I propped myself up on my elbow. “Yes,” I said. “I was.”
“Would you have preferred me to have you removed from the party? To have never touched you? Never put my tongue on your cunt, my hands on your breasts? Would you rather I’d never made you come, and never felt you explode in my arms?”
“No,” I whispered, my body hot and needy.
“Or what about the waiter? Do you regret that? Sitting bold and naked and open and turned on, so desperately aroused, not because of him but because you knew that watching you made me hard?”
I wanted to lie. So help me, I did.
But I couldn’t bring it to my lips. “No.”
“I know it,” he said simply. “I know you.”
I tilted my head to him. “Tyler,” I said, not even certain what I wanted, what I was asking. I simply needed the sound of his name on my lips as some sort of proof that this was real.
“Shhh.” He gently pressed his fingertip to my lip. “I started out just watching you. I must have watched the damn security video a dozen times. Then at the party. I couldn’t take my eyes off you, even though I knew what you were. What you are.”
He stroked me gently, and I closed my eyes, rolling on a wave of pleasure so intense I thought I would surely drown in it. “By everything I know, you are not the woman that I should want,” he said, as he trailed his finger over the wound on my hip. “Detective Sloane Watson, with just over a week of medical leave remaining. A cop, of all things. And I find myself in the unexpected position of wanting you desperately. Of wanting to stoke this fire that rages between us, hot and wild and so very combustible.”
He traced his finger along my collarbone, then over my side, along the curve of my waist, following my silhouette all the way to my hip.
“I want to burn with you, Detective. And, Sloane, you should know that I make it a point to get what I want.”
He smiled at me, slow and easy and full of confidence. “So this is the deal I’m offering you. While you’re on medical leave, you’ll dance at Destiny, you’ll have free access to the club. But during that time, you are mine.”
“Yours?” I repeated.
“Completely,” he said. “With everything that entails. To pleasure. To punish. To tend. I won’t hurt you and I won’t scare you. But I will use you,” he added, as he slipped his hand between my legs and slid two fingers inside me. “For my pleasure and for yours.”
I squeezed my legs around his hand, my body clenching tight, drawing him in farther.
“Agree, and you can dance at Destiny. Say no, and you walk away tonight.”
“I’m at a disadvantage here. I’m naked. Your fingers are inside me.”
“You’re the one who took off your clothes, Sloane. That was your move, remember? I’m only playing the game. And now it’s checkmate.”
He thrust deeper inside me, and as he did, he leaned forward to lightly bite my breast. I gasped in surprise, but also in pleasure.
“I know you like risk,” he said, and there was seduction in his voice. “You like excitement. And, my darling detective, you like the way I make you feel.”
I licked my lips. After what I’d done with him, I could hardly argue.
“You came freely to my room. You stripped when I told you to. You stood naked in a window while I touched you.” His voice, low and hot, swirled around me, teasing and tempting. “And tonight, you took off your clothes in front of other men, but you thought of me.”