Black Collar Empire Read online

  The only sound in the room is fabric sliding against fabric and then a small hum of concentration from the tailor as he stretches Seth's arms to shoulder height. “Soon enough you'll weigh little more than the sum of your bones,” says the old man with a disapproving tsk.

  The odd words jolt Seth out of his thoughts to frown toward the wrinkled man. Old hands turn Seth to face his reflection in the trifold mirrors. Of course Nathaniel would notice him avoiding himself. He has been the family's tailor since Seth was a small boy. He has watched Seth strut and preen before these mirrors, watched him own every single custom-cut suit as if no one could ever look any better. He sees him now, injured, gaunt, tired. He watches honey-brown eyes take in the slender form repeated back to him, the answering eyes of golden-skinned ghosts and cocaine traces.

  The sum of his bones?

  “This isn't me,” Seth answers softly, lowering his arms to pull the jacket lapels together.

  “Excuse me, sir?” asks Nathaniel with a startled expression,

  “This cut,” says Seth. “This jacket, it's different. It doesn't look like me. It looks like…” His voice dies as a knot lodges in his throat.

  “Like your father, sir?”

  “Yes. Don't call me sir,” Seth says, brow knitting as he looks himself over.

  “It is the style he preferred, said it presents the most prestigious image. It looks good on you.”

  Seth waves away the hand Nathaniel reaches toward him. He stares at his perturbed face before shaking his head. It's too soon. “I can't do this,” he says, pulling at the sleeves, ignoring the pins that prick him and the alarmed look on the tailor's withered face. These are the same words he said to the love of his life over a month ago. “I can't wear it like him,” he adds, turning to push himself off the measuring dais.

  It is not the old man's protests that stop him, half out of the jacket and poised to step. It’s her who makes him freeze, her who causes his breath to hang in his chest, her who has once again caught him in a moment of weakness. Questions fire in his head. How long has she been there? He didn't see her come in. What could she need that could not wait until after his fitting? He cannot put a voice to any of these thoughts.

  In moments, he has gathered several quick details. Nic is dressed down in an old pair of designer jeans and a thick, cream cashmere sweater. Her hair is braided against one shoulder. Her hands cling to a sling bag that is propped on her shoulder as if she was considering removing it before he brought the entire world to a halt just by turning around. He recognizes the look on her face, coldly composed, impassive. It means something is very wrong.

  The tension spirals into a long and breathless moment. Her silence only makes the grip on his vocal chords stronger. There are no less than six points jabbing into his skin in various places. They've hardly spoken in the weeks that have passed. A thousand needle points could not break his gaze. Then, as if the chill of the city street has found its way past the defenses of modern technology, Seth says to his tailor, “We're finished.”

  Nathaniel all but chokes on his oxygen at the sudden and icy dismissal. He cannot imagine anyone stupid enough to challenge that tone, not anyone still alive. Just before he reaches the door, Seth says, “Nathaniel,” so that there is no choice but to pause and to listen. “I'm not my father.”

  The old man hesitates, then turns sadly away. The door closes shortly after.

  To Nicolette, Seth looks miserable, frayed. She searches his face for something: a sign perhaps, or a hint of the emotion he has so effectively silenced since his brother’s funeral. All she can find are dark circles and sharp lines. Still, he shows the fathomless mask he acquired in the far South.

  “I spent two years trying to hate you,” she says finally, voice steadily controlled. “Two years trying to blame you for leaving me as I squirmed from under my father's finger.” She can see the pain, like the weight of his brother’s funeral, reflecting in his volatile gaze. Everything she will never see in his expression, she will always find in his eyes. “For two years, I pretended I could live on the other side, like everyone else,” she chokes. “All I've really managed to achieve is the realization that I can't hate you, and I can't be one of them. What does that make me?”

  Conflict dances across his glowing regard, raging against his seeming passivity. How long can he really fight it? “Human after all,” he answers quietly, arms relaxing back into the coat as if he has lost the motivation to remove it.

  “Not like you. You’re some higher breed of being,” she replies with an unintentionally malicious tone.

  Again, he looks like a fist has been punched through his rib cage. Surprise lights his eyes. His brow furrows the tiniest bit. “I'm not as invincible as I once thought,” he says, looking away at a ream of fabric. Concepts like responsibility and destiny, love and loyalty, wash against him.

  “What does that mean?” she asks.

  “It means my stores of skeletons have stacked up against me,” he answers in a similarly arctic manner. The sum of his bones. He turns away from her, looking at his reflection again. “And when I look in the mirror, all I can see is my dead family. It means I can never be sure when I turn around if there will be someone about to stab me in the back.”

  “Me? Look at me, Seth.” His weighted stare gravitates to her in the center mirror. “Would you look for a knife in my hand?”

  The ice cracks. He says, “No, but every time I get close to you, I think, 'Why wouldn't they just kill you, too?'” He pulls again on his unfinished jacket.

  “You can't force me out now,” she tells him, stepping closer to the dais. He pauses for only a moment, uncertainty dusting across his features before he can hide it. He keeps her eyes as he peels the fabric away from him, feeling the obtrusive pins pull free of his flesh. He makes no mind as the pieces of the suit coat fall apart. He notices that a single straight pin lingers, jammed uncomfortably into his shoulder, some orphan of an unfinished seam. He breaks his eye contact to pluck the thing out of his arm and flick it toward the mirror. It makes a tiny 'tink' sound that disturbs the tension they share. He watches her eyes roam from his face in the reflection to the smallest dot of red that soaks through his stark white dress shirt where the pointed offense had been. “Looks like you are human, as well. I stand corrected,” she says to his back, voice melting like sugar in warm water.

  How can she be cold and heartless when he looks so distressed? How can she pretend that she doesn't feel anything when he still looks so brown against his city's winterscape? How can she honestly be strong when he's wearing that shirt like he alone was born to model the finest cloth of the finest cut? Why won't he ever just button those top two buttons, she wonders as her vision creeps down his long throat to the delicate “v” of his collar bone. She asks, “How long do you think you can act like you don't feel anything?”

  “Sometimes, I don't feel anything,” he says, readying himself to field her burning attention when it returns to his face. He averts his eyes again and asks, “Are you sure that you want to call me human? I don't know if I am anymore.”

  He hears a crunch as she drops her bag at her feet. He feels the air in the room shift. He raises his shields, garners the strength of his emotional walls. For a moment he believes he can withstand her siege. Then he feels her fingers against his back, between his shoulder blades, and he knows that he is far too weak to deny her again. She passes his defenses as if they are nothing. They crumble at her touch. “Can you feel me?” she wonders, voice sticky-sweet and so close.

  “Yes,” he whispers. He cannot lie, and he can't hold up the heavy mask any longer. He doesn't just feel her; she is his world, whole and complete behind him.

  “Then you are still a man,” she answers, fingertips trailing up his spine.

  Chills rise on his skin as he turns, catches her hand in his to pull her up the last step onto the platform with him. “Still a Morgan,” he reminds her, meeting her momentum with his body so that they are pressed against each other. “D
oes that make me a dead man?”

  “No,” she answers softly, simply. “It makes you a resilient man.” She tenderly touches his neck, finding him so warm and real. He smells slightly spicy, expensive, delicious. She can feel him tense, knows what it feels like when his resolve fades in the intensity of the fire that has always burned between them. She leans in so very slowly to press her lips beneath his cutting jawline. One kiss tells him that he will never have the strength to stand against her. The second kiss on his fevered skin tells him he should have known better than to try. He feels her lips brush his ear as she says, “It also makes you mine.”

  His answer is a rush of hot breath, too much to be a sigh, as if all his relief has been painfully trapped and kept from him for too long. His arms wrap tentatively around her as if his bones are too brittle to squeeze any more. She pulls his face to hers, to look her in the eye for a far-reaching moment before they kiss each other like it should have been on his first night back to the city, like it should have been that night at the bar. She feels resistance in him still. She will not, cannot have it. She jerks his shirt open, sending buttons flying around them and calling to his inexorable sexuality.

  A slow sigh leaks from him as her hands flatten on his smooth chest. His skin is warm when her palms push the fabric along the razor edges of his collarbone. She knows he has been doing cocaine, knows that's why he has remained so thin, but she cannot help the thrill of his pronounced shoulders as she coaxes the ruined shirt out of her way.

  Their kiss smolders, threatens to set the world alight as, suddenly, life returns to his hands and he possessively grips her waist. The tiny gasp that escapes her makes the heat unbearable. He crushes her against him, her cashmere-covered breasts sliding against him, so soft, so sensuous. Her hands ghost beneath the dress shirt, taking him in slowly. Dreams, hopes, memories can never come close to the perfection that is Seth Morgan. Dreams cannot convey the way he shudders as she brushes his taught nipples. Hopes cannot live up to gentle way his teeth close on her bottom lip, the way he needs her mouth against his. Memories blanch in the face of reality, the truth that his personality is unique and irresistible. The fact is, she needs him.

  She traces the strong lines of his back, down to his prominent hipbones. He is far too engrossed in the kiss to realize how low his pants are hanging on his waist and what route her fingers are taking. She gasps into his mouth when she brushes the raised scar on the lowest part of his hip. He tries to catch her as she pulls away to examine him. Her eyes are wide with, some kind of horror as she studies the dark mark, a burn she can tell, in the shape of a tiny devil ray. The flesh is glossy pink, a new scar.

  “Seth?” she whispers, but he is shaking his head when she looks questioningly to her. He gets a grip on her hard and pulls her back up to face level with him. The denial in his eyes is so fierce that she can say nothing further. There are still some things he can't talk about. He pulls her back to his thirsty lips. She wants to fight him, to ask him why, but her thoughts wipe clean when he begins to lift the sweater off her. His hands on her bare skin string a low and mournful whimper from her. He has been gone from her bed for so long. No other can ever compare. No other can play her so sweetly.

  For several breaths, all they can do is taste each other and press together so that their skin rubs together. Friction heats the room. Her lace and silk bra slides across his surface. Their hips slam together and she can feel him, hard for her under the confines of his slacks. The city shivers around them so that it resounds through all the steel and glass and whispers across the myriad thread counts and measurements. The streets have missed their champion and his lady.

  He watches her reflection guide his shirt to an unrefined heap on the platform. She is beauty personified, smooth and brown sugar skin, firm and humming with desire for only him.

  For a moment, he doesn't recognize himself against her perfection. He sees his hand, long, skinny fingers running the gentle line of her back. He watches her kiss his throat and wonders if he is worthy of the shaking thrill she draws from the part of him that he thought had died. Then she steps aside and suddenly he is exposed, left alone to confront himself.

  She can see the panic that rises in him, so she slips her hand into his and stands beside him. He calms at her touch, but she can still feel his tension. “You told me to keep my eye on you. How can I when you can't even look at yourself?” she asks. She recognizes the pain in his expression. He's biting down on his lower lip to exact some sort of control over himself. She adds, “You're not your father. You're not your uncle. If you really believe that, then you'll realize that the only reflection that's left is you.”

  His fingers squeeze hers so tightly it hurts. He nods toward the mirror. “And you,” he says, no inflection, no insinuation. The storm in his eyes fades to a restless pitch. He nods again, and at least for the moment, it seems her sense has connected with something in his teeming brain.

  “And me,” she agrees, sliding before him once again. “And that makes us a very pretty sight indeed.” She smiles wickedly. She plants a hot kiss against that tantalizing collar bone, tasting his skin with her tongue. She smiles at the hitch in his breath, leaving a wet trail down his chest to taste his nipple.

  He gasps. Her braided hair tickles his abdomen. He watches lazily, as the lines of her back move and tense like a prowling feline as she brings his body to life. She lowers gracefully to her knees, leaving burning reminders of the passion they have always shared along his ribcage and lean abs. A quiet tempest is growing within him, a furious, wailing vortex of absolute need and power. Her nails dig, just a hint of pain, into the skin of his back, and his eyes close as pleasure spirals through him. She laughs when he curses, eyes sparkling with triumph. Such a naughty princess, he thinks and then thought flees completely.

  She bites down gently right at his pants line, carefully avoiding the brand. She sucks at his flesh slightly as she begins to unbutton his slacks. How does she know that pain has somehow become synonymous with pleasure for him? She pushes his boxer briefs down his slender hips, fingers brushing his inner thigh, then his length. She looks up at him as her mouth leaves his hip and she smiles. He stares, not even breathing as she meets his gaze.

  She tastes the tip of him, drawing a ragged breath from him. He is salt and spice, the savory essence of surreality. Her tongue dances along the head, teasing in tight circles. One of his hands curls around the thick braid of hair as the other grips her shoulder. She flicks her tongue once, twice, until he cries out through grinding teeth. Then she goes all the way down, and the uninhibited moan that she has been waiting for rolls out of him like the raging tide.

  She finds a slow rhythm, long and deep, teasing him with her tongue. She lets her eyes close and focuses on the buzz of ecstasy that radiates from their contact. She pushes him into her throat just to hear the moan again.

  He wants to watch the intriguing show, but no force in the world could hold open his eyelids. All he wants is to collapse against something and hand due control to her, but he knows, as well, that she does not want control. Even as she seeks to please her lover, she is teaching him a lesson in Court. An aspiring king must take his pleasure as he takes all things—with the utmost perception and endurance, on his own feet with his own strength. Mercilessly.

  He deftly rips the band from around the braid, muscles spasming as he uses both hands to shake her dark, dark hair loose against her shoulders. He takes a firm handful and bends to unhook her bra. She slows slightly when he roughly pulls the garment from her, but the grip in her hair pushes her back into her cadence. She whimpers onto him when he grabs a firm handful of her breast, and she sucks just a little harder.

  He grunts in answer. He will not hold out long under this onslaught. He breathes through her attack, tries his damnedest to ignore the stars that burst behind his vision. Stroke after sinful stroke, the tension mounts. He takes it as long as he can stand, until he is sure that he will die at any moment. Just as her lips slide from him, he
pulls her back by the hair. She smiles devilishly at him, tastes him slowly on her lips.

  “Stand up,” he demands.

  If she didn't know better, his low and level tone would scare her. She pushes to her feet quickly, but still the roots of her hair scream in protest at the force with which he commands her. The world falls away as he devours her swollen lips with a starving kiss. He holds her in place by the hair as his other hand makes quick work of the button of her well-worn jeans, then hurriedly shoves fabric out of his way. The moan that rises now is hers. His fingers find her so wet. He slides two in deeply, just to hear her gasp when he slowly extracts them.

  “Ah, fuck,” she spits, grasping onto his shoulder for support, manicured fingernails digging into his muscle.

  “Hold on tight,” he whispers, quickening the pace and increasing the force with which he fucks her with his hand, all the while slipping his thumb over her clitoris in unforgiving circles. She cries into his mouth at the sudden, overwhelming wave of orgasm that he summons so easily. Even after all this time, he still knows all the ways to make her come until she cries for mercy, though she knows better than to seek mercy now.