Zeth shoots me a surprised look. I am loving the slow, glacial melt that’s taking place within him. He’s a fool if he thinks he’s hidden it from me. And the fact he’s letting himself go around me more and more these days means I get to witness an entirely new range of emotions on his face. Surprise is a cute one. He looks kind of innocent with those big brown eyes of his growing wider, though the words that come out of his mouth next are far from it.
“You’re too smart for your own good, angry girl. Now you know our little secret, you’re going to have to be punished.”
My toes curl inside my shoes. He’s joking again. I think he’s joking. He opens the door, slings his duffel inside, along with our two other bags, and then turns to face me in the corridor. He pulls his hood up and begins to pace toward me. “When people come up here, Sloane, one of them always gives the other an option.”
Oh, shit.
With his face drawn into shadow in that hood…
With that dark, predatory look in his eyes…
With the way he prowls toward me like he’s hungry. So hungry…
My body comes alive.
“They might take the person by the hand,” Zeth rumbles, deep in his chest. He takes hold of my hand. “And they might press that person up against the wall.” I’m already walking backward, my breath fighting in and out of my lungs in short, heady bursts. My back hits the wall, and Zeth’s powerful body leans up against mine, trapping me. “And they might get up nice and close…”
He’s about as close as he can get. His mouth is less than an inch from mine. I want…no I need him to kiss me. I need it so bad. Zeth licks his lips, and it’s not a teasing motion. I can see it in his eyes—he wants to kiss me, too.
“Fuck, Zeth.” I mouth the words. I have no breath to spare for sound. Zeth smiles a little. The intense way he’s studying me—his eyes traveling from my own to my mouth, to my neck and back again—gives me the impression he’s fascinated by what he’s seeing. If that’s the case, then it makes two of us.
“And that person might say to the other person,” he whispers, “pick your poison, angry girl.” His tongue flicks out and licks at my top lip, sending a chorus of vibrations humming through my body. My nipples are so hard, they’ve started to ache. God, this is so messed up. I have to have him.
“What—what might a person’s options be?” I’m barely in control anymore. My hands are sweating, desperate to take hold of him. Zeth stares me down for one long second, and then he carefully lowers his mouth, barely touching his full lips to mine.
“Pleasure,” he whispers. There’s a ball of heat twisting into a burning knot in my stomach. That heats explodes into an inferno, burning up inside me when he takes my lip in between his teeth and tugs, hard. The surprise of the sensation makes me gasp. “Or…pain,” Zeth tells me.
My head is spinning. From the need in Zeth’s eyes, I know this isn’t a game. This isn’t a theoretic conversation. I am meant to choose now, and I know which option Zeth wants me to pick. For once, there’s not a shadow of doubt in my mind. I want what he wants.
“Pain, Zeth. I want the pain.”
Zeth growls low in the back of his throat. There’s no way he’s holding himself back. Adrenalin zips through me as he crashes his body into mine, hands reaching under my thighs and hoisting me off the ground. I wrap myself around him—arms, legs. My heart. I wrap my heart around him as I cling on for dear life. He kisses me, his lips finding mine, and I don’t need to breathe anymore. His mouth on mine is all I need. His hands holding me tight is all I need. Just him. He is everything.
“Fuck, Sloane, you turn me inside out,” he murmurs, his tongue licking at me again, tasting me. I don’t know whether his statement is a good or a bad thing, but from the size of his hard-on, I’m guessing good. Hoping. He carries me into the apartment, slamming the door behind him. I don’t register a single element of my surroundings. Those brown eyes, searching mine, peering deep into me, are the only thing I see. We move from the main room to another, smaller room—a bedroom—and Zeth throws me down on the bed. Our hands frantically scrabble at each other’s clothing. This—our joint desperation, to see, feel, taste, touch each other—makes this different to any other time we’ve been together. We’re coming to this as equals, and for once I feel like Zeth is as out of control as I am.
That doesn’t last long of course. He tears himself away from me and rips down his jeans, kicking them off with a dark, seductive look on his face. The excruciatingly beautiful man in front of me, naked as the day he was born, then takes hold of my ankle, lifts my leg, and kisses me on the arch of my foot. “Wait here,” he tells me. And then he disappears out the door.
I know where he’s going. I know what he’s going to come back with. My blood is charging in my veins, lighting me up. He left me in my bra and panties, but I don’t want to remove them myself. I want him to take them from me, the same way he takes everything else: roughly. He’s not gone long enough for me to regulate my breathing. My chest is still heaving when Zeth reappears in the doorway with his black duffel bag held tightly in one hand.