I’m mute, desperately trapping his voice in my ears, it’s so beautiful.
“You’re Melanie Meyers Dean,” he says in that low, deeply tender voice, “The couple that just left are your parents. You’re a lovely twenty-five-year-old decorator. You love wearing three colors at the same time. You love things that are bad for you, you love laughing, and you love . . .”
You, my mind screams.
He’s fallen silent, as if he has no words for me, raking his eyes over my face as if he hasn’t had a drop to drink and I’m an oasis in his desert.
“Melanie,” he rasps, searching my face for any sign of recognition, reaching out one hand, but then thinking better of it and easing it away. “I’m Greyson King and I’m your man.”
He waits in silence, flexing that hand into a fist at his side as though that’s enough to keep him from touching me. A huge lump of emotion gathers in my throat, and as we keep staring at each other, he looks more and more desperate. He takes his shirt out of the waistband of his slacks and slides my hand underneath, over his smooth, warm chest, past his scar, to his nipple ring. I feel his skin, his warmth, seeping into me, the beat of his heart against my palm. It beats as fast as mine, and streams of tears streak down my cheeks.
Tears of joy.
Of feeling safe, of not feeling alone, as all the love I feel for him floods me.
“Greyson,” I sob.
A breath shudders out of him as if he’d been holding it in all this time, then he brushes my eyelids with his lips. “Do you remember me? Do you, princess? Do you know what I do? Who I am? What you mean to me?”
Thoughts jumble in my head, one after the other. Me running away from him. Me running toward him. Me, and him.
Me and HIM.
Black gloves . . . diamond necklace . . . kisses in the dark . . . almost-there smile . . .
I feel unexpectedly weak, but not even this weakness can stop me from slowly sliding my hands up to his chest, his thick neck, his dark, stubbled jaw as I look into his eyes, eyes looking at me the way they’ve looked at me from the beginning.
The way Greyson King looks at Melanie.
“Remember you?” I croak. “I came back for you.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
* * *
PERFECT
Melanie
It’s the perfect night for a party.
The perfect night for a kiss.
The perfect, most perfect night to be in love.
I’m sitting on a thick limestone terrace railing, my dress hiked up to my waist so that Greyson can wedge his body in between my thighs.
He thumbs my nipple, and I try to keep from moaning as I visually devour him before me—his body clad in a black suit, his hair mussed by my hands, his lips a little red with my lipstick. He stares back at me as he slides his large, warm hand up my thigh and tugs off my panties. I’m breathless as he tucks them inside the pocket of his suit jacket, his hand coming back to cup my sex while the other plays with my aching nipple.
Can you die of pleasure?
Can you die of the way your boyfriend looks and looks and looks at you?
I am. Crazy. About this man.
I would do anything for this man.
And I’ve been waiting for and fantasizing this moment for months.
Behind him, I can see the party getting under way—a party he organized to celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday, an event well over three months old. But trivialities like that don’t matter to a man like Greyson King.
What matters is getting his way.
And from the brand-new Harry Winston diamond necklace dangling from my throat, to the lavish party behind us, to the glimmer in his eyes that tells me almost to the last detail what he plans to do to me tonight, there is no doubt in my mind my boyfriend is getting his way tonight.
And all I can think is, It’s about fucking time.
I’m so anxious that I’m not sure I can wait for us to find our way to our bed.
Maybe if I unzip his pants and get him close enough to ride him . . .
But now hundreds of our friends mingle inside the Ceres Ballroom. These people include my boss and coworkers, my parents, my friends, and Greyson’s old and new business partners. The old ones are the dangerous ones who work for him at the Underground fighting circuit. The newer ones comprise the committee of his King Yacht Corporation he’s founded in honor of his mother.
Anyone could step outside and see us. Him standing before me in his elegant suit, and me . . . my blow-dried hair now in disarray as it flaps in the wind, my body shivering under his hands and his lips, and the way his beautiful hazel eyes look at me.
“Greyson . . .” I say, a plea. He uses his body to shield me from the ballroom doors, towering over me as he ducks so he can trails his lips over my jaw. “You look delectable, Melanie, you taste delectable. Who is it that you’re panting for?”
I grip his shoulders to brace myself from the delightful dizziness taking over me. “Who do you think?”
“I’ve been waiting for this for months, princess. Months.” He tweaks my nipple in his big hand and lifts the swell of my breast to his lips, covering the peak with his mouth.
His tongue rubs against the hard little point, and I die. I die as he suckles, gently first, then harder, causing a rush of desire to shudder down my spine.
I know Greyson is not a man used to loving. I don’t think he’s ever loved another human being since his mother got taken away from him over a decade ago. A decade of feeling nothing . . . until he met me.
He’s hungry now. I have felt his hunger building in him as our return to Seattle approached and my release from the hospital finally happened. He’s hungry and male enough to not give a shit about anything but this hunger of his tonight; for without thought or hesitation, he tugs down the sleeve of my dress to bare my breasts and moves to suck on my other breast. Quaking in a mass of lust, I grab his thick, copper-streaked hair and pull his head up so his lips meet mine. “Kiss me,” I groan.