Page 57 of At Her Pleasure
Today it wasn’t going to be an invitation.
She was tired of being dodged, of people not letting her in and giving her the fight she wanted. No matter how irrational, selfish or fucked-up that was, that was where her head was. And she was going to act on it now.
When Matt reached the bottom of the steps, she met him there. The man looked like a hawk, with a curved nose and piercing brown eyes. He had a smooth block of a jaw and hands like hammers.
Matt preferred boxing, but he had trained with the MMA instructor on staff to expand his repertoire. He didn’t have Cyn’s skills, but he was a top-notch boxer with great footwork. On the north side of fifty, the man was still way fucking strong.
He wore a tank shirt and shorts, the shirt damp from the intensity of his workout. He used the big ropes upstairs and usually ran the track, then came down to get in the ring with a willing member or work the bag.
His workouts matched his business approach. His dad had been oil money, but since Matt had quadrupled the value of K&A and expanded its holdings to become a Fortune 500 company, no one could accuse him of living off his inheritance. He’d known suffering, losing his father in his teens, and his mother even younger.
He and his four-man team were a male mirror of the TRA executive board—all sexual Dominants. Savannah Tennyson Kensington was Matt’s wife and submissive, but also CEO of Tennyson Industries, a company that at times unapologetically competed with Matt’s for business.
Matt was protective of his close-knit team and considered them family—another match for Ros’s view of Abby, Cyn, Skye and Vera. He was also fiercely devoted to Savannah and their daughter, Angelica.
It irritated Cyn, made her angry with no desire to look at why. She knew she was in a bad space in her head today. Knew it, goddamn it. That was why she’d come early, without Ros. Not to work out with the punching bag, but because she didn’t want anything to stand between her and the outlet she really craved.
Each time she thought of the text Mick had sent her, she was sucked down into what had brought her to the cemetery that night. Which was so far in the past it shouldn’t affect her at all. But Mick showing up had changed that.
It was yesterday, it was today. It was still inside her.
“Cyn.” Matt mopped sweat off his neck with a towel as he stepped off the stairs. He was over six feet, with shoulders as broad as Tiger’s. Silver was threaded in his brown hair, and she liked that he didn’t color it, didn’t try to look younger than he was. No woman in her right mind would think he looked any less with it. Even in baggy workout shorts, he attracted female attention. In a suit, he was the definition of suit porn.
So was Mick, in the slacks and dress shirts he seemed to favor. He’d looked pretty damn good in jeans, too.
The bruising on his abdomen had been from fists. More than one set. He wouldn’t let himself be taken down by a single opponent. No surprise to her there.
Goddamn men.
“We’re sparring today,” she told Matt.
Showing why he was good at business, as well as being a Master to a successful and complicated woman, Matt paused to assess. His evaluation covered Cyn’s face, tone and body language.
She was good at those critiques herself, and recognized the impending courteous refusal. Even when she’d been more insistent in the past, enough that Matt’s courtesy came with a touch of steel and Ros’s rebuke to her later for pushing the issue, it had always been the same.
This time she wasn’t putting up with that shit. She wanted to spar with the alpha dog in the room, and prove she had every right to be in the ring with him.
“This isn’t about you fighting a woman,” she snapped. “I want you to fight an opponent who wants the fight.”
Needs the fight.
“No.” Matt’s brown eyes went cool. “Whoever you're wanting me to stand in for, I'm not him. Excuse me.”
Patronizing son of a bitch. He stepped around her, and she stepped into him. The punch took him squarely on the jaw, her follow-through, footwork and control perfect. She hit him with the amount of force needed to prove she could hold her own.
It would also get her banned from Roughnecks if he didn’t take it for the gauntlet it was.
That swirling, sick feeling in her stomach told her she was out of control, capable of anything. It had been a while since she’d felt that way, but it said she needed to back off, right the fuck now.
Mick’s scar flashed through her mind. When she’d been miles away from him, trying to fall asleep in the car, she’d seen the glass cut him, again and again. She’d ended up in a ball, shaking with the truth. If his reflexes hadn’t been as fast as they’d been, she would have opened up his throat. In a flash of fury, she would have committed murder.
No. She took a hard look at herself. This wasn’t as far gone as that. Yes, it was on the edge, but she still had her hands on the reins. White-knuckled, but there. She pushed clients to an edge that could seemingly result in them telling TRA to fuck off, yet instead they usually doubled their marketing budget estimate. They took the risk of the greater return her strategy would bring them, because they had faith in her direction.
She didn’t doubt herself, she did the hard work, and she made it happen. Personally and professionally. She could dispense pain because she wasn’t afraid to suffer.
Matt respected those qualities, she knew it. She was going to get the answer she wanted here. She refused to believe anything else.
The punch had prompted a few startled exclamations from those nearby. Even now, Grizzly, the ex-cop who ran the place, was probably headed her way, to handle whatever the hell this was. She planted her feet, waited as Matt straightened, rubbing his jaw.