

I cry out. “Oh my God!”

He takes his fingers out just long enough to spread me wide. His hands clamp on the globes of my ass, my legs on either side of his knees.

I haven't watched a minute of the movie.

Chet seats the tip of himself against my entrance, and in one movement, his thick cock breaches my opening, gravity assisting my descent.

We cry out together at the deep marriage of our bodies. He lifts my ass and plunges me back down on him.

His finger finds my clit, and he squeezes my slick nub as he slams me down. My pussy gives a deep throb with his next thrust.

“Yes,” Chet hisses, pressing his thumb against my clit—hard.

My scream is louder than the soundtrack of the movie as my orgasm surges through me. I clench Chet rhythmically, my head dipping with his final gentle thrust.

My hands grips the seat in front of me as Chet unloads inside me.

A frozen part of me thaws, and an irretrievable piece of my self-preservation falls away when Chet wraps his arms around me, pulling me against him.

We stay like that even after he grows soft.

The movie blares on and he holds me.

Best. Night. Ever.

*

“Still up for that cheesecake?” Chet asks as the credits spin.

“Oh boy—ah, probably not.”

I mop up my messy self with the million napkins Chet brought along. I stuff them in the half-empty popcorn container.

He watches me with a satisfied smile.

“Full?” But his face says he isn't talking about cheesecake.

“Very.” I smirk.

He grabs my hands and pulls me to him. The theater lights glow softly at our feet, strips of artificial stars captured down the aisle way.

“I'm glad,” he says and pulls me toward the emergency exit.

“Hey!” I laugh, pulling against him. “No, Chet—Sin!”

“We'll get it to go!” he claims, slapping the bar out the back entrance.

We tumble out the door, and I turn toward the restaurant. Chet's eyes meet mine, free and easy. He raises my hand to his lips and gives me a kiss so soft, if I blinked, I'd have imagined it.

We walk toward the street and abruptly halt. Five men swarm like vicious wasps around an older homeless guy.

He mutters, “Just leave me alone,”
from his prone position on the asphalt.

One sends a brutal kick into his ribs. The man cries out from the ground.

Adrenaline makes a sick rush through my system, the popcorn rising in a tide of nausea. Right then, my night turns on a dime.

Chet tenses. “Kiki, stand behind me—not too close.”

He never calls me Kiki.

I move behind him, backing up until the cold brick of the theater leeches into my hands.

“No, Chet!” I warn softly. “There's too many.”

Oh my God.
One of their head's pivots toward the sound of my voice, and I cover my mouth. Every vile memory I've ever owned rises to the surface of the water of my mind where I thought they'd drowned long ago.

Nope
. Right there, waiting.

“What the fuck do we have here?” the loser asks. His black eyes scan Chet.

I feel his gaze and shiver in the dark.

The ringleader stomps the homeless guy in the stomach, and he howls, trying to crawl away.

I swallow, hiding in a jog out along the wall. Shadows claim most of me.

I hope.

“Some slick pretty boy,” his buddy says.

I look from one to the other of them.
Gang colors.

Hispanic.

Black.

White.

A goddamned motley crew.

Some have tattooed teardrops underneath their eyes.

Kills.

Some have a scattering of inked tears, some an avalanche.

“Chet, let's go,” I whisper.

Maybe we can get to the street another way. My look down one end of the alley, then the other. It's very dark. Seattle’s budget for light poles is for the streets, not the alley.

Fuck.

“No,” Chet answers softly.

My eyes follow his body as he moves toward the men. His suit coat has been tossed on the pavement. Bits of old cobblestones peek through the pebbled asphalt like forgotten wounds. My eyes flick up from the damp ground.

“Would you look at this fag boy ballsy mother fucker, nice bling you got.”

His cufflinks.

They glitter darkly from Chet's wrists.

My extremities tingle, my palms growing damp.

Chet calmly rolls up his sleeves after pocketing the cufflinks.

“No, hand over the shit,” another says. Then his eyes find me in the shadows. I shrink into the brick wall.

“Ooh... not so much of a gay boy as I thought. Nope, he likes the pussy. Look at that fine ass behind him.”

Five sets of eyes find me.

I cringe, trying to become one with the wall.

No, please, not again,
never again
. Panic settles into my chest like a bird come to roost.

“Stay there, Kandace,” Chet's voice comes through as though it's traveling underwater.

He doesn't glance behind to check on me.

I don't move.

“We're gonna have us a piece of the
Kandace
pie. She be thinking banginʼ your rich ass is all she needs? Nah, brother. She needs what I got.” He wraps his hand around his crank and squeezes, his blond hair spiking erratically underneath his patterned bandana.

I breathe through my mouth, trying to stifle the urge to puke.

Chet says nothing. His hands are loose at his sides. He moves with grace as the first one comes at him.

A fist launches at Chet's jaw, and he snaps the elbow as it locks for a blow that never connects. He uses the attacker's momentum to twist the joint as he throws the man behind him.

The man wails, elbow canted at an unnatural angle.

I scoot farther along the wall as he writhes only ten feet in front of me.

Two men grab Chet's arms, and a third pounds his flat stomach.

A little sound slips out of me, and I want to crush my voicebox. I'm so scared my tongue tastes metal.

The fifth comes toward me.

No—swaggers.

Kiki doesn't take rape. I'll die first.

I can't stand the thought of this man touching me where Chet's just been.

“Take your shit off and bend over, baby. I got some love for you,” he says as if I've been waiting my whole life for him to utter those words.

“Fuck you,” I say in a low voice of authority I don't feel.

He gives a manic chuckle. “I'll be fucking you, all right.”

I glance at Chet.

Two men are beside him like fallen bowling pins, and the one who hit him just got his nose flattened like a flesh pancake. It's a splatter of cartilage and blood as he staggers around screaming for his homeboys.

Nobody's answering.

Broken Elbow is mewling on the ground, and Chet steps over him with purpose. Our eyes meet over the shoulder of the man who has wrapped his hand around my breast.

I hit the man’s arm, but he flings my hand away and squeezes.

I whimper at the pain. It's not pain I want.

Then Chet's there.

He puts his face next to the man's. The man's hand tightens on my tit, and I whimper.

Murder fills Chet's eyes, now glacial ice chips.

“Take your hands off my lady, or I'll kill you.”

“Fuck off, dickhead.”

I gasp as Chet tears him off his feet. My palms slap the rough brick.

Chet lands him on top of Broken Elbow then lifts him by his shirt. He throws a punch that rocks the wannabe rapist's head back.

Then another.

Five hard punches later, I come to my senses.

I walk shakily toward Chet as he beats the fucker.

“Chet.” I touch his back.

His fist pounds.

Something cracks. An eyesocket? Cheekbone?

Oh. My. God.
“Chet!” I yell, hitting his back with my fist.

He whirls, suddenly an inch from my face, his fist raised.

The skin on his knuckles is gone, and every muscle strains his torn shirt.

He blinks, his arm taut and trembling.

“Kandace?”

“Don't hit me.” It takes everything in me to stand there and not run.

“No,” he says, but his arm remains raised.

I look at it, and he seems to realize his fist is up, ready to punch something, but I’m the only one there.

He lowers his arm slowly as his chest heaves. Seconds slip by, and his breathing slows to something resembling normal.

His eyes skip to the open street. “Let's go.”

I shake my head. I'm fucking beyond freaked. This guy I dig, who sexes me perfectly and was beginning to make me feel—I don't know—loved? He's a fucking violent rager.

Like the other men.

A frustrated sigh slides out of Chet. He grabs my hand and strides down the alley. As he passes the homeless man, he stops and I plow into his back.

Tearing his wallet out of his pants pocket, Chet plucks out several hundred-dollar bills.

They float down to land on the stunned guy's chest.

“Thanks!” Then he coughs into a clenched fist full of cash.

“My pleasure,” Chet answers more to himself than anyone.

The Cheesecake Factory sign glows softly.

I turn away before I can puke.

Kiki

Shadows and light pool, alternating Chet's expression to hidden then open. He stays on his side of the limo. I am opposite him, as far as I can get.

The limo was waiting when we left the destruction of the alley.

Chet never asked if I still wanted cheesecake. One look at my face was enough.

“Why do I feel like I have to apologize for what happened?” he asks.

A streetlamp illuminates his expression. It's unforgiving.

I look at my hands instead of that unreadable expression. “I—it's what I grew up with. Sudden violence. The promise of harm was always just around the corner.” I give a helpless shrug.

My eyes flash to his in the gloom. “And this”—I jerk my thumb toward from where we came from—“is such a déjà vu it's not even funny.”

“They would have raped you for sport, Kandace.” His hand falls to my knee.

Chet touching me feels so right that I don't notice for several seconds. Instead, my mind turns over his words.

“I know. And…” I look at him again. Somehow, he's moved nearer. “I'm so glad you dusted his ass. Even though I'm horrified.”

Neither one of us clarifies who
he
is.

He holds a stray piece of my hair and rubs it sensuously then moves it behind my shoulder. Chet's fingertips brush my collarbone, and a sigh of pure contentment slips out of my mouth.

“I couldn't let them hurt you,” he says simply.

“Did you have to break the guy's arm?” My mind flashes to the memory of the torqued joint, the howls of agony.

His fingers circle my throat, his thumb traveling lightly up and down.

“Yes.”

I swallow, and his thumb rides the movement. His eyes flick to mine. “I would do even more.”

“Would you have killed them?”

His eyes never leave mine. His hand is warm on my neck.

“I think you can answer that.”

I search his eyes, his face.