Read Soul Rest: A Knights of the Board Room Novel for Free Online

him irresistible to her. There were so many ways he could mess this up. Yet her anticipation of it, building to dark hope, told her how worried she was that he wouldn’t mess any of it up. That would be her job.
    As she stared at him, memory swam to the front of her mind. Herself as a teenager, sitting on the stoop of her mother’s trailer. She’d fed her siblings and was smoking a cigarette, a habit she fortunately kicked when she reached her twenties. Two children lived in a trailer a couple lots down from hers, a girl and a boy. As Celeste had sat there, she’d heard their mother call them in for their supper. “Les, Tina, come on in. Your supper’s ready.”
    It was the tone of voice that had dug into her gut, held her in place. Yeah, supper could be a bribe. Heaven knew, it was the way she managed to corral her two younger brothers when they were running wild. When she got them back to the trailer to eat, she had half a chance of getting them bathed, making them sit down to do homework.
    But this mother hadn’t called to her children in a thin tone of desperation, a cross between empty threat and whining plea. It was a loving command.
You will come when I call, because I love you and I’m in charge of your care. And I expect you to respect me.
    “Honey, do you want to come join us? There’s plenty.”
    She’d been startled to look up and see the woman talking to her, her gaze friendly but concerned. Celeste now recognized it as how a decent human looked when they saw a person in need and wanted to help. Back then, such a look had merely made her suspicious and wary.
    “No, thanks. I’ve eaten.”
    “You sure? You look hungry.”
    She was always hungry, never full. The body had to occasionally feel full of something, and when happiness and love weren’t around to accommodate, hate, bitterness and anger were ready to step into the void if you weren’t vigilant. But they weren’t filling.
    “I’m sure.”
    She wasn’t sure at all, but by then she couldn’t afford to show any weakness. Childhood was far away and she’d already learned not to trust adults. Their promises were worthless. She had no father, and her mother spent most her time trawling for poor substitutes, while depending on her teenage daughter to raise her other three children and figure out how to spread whatever money was thrown her way for shoes, food and the never-ending need for school supplies.
    Good Christ.
If this guy was making her feel this much just from a chance encounter, his impact on her senses went way beyond a late-night booty call. By saying those simple three words, he’d made the things that could surge up in her lonely heart in the dead of night overflow.
    She swallowed, met his eyes. “Will you say it again?” Would it feel the same way the second time?
    He nodded. “Come inside, Celeste.”
    The significance of her request brought additional heat to his gaze, because of course she was confirming his knowledge of what she was, what she wanted. He’d said nothing but TV tonight, but she knew enough about BSDM stuff to know how much could happen just mind to mind. It didn’t have to involve sweaty sheets, getting naked or the awkward issues of protection to be over-the-top intimate, far more soul-baring than simple sex.
    Yet she came up the stairs, came to him. When she was close enough, he brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes. She had a pixie cut, the hair severely short on her neck and over the ears, but long on the top so the streaked brown strands scattered across her brow and curled over her right ear. In her exposed left ear she had two diamond earring studs in addition to the big hoop. One of the studs was in the second piercing in her lobe, the other at the upper curve of her ear. He passed a fingertip over those as well, sending a tingle down her neck.
    “Nothing to be scared of, darlin’. Except my microwave causing a power overload on the outdated wiring and catching the house on fire.”
    She smiled.