Winner Takes All (A Full Length Erotic Romance Novel) Read online

  Another gasp tore itself out of her throat as she began to tremble uncontrollably. She dug her fingers into the sheets, tears pouring from her, wetting her cheeks, soaking the sheets under face.

  She felt torn apart. Burst into pieces then roughly put back together. Her breath rushed from her parted lips.

  “Shh....darling...hush.....”

  He caressed her bare back, soothing her. But even that soothing was too sensitive for her skin. The very air against her flesh felt too rough. She squirmed away, gasping. Damien whispered calming words again in her ear then slowly undid the pins in her hair until the loose strands fell over her face. He put the pins on the bedside table before coming back to her.

  He was a heavy and undeniable presence behind her, his cock still hard against her leg. But he didn’t try to do anything about it, only touched her skin, whispered soothing nonsense in her ear until her body slowly, slowly calmed.

  A long while later, she blinked away the last of her tears, breathed quietly through her mouth. A fugitive ripple of pleasure moved through her.

  “You’re incredible.”

  He moved up in the bed until they were face to face. He drew her up against him, gently cradling her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let it go this far.” He kissed her forehead. “Why didn’t you tell me the safe word? That would have stopped everything.”

  She shifted in his arms, winced at the faint pain in her butt. “Because I wasn’t ready to stop.”

  He stared into her eyes. “How did I get so lucky?”

  “You were born under the perfect star.” Sasha slipped her arms around his neck as he pulled her even closer. His mouth touched hers, tentatively at first, then more firmly.

  Their kisses were soft and then hard, mouths sliding together, bodies moving gently together as their breaths gradually sped up, the desire rising inside Sasha again, a more gentle desire, a softer feeling than the one that had consumed her before and turned her into a panting slave thoroughly under Damien’s control.

  She actually wanted to share this delicate feeling with Damien, to ease his body into hers and show him the kind of pleasure he had guided her toward so many times. And so, that was exactly what she did. Parting her legs for him as she lay on her side, guiding his thick cock inside her, sighing from the exquisite pleasure of it. He moaned into her mouth as his cock moved inside her. Slickly sliding between her plump folds to plumb the drenched depths of her pussy. Pleasing her. Pleasing himself.

  “You’re incredible!” He gasped the words into her throat. Clutched her to him as if he thought she would disappear like smoke. “You’re so fucking incredible!”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Sasha hoped that he would like the pie. She held the still-warm cherry pie, carefully lying in its white baker’s box, in her arms like a baby as she walked across the path that separated the Taylor Stables from the mansion.

  It had been a long but rewarding morning. With Linc, she’d finally broken the newest filly of her habit of biting. A big achievement since Sasha had done it primarily on her own. Now, it was lunchtime, and she was ready to share one of her favorite times of the day with her favorite guy. Her footsteps quickened at the thought of seeing Damien.

  Since the weekend she’d spent at his house where they had made love, talked, gone riding together, even made tentative references toward the future, their relationship seemed to mean so much more. It was fine enough to love a man, but if he didn’t think any more of you than the next girl on a string then all the love in the world wouldn’t matter. But she mattered to Damien. Sasha knew that now.

  As she walked up the path toward the house, a familiar white car caught her eye. Her footsteps faltered. No. That couldn’t be who she thought it was. Then she remembered James’s threat. But he wouldn’t approach Damien for money. He wouldn’t dare.

  But as she stared at the white Lexus, the driver’s side window rolled down. Her brother’s smirk just about slapped her in the face as the car passed by. He waved at her and the car completed its turn around the circular driveway then disappeared down the hill.

  No!

  She ran the rest of the way to Damien’s study. Panic flying up in her throat. Sasha clutched the boxed pie as she begged pardon of the middle-aged butler before she dashed through the house. At Damien’s door, she knocked, her heart thumping madly.

  “Come!”

  His firm reply through the door made her falter for a moment. Then she stiffened her spine, clutched the pie even closer to her chest and walked through the door.

  Damien was standing by the window, staring out into the sunlit day. Not a good sign. As Sasha walked in, a savage look flashed across his face. She winced, closed the door behind her. James had already told him. She could see the knowledge of her life before now in Damien’s eyes. He had seen her brother, heard his version of events. James had made demands of Damien. Threatened him.

  Sasha put the pie on the sideboard that also held decanters of various liquors. Suddenly, she wanted a drink very badly, even though it was the last thing she actually needed. What she needed was a clear head so she could properly explain everything to Damien. It would kill her if he thought she had sent James to extort money from him. If he thought she had only slept with him for what he could give her.

  Sasha wanted to rush to Damien, fall on her knees and make him understand. But instead, she clasped her hands behind her back and stayed on the opposite side of room from him, watching him. Waiting.

  “What a coincidence that you’re here now,” he finally said. His voice was carefully neutral. “Your brother just came to see me.”

  The bottom dropped out of her stomach as she heard her intuition and worst fears confirmed. She swallowed heavily. Gripped her fingers even more tightly together behind her back.

  “I’m sorry. I should have told you.” She pressed her lips together. “I was going to tell you.”

  “Which part were you going to tell me? That this low life is your brother or that he is extorting money out of you?”

  Humiliation flared in her cheeks. For a moment, she was struck dumb. Waves of alternating cold and heat took her body.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can pack my things and go today.”

  Damien made an impatient noise, strode quickly across the den to grasp her shoulders. “You’re not going anywhere, Sasha!” He pulled her to him in a rough embrace. “All this time you’ve been dealing with this pathetic excuse for a brother all by yourself, you should have come to me.”

  She sagged in shock at his defense of her, his soothing caress on her back. “I thought you wouldn’t want to see me again after you knew the truth. I thought – I thought James would only make trouble for you.”

  “There’s nothing that can make me banish you from my life, Sasha. Nothing.” His hand tightened on her back. “As for your brother, he made some stupid threats, but he doesn’t scare me.” Damien drew back to look into her eyes. “He’s nothing but a low life. I know exactly how to get rid of him and keep your name and anything that he might say out of the papers.”

  She stared up at him. “You do?”

  He shook his head with the smallest of smiles. “I would be a poor businessman indeed if I didn’t know how to send opportunistic rats scurrying back to the dung heap they came from.”

  Sudden tears started in her eyes and rolled down her face. “I—really?”

  “Really. You don’t have to worry about—”

  A knock sounded on the door, interrupting the rest of what Damien was going to say. He cursed softly. Looked at his watch.

  “My office is damn lively for a Monday afternoon.” He kissed her briefly on the mouth. “Let me see who this is so I can get rid of them and take you out to lunch.” He lifted his head to face the door. “Come in.”

  After a brief hesitation, the door opened and Michelle walked in. The vet had her glasses perched on her nose, a collection of papers in her hand, purpose in her stride.

  “Sorry to inte
rrupt, Damien. Sasha.” She greeted them with a brief smile. “But we have a problem.”

  As Damien crossed the room to take the papers from Michelle’s hand, Sasha looked into her friend’s face, saw that whatever it was must have been very serious indeed.

  “I can go and leave you two to it,” Sasha said as she started to walk toward the door.

  “No, love.” Damien tossed the words casually over his shoulder. “Have a seat for a few minutes would you, please. I’d like you to stay.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she went to the couch and sat down. “Okay.” She pulled a magazine from the rack nearby and tried to pay attention to the glossy pages.

  The papers in Damien’s hands rustled as he read them. “This is impossible,” he said. His voice was hard and tight.

  “That’s what I thought too. But my office got an anonymous tip and we had to follow up on it.”

  Damien frowned at the papers as if he could incinerate them with the power of his stare. “No one at Taylor Stables would do something like this. I hire people with integrity. And everyone here knows the penalty I inflict for dealing in this garbage.”

  Michelle nodded, her glossy blonde hair moving over her shoulders in a golden curtain. “I understand. Be that as it may, this report confirms some details of the tip. Someone here at Taylor Stables had been doping horses.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Sasha gasped silently, unable to believe what Michelle had just said. Even the most untrustworthy Taylor Stables employee would never do something like that. They knew what was at stake. Their jobs. The stable’s reputation. Their freedom.

  “I’ll look into this, Dr. Wallace. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” Damien paused as he looked through the papers again. “Do what you need to do as far as your reporting obligations. I’ll take care of this.” He passed the papers back to her, instructing her to have copies made and put on his desk as soon as she was able.

  Tight-lipped, she nodded. Then after a slight wave at Sasha, she left the office and closed the door behind her.

  Damien’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “This doesn’t make any sense at all. I can’t think of anyone who’d do something like that here.”

  “There must be some sort of mistake,” Sasha said. “In all my years here, that’s never been a problem. I can’t see any reason why that would crop up now. Something is off about that accusation.”

  “I agree.” Damien rapped his knuckles against his desk, staring off into space. Then he shook himself. “We might not be able to have that lunch after all,” he said.

  “I understand. This is important.” She stood up and crossed the room to press her lips briefly to his. “Maybe we can have dinner tonight and—”

  She trailed off as the phone rang.

  “Busy day. I just hope this isn’t more bad news.” Damien shook his head, a tight smile on his lips. “Don’t leave yet,” he said as he picked up the phone.

  “Damien Taylor.”

  Sasha tuned out the conversation as he talked, trying to decide if she should take the pie away and put it in the kitchen for him to eat later. Then something in Damien’s voice made her look at him. He was rigid behind the desk, a look of disbelief on his face.

  “Thank you, Mr. Davis.”

  He said something else to the man on the other end of the phone and then he hung up. He stared at Sasha. “That was one of the investigators from the state police.” He paused. “They already know about the doping charges. The same anonymous tipster probably contacted them the same time they reached out to Michelle.”

  Damien was talking but it seemed he wasn’t really paying attention to the words coming from his mouth, but rather to something else. Like he was trying to figure out a puzzle.

  Something is very wrong. Sasha crossed the room to stand on the other side of his desk. Her fingers gripped the edge of the polished wood desk. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.

  Damien frowned down at the phone before looking back up at Sasha. “They’re looking into Taylor Stables as the source of the doping. The investigation is focusing on you in particular, Sasha.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “What?!”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Sasha stared at Damien, unable to believe what he just said. They were investigating her for doping horses? Her? She wanted to leap across the desk into his arms, begging him to believe that she would never do something like that. But the sudden rise of an irrational fear held her bolted to the floor across from Damien. She gripped the edge of his desk as she sagged against it, staring at him.

  “I—I’d never do something like that!” she gasped. “You’ve got to believe me.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Damien said. “That thought never even crossed my mind.”

  He came to her immediately, pulled her into his arms, and resting a gentle hand at the back of her head. His heartbeat thumped loudly beneath her ear. Or was it the sound of her own runaway pulse, frightened that the police would take her away simply for just being who she was? Her brother’s sister. Her parents’ daughter.

  Her lover’s tender caress didn’t wipe the thought of her own tainted nature from her mind. She’d just confessed that she had come from some of the worst kinds of people in the world. That her brother was blackmailing her for nearly every dime she made, and she’d kept the truth of these things from Damien and basically everyone she cared about. How could he not believe she was guilty of the doping she was being accused of? Sasha’s fingers curled tight in the fabric of Damien’s suit jacket.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” He made soothing motions against her back, kissed the top of her head. “Don’t,” he said. “Where you come from does not determine where you will end up.”

  Damien put a finger under her chin and gently tilted her face up to look at him. “You’re a woman I’ve come to know and trust in so many ways. The time we’ve spent together, the things we’ve done, the person you’ve shown me to be, none of these things tells me I’ve placed my trust in the wrong person.”

  Tears started in Sasha’s eyes. Her lower lip trembled and a wet tickle started behind her nose. Through the sheen of tears, she saw Damien’s blue, blue eyes. The faith and trust that shone from them as brightly as a beacon on the shore of a stormy, night-black sea. “I know you, Sasha Cormick,” he said. “And you’d never do something like this.”

  The tears fell. She sobbed and clung to him, the stress of the last few weeks boiling over and spilling out through her cries. In one swift movement, Damien lifted her into his arms and took her to the couch. He sat with her on his lap, silent and patient as she cried into his shirt front, the ugly and endless sounds falling from her lips.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a long moment. She sniffled, wiped her palms across her damp face. “I don’t usually act like this. I promise.”

  “I know your strength, darling. You have nothing to apologize for.” His hand soothed her back while he looked into her face, his eyes piercing and unblinking. “We all have moments when we need to lean on another person, if only for a little while.” A smile touched his lips. “I’m honored that you have enough trust in what we have to lean on me.”

  A steady warmth blossomed in Sasha’s chest. Radiating out and through her until she was filled with it, comforted by it. She sniffled again, settled back into Damien’s arms. “Thank you.”

  “You have nothing to thank me for yet.” A touch of amusement colored his voice. “I still need to find out who’s making these accusations against you. And also who the hell is doping our horses.” The humor left his voice, leaving it cold and hard. “Whoever this bastard is, he’s going to regret the day he crossed me.”

  Lying against his chest, Sasha shivered. She almost felt sorry for whoever it was that dared to mess with Damien and his business. Almost.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  There were investigators crawling all over Taylor Stables and all over Sasha’s life. Although th
ey wore plain clothes and were polite, she still felt as if they – the intimidating and stern men and women who appeared on the grounds almost overnight – looked at her with suspicion whenever she ran into them. Which, in turn, made all her co-workers, who hadn’t so much as blinked when they found out about her and Damien, begin to look at her with an unpleasant, speculating look on their faces.

  She knew she hadn’t done anything, but that didn’t stop her from feeling guilty about her past and thinking that it was something about her that made the investigators’ suspicion gravitate toward her. And even if there had been no real reason for them to suspect her, once they found out about her past, they would be sure to look at her even more strongly for the crime. They might even make up the facts of her guilt, figuring that someone who came from such a poisonous tree obviously had to be rotten to the core as well.

  Because of this discomfort, this feeling of constantly being under the microscope, Sasha only came to the stables to do her job, work with Linc as needed, then quickly drive back to her little apartment and wait for the suspicion to fall away from her. Damien was busy trying to find out who the culprit was. Looking through paperwork, questioning the staff, checking records of the horses’ feeding schedules, medications, and performances. He’d discovered nothing, but he vowed not to stop until something fruitful came to light. Because of his preoccupation with clearing her name and the name of Taylor Stables, Sasha had barely seen him.