Читать книгу Consequence Of His Revenge - Dani Collins - Страница 11
ОглавлениеMAKING COOKIES WAS the perfect antidote to a night of self-pity and a morning of moving boxes. Besides, she had a few staples to use up and a neighbor to thank.
When the knock sounded, she expected Sharma from down the hall. She opened her door with a friendly smile, cutting off her greeting at, “Hell—”
Because it wasn’t Sharma. It was him.
Dante Gallo stood in her doorway like an avenging angel, his blue shirt dotted by the rain so it clung damply across his broad shoulders. He was all understated wealth and power, with what was probably real gold in his belt buckle. His tailored pants held a precision crease that broke over shiny shoes that had to be some custom-crafted Italian kind that were made from baby lambs or maybe actual babies.
Oh, she wanted to feel hatred and contempt toward him. Only that. She wanted to slam the door on him, but even as her simmering anger reignited, she faltered, caught in that magnetism he seemed to project. Prickling tension invaded her. Her nipples pinched, and that betraying heat rolled through her abdomen and spread through her inner thighs, tingling and racing.
Woman. Man. How did he make that visceral distinction so sharp and undeniable within her? Everything in her felt obvious and tight. Overwhelmed.
Claimed.
Hungry and needy and yearning.
She hated herself for it, was already suffering a kick of anguish even as his proprietary gaze skimmed down her, stripping what little she wore. The oven had heated up her tiny studio apartment to equatorial levels, so she had changed into a body-hugging tank and yoga shorts. Her abdomen tensed further under the lick of his gaze.
Stupidly, she looked for an answering thrust of need piercing his shell, but he seemed to feel nothing but contempt. It made that scan of his abrasive and painful, leaving her feeling obvious and callow. Defenseless and deeply disadvantaged.
Rejected, which left a burn of scorn from the back of her throat to the pit of her belly.
She should have slammed the door, but the timer went off, startling her. With emotion searing her veins, she made a flustered dive toward the oven and pulled out the last batch of cookies, leaving the tray on the stove top with a clatter.
Pulling off the mitt, she skimmed the heel of her hand across her brow. What was he even doing here? Yesterday’s interaction had been painful enough. She didn’t need him invading her private space, judging and disparaging.
She snapped the oven off and turned to see him shut the door as if she had invited him in. He stood behind the door, trapping her inside the horseshoe of her kitchenette.
Her heart began thudding even harder, not precisely in fear—which was frightening in itself. Excitement. How could part of her be thrilled to see him again? Forget the past. He was a cruel, callous person. Good. She hated him for that. Truly hated him.
She didn’t ask how he’d got in the building. She wasn’t the only one moving this weekend. The main door had been propped open the whole time she’d been loading boxes into Sharma’s car and taking them to the small storage locker she’d rented.
This felt like an ambush nonetheless. What other awful thing had he said to her yesterday? She set aside her oven mitts and said, “You’re not welcome on this property.”
He dragged his gaze back from scanning her near empty apartment. His eyes looked deeply set and a little bruised, but she didn’t imagine he’d lost sleep over her.
A weird tingle sizzled in her pelvis at the thought, though. She’d tossed and turned between fury and romantic fantasies, herself. He was ridiculously attractive, and this reaction of hers was so visceral. In her darkest hour, she hadn’t been able to resist wondering, if they didn’t hate each other, what would that look like?
Tangled sheets and damp skin, hot hands and fused mouths. Fused bodies? What would that feel like?
Not now. Definitely not him.
She folded her arms, hideously aware she only had a thin shelf bra in this top, and her breasts felt swollen and hard. Prickly. If she had had a bedroom, she would have shot into it and thrown on more clothes. Her chest was a little too well-endowed to get away with something so skimpy anywhere but alone in her apartment, especially when her nipples were standing up with arousal.
She became hyperaware of how little she wore. How close he stood and how small her space was. The studio apartment ought to feel bigger, stripped to its bare bones—a convertible sofa that had been here when she moved in, along with an oval coffee table, a standing lamp and a battered computer desk. All that remained of her own possessions was an open backpack and the sleeping bag she was taking to her brother’s. The emptied space felt airless and hollow, yet bursting with tension. Like her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked when he didn’t respond to her remark.
“My grandmother would like to thank you.”
Could he say it with more disdain?
“Is she...” She took in the signs of a rough night, suddenly gripped by worry. “I called the hospital. They don’t share much if you’re not family, but said she’d been released. I thought that meant she was recovered.”
“She’s fine.”
“Good.” She relaxed slightly. “What happened?”
“Asthma. She hasn’t had an attack in years so didn’t bring her inhaler.”
There was definitely something wrong with Cami because even though he took a tone that suggested speaking to her was beneath him, his accent and the subtle affection and concern in his tone made his talk of asthma and an inhaler sound ridiculously kind and endearing. Sexy.
The heat of the oven was cooking her brain.
“Well, I’m glad she’s all right. I didn’t realize she was your grandmother—”
“Didn’t you?”
What now? Her brain screeched like a needle scraping vinyl. It struck her that a tiny part of her had wondered if he was here to apologize. Or thank her himself. Wow. How incredibly deluded of her.
It made her ridiculous reaction to him all the more unbearable. Of all the things she hated about him, the way he kept making her feel such self-contempt was the worst. She normally liked herself, but he made her mistrust herself at an integral level. He said these awful things to her and she still felt drawn. It was deeply unnerving. Painful.
“No,” she pronounced in a voice jagged by her turmoil. “I didn’t. And yes, before you ask.” She held up a hand. “I would have helped her even if I’d known she was related to you. I don’t assume people are guilty by association and treat them like garbage for it.”
She had to avert her gaze as that came out of her mouth, never quite sure if she could truly claim her father was innocent. He had signed an admission of guilt, that much she knew, but had told her brother he was innocent. If he was guilty, was it her fault he’d stolen Dante’s proprietary work and sold it to a competitor? She just didn’t know. The not knowing tortured her every single day.
It made her uncertain right now, one bare foot folding over the other, when she wanted to sound confident as she stood her ground. Her culpability was reflected in her voice as she asked, “How could I know she was related to you? You don’t even have the same last name.”
“Sicilian women keep their names.” He frowned as though that was something everyone should know, then shrugged off her question. “I’m not on social media much, but she is. It wouldn’t take more than a single search of my name to pull up our connection.”
“It would take a desire to do so, and why would I want to?”
“You tell me. Why did your father target me in the first place? Money? Jealousy? Opportunity? You knew who I was yesterday. You must have looked me up at some point.”
Further guilt snaked through her belly. Had she been intrigued by him even then? Not that she had admitted to herself, but how could she not want to know more about a man who had such power over her and remained so out of reach?
“Maybe I did.” She tried a shrug and a negligent shake of her head, but only managed to loosen her ponytail. She grabbed at it, dragging his gaze to her breasts, raking her composure down another notch. Challenging him was a mistake. It was an exercise in bashing herself against bulletproof glass with no hope of reaching whatever was inside. She knew that from the few times she had been desperate enough to try getting in touch, to plead her case, only to be shut out.
At least she was in a better place these days, even though it was still a precarious one. Her brother was looking after himself now, if barely scraping by under student loans. Her being jobless and homeless didn’t mean he would be without food and shelter, as well. She actually had a place to go to now that her own life had imploded again.
That meant she didn’t have anything left to lose in standing up to Dante. She dropped her arms and lifted her chin.
“Are you accusing me of somehow causing your grandmother’s asthma so I could call for treatment?”
“No. But I think you recognized her and took advantage of an opportunity.”
“To do what? Be kind? Yes. Guilty!”
“To get on my good side.”
“You have one?”
He didn’t move, but his granite stillness was its own threat, one that made a dangerous heat coil through her middle and sent her pulse racing.
“You haven’t seen my bad one. Yet.” Then, in a surprisingly devastating move, he added, “Cami.”
She felt hammered to the floor then, all of her reverberating with the impact of his saying her name. A flash in his eyes told her he knew exactly how she was reacting, which made it all the more humiliating.
Sharma chose that moment to knock, forcing her to collect her bearings. Cami had to brush by him, which caused him to move farther into her apartment. Her whole body tingled with awareness, mind distracted by thoughts of his gaze touching her few things, casting aspersions over them. Why did she even care how little he thought of her?
“Hi,” Sharma said with a big smile.
Cami had actually forgotten between one moment and the next who she was expecting. Her own baffled, “Hi,” reflected how out of sorts she was, making Sharma give her a look of amused curiosity.
“Everything okay? Oh, you have company.” Intrigue lit her gaze, and she waved at Dante. “Hi. Are you our new neighbor?”
Cami caught back a choke. The Dante Gallos of the world didn’t live in places like this. He’d probably wipe his feet on the way out.
“He’s just visiting.” Flustered, she set a brown bag of cookies on a small box of dishes she wasn’t keeping, but that Sharma’s young family might find useful, and returned Sharma’s keys at the same time. “Thanks for the car today.”
“It was bad enough you were moving out of the building. You can’t leave town,” Sharma said, making a sad face as she accepted the box. “What happened with the job?”
“I’ll explain later.” Cami waved a hand to gloss past the question, not willing to get into it with the demigod of wrath looming behind her, skewering her so hard with his bronze laser vision she felt it like a pin in her back. She was a butterfly, squirming under his concentrated study, caught and dying for nothing because her plain brown wings wouldn’t even hold his attention for long.
Sharma’s gaze slid over to him and back as if she knew Dante had something to do with it. “Okay, well, nice to meet you.” She waved at Dante, then said to Cami, “Gotta run to get Milly, but say goodbye before you leave.”
“I will.”
As she closed the door, Cami ran through all the should-have-saids she’d conjured last night, as she had replayed her interchange with Dante in his office. Through it all, she had wished she could go back and change a decade’s worth of history, all to no avail.
No matter what threats he was making, however, she knew this was a chance to salvage something. To appeal to whatever reasonable side he might possess. Maybe. Or not. Perhaps talking to him would make matters worse.
Still, she had to make him see she was trying to make amends and hopefully ease this grudge he had. It was killing her on every level; it really was.
* * *
As Dante waited out Cami Fagan’s chat with her neighbor, his brain was still clattering with all the train cars that had derailed and piled up, one after another, starting with the news her father was dead—which had been strangely jarring.
Initially, before their association had gone so very wrong, he’d looked on Stephen Fagan as a sort of mentor. Dante’s grandfather had been a devoted surrogate after Dante’s father died, and an excellent businessman willing to bet on his grandson, but he hadn’t had the passion for electronics that Dante possessed.
He’d found that in Stephen, which was why he had trusted him so implicitly and felt so betrayed by his crime. Maybe he’d even believed, in the back of his mind, that one day he would have an explanation from the man he’d thought of as a friend. Damaging as the financial loss had been, the real cost had been his faith in his own judgment. How had he been so blind? Something in him had always longed for a chance to hear Stephen’s side of it, to understand why he would do something so cold when Dante had thought they were friends.
Hearing Stephen was dead had been... Well, it hadn’t been good, despite his claim otherwise. It had been painful, stirring up the other more devastating loss he’d suffered back then. All the losses that had come at once.
As he’d been processing that he would never get answers from Stephen, someone had knocked insistently, informing him his grandmother was unwell. Rushing outside, what had he found?
Cami.
In the confusion, she’d slipped away, but she’d stayed on his mind all the while his grandmother was treated. The moment she had recovered, his grandmother became adamant that she thank the young woman who had helped her.
Back when she’d been grieving the loss of her husband, Dante hadn’t dared make things worse by revealing how he’d put the family’s security in jeopardy. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t pressed charges against Stephen—to keep his grandmother and the rest of the family from knowing the extent of their financial woes. He hadn’t wanted anyone worrying more than they already were.
Instead, with the help of his cousin, he’d worked like a slave to bring them back from the brink.
That silence meant Noni didn’t understand why he was so skeptical of Cami’s altruism. He didn’t want to tell her he would rather wring Cami’s neck than buy her a meal, but he wasn’t about to let his grandmother go hunting all over town for her good Samaritan, possibly collapsing again. He also sure as hell wasn’t going to give Cami a chance to be alone with his grandmother again. Who knew what damage would be done this time?
So, after a restless night and a day of putting it off, he’d looked up her address from her CV and had come here. He’d walked up the stairs in this very dated building, wondering what sort of debts her father had paid off since he clearly hadn’t left much for his daughter, and knocked.
Then Smash! She had opened the door, plunging him into a blur of pale pink top that scooped low enough to reveal the upper swells of her breasts and thin enough her nipples pressed enticingly against it. Her red shorts were outright criminal, emphasizing her firm thighs and painting over her mound in a way that made his palm itch to cup there. The bright color stopped mere inches below that, covering the top end of a thin white scar that scored down past her knee.
He’d barely processed the old injury when she whirled away in response to a buzzer. The fabric of her shorts held a tight grip on her ass as she turned and bent to retrieve something from the oven, making his mouth water and his libido rush to readiness.
He had spent the night mentally flagellating himself for being attracted to her at all, let alone so intensely. Cami was beyond off-limits. She was a hard No. Whatever he thought he might have seen in the first seconds of their meeting had been calculated on her part. Had to have been.
She had known who he was.
And now he knew who she was, so how could he be physically attracted to someone who should repel him? It was untenable.
Yet the stir in his groin refused to abate.
She turned from closing the front door, and her wholesome prettiness was an affront. A lie. He curled his fist and tried not to react when she crossed her arms again, plumping that ample bosom of hers in a most alluring way. Deliberately?
“I don’t know how to convince you that I had no ulterior motive yesterday, but I didn’t.” Her lips remained slightly parted, as though she wanted to say more but was waiting to see how he reacted first.
“You can’t. She wants you to come to the hotel anyway. To thank you. Not the Tabor. The one where we’re staying.”
Surprise flickered across her face, then wariness. “And you’re here to intimidate me all over again? Tell me not to go anywhere near her?”
“I’m here to drive you.” Was she intimidated? She wasn’t acting like it. “But it’s true I don’t want you near her. That’s why I’ll supervise.”
“Ha. Fun as that sounds—” She cut herself off with a choked laugh. Her ironic smile invited him to join in the joke, then faded when he didn’t.
Something like hurt might have moved behind her eyes, but she disguised it with a sweep of her lashes, leaving him frustrated that he couldn’t read her as easily as he wanted to.
She moved into the kitchen to transfer the last batch of cookies onto the cooling rack. “Too bad you didn’t put it off until Monday. I would have been gone. Tell her I’ve left town.”
He moved to stand on the other side of the breakfast bar, watching her.
Such a domestic act, baking cookies. This didn’t fit at all with the image he’d built in his mind of her family living high off his hard work and innovation. Nothing about her fit into the boxes he’d drawn for Fagans and women, potential hires or people who dined with his family. Nothing except...
“Unlike you, I don’t lie, especially to people I care about.”
“Boy, you love to get your little digs in, don’t you? When did I lie to you?”
When she’d mentioned he was being paid back, for starters, but, “Forget it. I’m not here to rehash the past. I’ve moved on.” Begrudgingly and with a dark rage still livid within him.
“Really,” she scoffed in a voice that held a husk. Was it naturally there? An emotional reaction to his accusation? Or put there to entice him? “Is that why you fired me without even giving me a chance? Is that why you said it was ‘good’ that my father is dead? My mother died in the same crash. Do you want to tell me how happy you are to hear that news?” The same emotive crack as yesterday charged her tone now, and her eyes gleamed with old agony.
He wanted to write her off as melodramatic, make some kind of sharp comeback so she wouldn’t think she could get away with dressing him down, but his chest tightened. Whatever else had happened, losing one’s parents was a blow. He couldn’t dismiss that so pitilessly.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he allowed, finding his gaze dropping to the scar etched onto her collarbone. She had that longer one on her leg, too. Had she been in the accident? He tried to recall what he had known about Stephen Fagan’s family, but came up with a vague recollection of a wife and a forgotten number of children.
Why did he find the idea of her being injured so disturbing? Everything about this woman put him on uneven ground. He hated it. There was already a large dose of humiliation attached to her father’s betrayal. He’d been soaked in grief over losing his grandfather, but guilt, as well. The old man had loved him. Indulged him. And Dante had failed so very badly, even contributing to his grandfather’s death with his mistake.
An acrid lump of self-blame still burned black and hot within him. He had had to take that smoldering coal in hand, shape and harden it with an implacable grip, and pull himself into the future upon it.
Since then, nothing happened without his will or permission. He was ruled by sound judgment, not his libido or his temper. Certainly not his personal desires. Yet anger had got the better of him yesterday. She had. And emotion was threatening to take him over again today, especially when she muttered, “No. You shouldn’t have.”
The utter gall of her was mind-blowing.
She clattered the cookie sheet and spatula into the sink. Her ponytail was coming loose, allowing strands of rich mink and subtle caramel with tiny streaks of ash to fall around her face. It gave her a delicate air that he had to consciously remind himself was a mirage. That vestige of grief in her expression might be real, but the flicker of helplessness was not. Fagans landed on their feet.
“Look,” he said, more on edge than he liked. “Helping my grandmother was a nice gesture, but I’m not giving you back that job, if that’s what you were after.”
She lifted her head. “It was a coincidence!” She dropped some cookies into a brown paper bag and offered it to him. “Here. Tell her I’m glad she’s feeling better.” Her hand tremored.
He ignored the offering. “She wants you to come for dinner.”
“I have plans.” A blatant lie. She set the bag on the counter between them.
“I’m not letting you hold this over me. Or skirt around me. Put on a dress and let’s get it over with.”
“I’ve packed all my dresses.”
“Is that your way of asking me to buy you a new one?” He had played that game a lot and couldn’t decide if it grated that she was trying it. Under the right circumstances, he enjoyed spoiling a woman. Cami’s heart-shaped ass in a narrow skirt with a slit that showed off her legs—
“No,” she said flatly, yanking him back from a fantasy that shouldn’t even be happening. A pang of something seemed to torture her brow. Insulted? Please.
“What do you want, then? Because clearly you’re holding out for something.” He had to remember that.
“And you’re clearly paranoid. Actually, you know what I want?” Her hand slapped the edge of the sink. “I want you to admit you’ve been receiving my payments.”
“What payments?”
“Are you that rich you don’t even notice?” She shoved out of the kitchen and whisked by him to the rickety looking desk, then pulled up short as she started to open a drawer. She slammed it shut again. “I forgot. It’s not here. His name is, like, Bernardo something. It’s Italian.”
“What is?”
“The letter! The one that proves I’ve been paying you back.” She frowned with distraction, biting at her bottom lip in a way that drew his thoughts to doing the same. “My brother has the file, though. He took it last fall.”
“Convenient.”
“God, you’re arrogant.”
He shrugged, having heard that before. Recovering his belief in himself had been the hardest part of all. His ego had taken a direct hit after misjudging her father. He’d questioned himself, his instincts and his intelligence, which almost crippled him as he faced the Herculean task of recovery. In the end, he had no choice but to trust his gut above anyone else and get on with the work. He would have been dead in the water otherwise.
He refused to go back to self-doubts. He faced everything head-on and dealt with it as expediently as possible. “Let’s get past the games. I know you have a hidden agenda. Speak frankly.”
“I don’t! I’m exactly what I look like. I applied for a job for which I am fully qualified. You came along with your sword of retaliation and cut me off at the knees. Then I was nice to a little old lady who happens to be your grandmother. Now I have to move and get back on my feet. Again.”
Her hand flung out with exasperation as she spoke. She smelled like the cinnamon and vanilla she’d been baking with, sweet and homespun. All smoke and mirrors.
“How was I supposed to know you would buy the Tabor when I interviewed six months ago? I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you. You’re the one out to get me.” She managed to sound quite persecuted.
He shook his head, amazed. “You look like you’re telling the truth, but so did your father. It’s quite a family talent, I have to say.” Then, because he was so damned tempted to reach out and touch her, he neutralized that secret weapon of hers. He gave her luscious figure a scathing once-over and said, “Of course, he didn’t work the additional diversions you employ.”
Her jaw dropped open with affront, but her gaze took a skitter around the room. She blushed, seeming disconcerted. Caught out, even. “I’m not—You showed up here unannounced! As if I’d throw myself at you.”
“No?” He was needling her, determined to maintain the upper hand, but that tiny word seemed to flick a switch.
She flung back her hair to glare at him. “You’re the last man on earth I’d want anything to do with!”
She faltered as she said it and tried to give him a scathing once-over, but her lashes quivered. He could tell by the way they moved that her gaze traversed his torso and down to the muscles in his abdomen. His stomach tightened with the rest of him. In those charged seconds, he grew so hot, his clothes should have incinerated off his body.
When she brought her gaze back in a flash of defiance, there was a glow of speculation in their depths. The light shifted, or, more accurately, the fog of animosity in her eyes dissolved into a mist of desire.
The air shimmered, hot and oppressive between them. All an act, he reminded himself, but, What the hell. He ought to get something.
* * *
“If you want to talk about compensation, I’m listening.” He suddenly seemed really close. His voice was like whiskey-soaked velvet.
“What?” She took a step back, reeling from the way her body was betraying her. She was trying to rebuff him, but everything about him overwhelmed her senses.
She came up against the wall and he flattened his hands on either side of her head, not touching her, but caging her. She set her hands on his chest, alarmed then intrigued by the layers of heat and strength that pressed into her fingertips. He was pure vitality, enticing her hands to splay and move in a small stroke of curiosity that quickly edged toward greed.
How did he disarm her so quickly? How had they even wound up like this? She could feel his sharp nipples stabbing into the heels of her palms and it pleased her. Excited her. She wanted to run her hands over his chest and onto his lower back, exploring everywhere.
She had to quell a whimper of helplessness. This desire was terrifying and exhilarating at once. Deadly, yet impossible to ignore.
His pupils swallowed all the color in his eyes, drawing her into the darkest unknown.
“What are you offering?” His arousal was so tangible in his voice, it felt like a caress from her shoulder down her chest. A sweep of bumps rose on her skin and her breasts grew heavy and swollen.
“Cold?” The corners of his mouth deepened and she couldn’t read his eyes.
This was bizarre and damning, yet compelling. She felt as though a drug had been released in her system that made her languid and euphoric. She didn’t move away. Couldn’t. Her breaths moved unevenly, and she could swear she felt the brush of his erection against her.
His muscles were like iron. Rather than shoving him away, she dug her fingers into flesh that had no give, exploring against her own willpower. How could the inherent strength in him, that wasn’t even being exerted against her, make her so weak?
He was doing something to her, though. It was a force that gripped her without effort. He wasn’t even touching her. She was the one touching him, yet she couldn’t escape. Couldn’t make her body push him away. She stood there and watched his face draw closer, filling her vision. She waited, lips parting, mind blank, until his mouth touched hers. Hot.
Why she held still for his kiss, she didn’t know. It was beyond stupid, yet she let it happen, wanting to know something she couldn’t even define. She tensed, maybe expecting punishment. Cruelty, even. He wasn’t a kind man. She already knew that.
He was cruel as he kissed her, but in a way she couldn’t have anticipated. He used gentleness to tease her lips into opening wide, then slowly worked their mouths into a firmer fit, angling and sinking closer, waiting until she was moving her mouth against his before he settled in to fully plunder.
A deep quiver rang through her. Recognition. As though she’d been waiting all her life for this. Her body gave a small shudder and sighed in relief. This one.
That should have scared the hell out of her, but she was so entranced by the sense of discovery, by the flood of heat and need, she let the kiss continue. She let it draw out, going on and on while she sank deeper and deeper into sweet pleasure.
She had never progressed much further than a kiss. Had never wanted to. Not like this. This kiss was beyond anything she’d ever known. It was right. It picked up all the pieces of herself she’d left scattered and broken and fit them together again, making her feel whole and alive. Omnipotent.
Worldly and womanly and exalted.
Her fingers moved, testing the firmness of his pecs, then slid in a blatant caress across the flex of his muscles, squeezing and shaping, tracing the ridges of his ribs and flowing to the hollow of his spine.
He growled and dropped his hands to her waist, stroked her hips in a sweeping circle of his big hands, then he cruised his palms up to cup her breasts, thumbs raking across her nipples. The twin sensation was so sharp and electric, she bucked.
He settled the weight of his hips against hers, pinning her to the wall, forcing her to take that continued gentle torture of her nipples. Heat plunged into her loins, and there was no denying what she felt there. She was screamingly aware of the stiffness of his arousal against her. His thighs were hard and hot, pressing hers to open so her mound was firmly in contact with that hard, hard shape. She throbbed under the pressure of him against her so intimately. When had she ever wanted something so earthy and base? Never. Not before this moment and this man who kissed her to the point she stopped thinking.
His thumbs circled and teased with an expertise that made her wriggle, the acute stimulation lifting her hips into his. More. That’s all she could think as she kept kissing him, suffocating, but unwilling to stop. Keep doing that. I want more.
The way they were consuming each other was blatant and more primal than anything she’d ever known. Her arms lifted to circle behind his neck, arching her breasts into his relentless hands. He pinched her nipples and she whimpered at the pleasure-pain, legs growing weak and pliant under the pressure of his. She stroked her fingers through his hair, luxuriating in the feel of the short, crispy strands, before drawing his head down to increase the pressure of his kiss to the point of near pain. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.
His tongue thrust in and her hips ground against his, seeking the most acute sensations she could find. Nothing had ever made her act so animalistic. That’s why she’d never gone all the way. She’d never been compelled to by her own body, but oh, the way he was massaging her breasts was driving her crazy. She was so aroused, she actually mewled with loss when he lifted his head and dragged his hands down to her hips.
He watched her as he held her still for the blatant, deliberate thrust of his hard sex against hers. The flush on his face was barbaric, dark and satisfied as she gasped and met his erotic movement with a wanton, inviting rock of her own. A moan escaped her lips as she climbed ever higher on the steps of arousal toward the precipice of bliss.
Her hands clenched in his shirt and she pressed her head into the wall, giving up her lower half to his, inhibition gone. She had to bite her lip against groaning even louder as he rubbed against the bundle of nerves that was barely protected by the thin fabric of her yoga shorts. Her eyes fluttered closed and she held her breath, quivering with tension, so close—
With a hiss, his hands hardened on her hip bones before he thrust her back into the wall, releasing her to step away.
Stunned, she scrambled for purchase on the empty wall, panting as she fought to remain standing. Her body screamed for his, making this rejection the height of cruelty.
His cheek ticked, but he didn’t look nearly as shattered as she felt. He was aroused, but held a cynical gleam in his eye that cut her to the bone.
“We’ll finish talking about that later. Get dressed. Comb your hair. We’re running late.”
“What?” Her knees threatened to buckle.
If she thought he sounded strained, or as though he balanced on a razor’s edge of his own, the impression evaporated as he smiled, merciless and self-assured. The peaks and valleys in his face stood out in sharp relief, light and dark. Beautiful and indifferent.
“Since the compensation you’re offering comes with such a high rate of interest—” the corner of his mouth curled at his own pun “—I’ll give you a chance to make your case. But my grandmother is expecting us.” He glanced at the gold watch on his wrist, the face black and numberless, with only two needle arms. “We need to leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You want to finish talking now?” His withering inflection told her they wouldn’t be using their mouths for words.
