Lily hooted. “Adjust something? You’re fucking stupid if you think that’s why he called. I’m not the woman in his life right now. You are. I heard the whispers, but now I know. Go out with Ryan Hamilton, sure, but get fucked in Irresistible lingerie, because that’s what gets him off. He’s not fucking any of us. He’s fucking you, and don’t think I won’t tell everyone how you came out here when he snapped his fingers.”
The storm surged under Simone’s skin, white-hot and powerful enough to drive her forward a step. Her hair seemed to crackle on her head, and fury coursed through her veins, tightening muscles, driving her to the brink. She could see Ryan standing at the end of the hallway that seemed to lead straight into the storm. He had a glass with amber liquid in it, no ice, and he leaned against the wall, dressed in a suit she recognized with a single glance as Martin Greenfield. The shirt would be custom-made as well, as were the shoes. He was wearing the wolf’s clothes, and they looked utterly wrong on him.
“Arrêtez! C’est assez!” she snapped. “Enough,” she repeated, forcing herself back into English. “Have you forgotten who I am? Who my brother is? My father? How easily I can destroy you? You lie. If I hear one rumor to that effect, even a whisper of a hint of gossip, I will ensure you don’t walk through the doors of any showroom in the world.”
Her words were barely audible under the rumbling thunder, the pitch and crash of the wind, the rain pattering more heavily on the water, the deck, the windows. Lily leaned forward to hear Simone, but whether she heard her or simply understood the threat on her face, the response was the same. She spun on her heel, shoved past Ryan, and disappeared up the stairs.
Ryan stared at her. She stared at him, her stomach surging, her pulse pounding at her temples and in her throat. Lightning cracked, splitting the sky over the ocean, visible in the massive wall of windows at the back of the house. Lily tumbled down the stairs in a clatter of heels and a whirl of knees and elbows and hair, an overnight bag the twin of Simone’s bumping against her legs. Without a word she shoved past Simone and climbed into the waiting SUV, leaving Simone alone with Ryan.
Simone stepped into the house. The wind caught the door, or that was her excuse, because it slammed hard enough to rattle the framed pictures of seashells lining the hallway to the main room. She dropped the bag, stalked up to Ryan, and shoved him as hard as she could, hard enough to rock him back a step. He held on to the whiskey, though.
Until she shoved him again, putting her weight into it. Glass shattered on the slate at her feet, and the scent of good whiskey and wrath filled her nostrils. She reached for him, not aware of what she intended to do, just knowing that wringing his neck was entirely possible.
Ryan gripped her wrists, gave her a little shake. “Stop this.”
She jerked free and went for him again, and this time she got one hand fisted in the collar of his shirt and the other in the too-loose fabric at his side. In the functioning part of her brain she registered his ribs under his skin, not padded with a healthy layer of fat or even a gym-toned muscle. She could move him only because he was skin and bone.
Then she kissed him. She bore him back against the wall and kissed him hard, kept him there with the weight of her body and her fury that was never really anger but something else, darker, deeper, even more primitive. Lust. Blood bloomed in her mouth from the impact of lips and teeth, and it tasted so good. She wanted to lick it from her mouth and his, and snarl.
For a split second he remained frozen, his hands tense in the air beside her shoulders, as if he wouldn’t let himself touch her, not even with sex and violence in the air, not even with their bodies plastered together from shoulders to calves. Then Simone parted her lips and licked the seam of his mouth, deft, fleeting, taunting. His hands slid into her hair to curve around her skull and hold her while he opened his mouth and hooked one ankle around her calf to pull her close.
Oh, he’d been holding back on her. All the carefully phrased descriptions, the dialogue, the way he set the scene, were all modest, clumsily described. His mouth was deft, seductive, opening under hers, his tongue licking inside, then retreating, drawing her deeper and deeper into him. This was lust, fueled by chemistry and deceit and anger, hot enough to burn each other to ash.