Page 48 of Skins Game

Supper first, definitely.

Wine.

Dessert.

His bed.

Maybe his ties. He’d packed four.

Even though he’d only booked the trip for three days.

But that was tomorrow.

Today, they were playing Pebble Beach on the golf simulator.

He laughed and balanced himself. “I think I still need to tee off.”

She huffed a chuckle. “Yeah, I think you got teed off all right.”

He laughed again out loud, a sound he didn’t hear often come out of his throat, and walked over to his bag to select the big, long driver.

Even his driver seemed lighter as he stood in position over the ball and striped it dead-center down the fairway.

Getting off seemed to be good for his golf game. He’d have to remember that.

When Nicole stood over the ball to take her next shot, she was still grinning, still relaxed, and she hit her shot much better than before, too.

Getting off was good for everybody’s game.

Convenient.

They played the spectacular vistas of Pebble Beach, marveling at the views of the ocean that stretched to the distant horizon and the sea birds calling and flying overhead.

After the first nine holes, at the turn, Kingston asked Nicole, “Got any other interesting new golf clubs over in the rack?”

“Nothing to speak of,” she said.

Ah, there it was again, her non-answer that was as suspicious as hell. “You don’t have an early mock-up of the Excalibur or the Vorpal Sword in that rack somewhere, perchance?”

She watched him again, her dark eyes gazing steadily into his, and he felt like he was being sized up.

“Come on,” he said, smirking and trying to be charming. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Nicole bit her lip, her brain-gears grinding, and then she walked over to the wall of clubs.

Yes.She was hiding something.

He watched her delicate form, a lithe, curved silhouette in the dark recesses of the room, as she fiddled with the golf clubs in the bags on the stepped racks.

Her dark braid swung down her back as she twisted, looking in different golf bags and examining tags on clubs with the flashlight of her cell phone.

Wrapping her long, silken braid around his fist, controlling her, had damn near pushed him past his boundaries. He could have tormented her into a yes. He could have held out until she’d begged him to take her despite her not being on the BC pill.

But Kingston had boundless depths of self-control. In the gym, he pushed himself to carve his body into exactly the form he wanted, to optimize his VO2 max, and he ate to produce a minimal body-fat percentage. Not the dehydrated striations of bodybuilders or Method actors, but a strong, robust physique that could handle anything and would never fail him.

He could lift a car off someone if he had to and run a marathon distance to get help afterward.

But when Nicole had had him on the floor, when she’d been stripping his clothes while he’d been on his back like a turtle, he’d felt his control slipping away.