“True. Okay, so for you. What’s a definite turn on to you?”
He twisted his neck. “I don’t know, Sydney. I just don’t know anymore.”
“Obviously you don’t like redheads, but, thanks for saying no that day, by the way.” She smirked.
“Yeah, I don’t.?
? He crossed the room to the door. “Goodbye, Sydney.”
Sydney lay in bed, feeling deliciously feminine, but also confused. The way he’d kissed her had been passionate. Like he’d thrown himself entirely into that kiss. She’d also seen that if she licked his lips for a good long while, he had no choice but to respond.
So here she was, trying to plan what she’d learned from him to use on Court tomorrow, when she saw him in the gallery tomorrow.
She touched her lips, tasting him on her mouth, and she felt herself grow wet again, and for a moment, she wanted to run after him and beg him to do it all over again.
But he’d been grumpy in the end. Why? Well because he hadn’t had as much fun as she had, of course. He didn’t want her, he hadn’t even climaxed. He’d done it because she’d paid 100k for this. Her stomach sunk at the thought. What would it feel like to watch him lose it? To take her, completely? What would it feel like to be wanted by a man like him?
What would it feel like to do this with Court tomorrow?
five
Sydney smiled inside the gallery’s private office, seeing Court, his adoringly innocent smile and harmless baby blue eyes, looking at her as he came from his desk, which was identical to hers and sat right across his. As she hung up her coat and purse, he held out a cup of her favorite Starbucks coffee. “How was the auction last night? What did you get?” he asked.
A man! she thought giddily. She instead answered, “A black…er, diamond.” Because, wasn’t that what the press had called Damien on numerous occasions?
“Oh? For the gallery? Or your personal collection?”
“My personal collection,” she said sheepishly, taking her Starbucks with a beaming smile. Since the accidental death of her parents, Sydney had relied on Court heavily. He was like her brother, her friend, her confident, her massage therapist who knew exactly where to press in her hands and feet, Court Reynolds was pure wonderfulness, all in a good boy package that would never, ever, knowingly hurt her.
He went back to his desk and was restlessly tapping his foot as he answered some emails. Sydney surveyed his lips as she took a sip of her Frapuccino mocha.
It felt different when she was in the same room as Damien. Damien made her nervous. While Court made her feel at ease. She much preferred the latter.
And yet today, she’d woken up a bit agitated. Last night she kept wondering who else Damien Knight had introduced to the pleasures of sex. Why was this important to know? That Damien had done this with tons of women? That he’d had a dozen women on his travels? It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter. She should be grateful for his sexcapades, otherwise, he would be able to teach her nil. He’d rejected her. Stomped on her heart. So really, who cares?
She still had nightmares about standing at his doorstep, pouring her heart out to him. He couldn’t have been anymore clearer with his answer than if he’d just poleaxed her on the chest with a paddle, then finished her off with a kick or two.
At that time, there had been a big mess about his name in the press. Upon his mother’s death, rumor of an affair with some drug dealer leaked, and Damien’s father had a paternity test. The shit hit the fan when it was proved that Damien was not his son, and he was not only disowned, but cast away from the family. He’d left home with nothing, a nomad carrying only the knowledge of jewelry he’d learned from his family.
He’d been down in the mines, with an eye and nose for diamonds that quickly made him a leader, then an owner of the same mines that supplied jewels to the cutters who supplied to Knight’s. Years later, his father begged Damien to take his name back. The fact that Damien, such a proud, angry man, had accepted, only confirmed what Sydney had known all along.
He had not been as immune to being rejected by the man who’d raised him as a father as she’d known. But even taking his name, Damien still became the dark one to the press. Their black swan became the black diamond, and although they feared and challenged him, a lot of people also revered him.
He was his own man, a survivor of a sad family war which had served no purpose but to destroy everyone involved.
Why Sydney cared that Damien had been hurting at the time, recently disowned, was beyond her. Because he’d looked mighty fine that day when he opened the door to send her back, whimpering and crying.
“Court,” she said then, pulling herself out of her own dark thoughts. He had glanced up at her, his eyes unable to hold hers for long, only for a couple of seconds at the time.
Her heart squeezed in sympathy and tender love for him. She set the coffee aside and came over, propping her hip on his desk and sliding her hand into his hair.
She wanted him to turn on the flames inside her, like Damien had. The feelings she’d experienced last night had been so powerful, she felt like a junkie needing a fix, urgently craving it.
She bent her head, whispering, “I love you,” and started to slowly, slowly, kiss him like she had kissed Damien only hours before, when she’d been practicing…
With over a hundred million dollars of rough diamonds spread out before him, a jeweler’s loupe in one hand, and the sketches of a rough diamond in the other, Damien stared down at the eighty carat fancy pink diamond that took up most of the space, and thought about Sydney Morgan.
“Sir?”