And neither can I. Therein lies the problem, but I can’t stop myself from touching her, caressing a path up her sides and skimming the lush curves of her breasts. That I can’t stop myself is a red flag, a sign I am not myself, and that I have no business doing this. But I watch Crystal’s lashes flutter and her lips, those damn lips I want to taste, part. To possess this woman is like a drug I have to have. And I do have to have her.
Desire overcomes me, and it’s a welcome replacement for what I’ve felt these past few days. Without conscious thought, I lace my fingers into the silky strands of her hair, and my mouth closes down on hers. The taste of her explodes on my tongue—addictive, sweet, with a hint of coffee. Her hands are all over me, her touch feeding the hunger in me, and I don’t know why I don’t stop her. Or maybe I do. Control means thinking, and thinking is more dangerous than this woman. Thinking is making me crazy, it’s making me doubt, it’s making me question all that I am or ever have been.
My hands hug her backside and I pull her hard against my thick erection. She moans, a seductive, wanton sound, and I am instantly harder, hotter. I am lost in her, in kissing her, in touching her, and I can feel how lost she is, too. I want her like I’ve never wanted anyone. She answers an invisible something inside me, and I don’t know why or how.
She shrugs out of her jacket and I keep kissing her, hungering for more of her and ready to have her naked, to feel her soft skin next to mine. To bury myself in her and have her wet heat wrapped about my cock, taking me away to some oblivion that will never last long enough. My hands work her shirt up from her sides, my fingers finding her bra and shoving down the lace to tug at her nipples. She makes a tormented sound, tears her mouth from mine, and our eyes collide.
And holy hell—I don’t know why, but the impact punches me in the chest again. For a moment we’re frozen, looking at each other, and I’m not sure what I feel. It’s unfamiliar, like everything this woman does to me. And the very fact that I crave more of it tells me I’m in trouble. I don’t have control. She has it.
Crystal moves first, tugging her shirt over her head, and the broken connection of our stare is just enough to shake some clarity back into my mind. I step back and sit on the bed to watch her undress. I study every inch of her with a penetrating boldness that would make most women nervous. Not Crystal. She watches me watch her—desire, even challenge, in the depths of her stare as she unhooks her bra, as if she’s telling me she knows what I’m trying to do. She knows I’m trying to rattle her, and it won’t work.
Just when I’m about to order her to caress her breasts, her hands close around them, shoving them together, her thumbs moving over her nipples. My cock pulses at the sight of her, all wanton and eager to please. Or maybe she doesn’t want to please me. Maybe she wants to control me with her body. It is not a pleasing thought. She’s everything I don’t like in a woman, and yet I can’t take my eyes off her.
My gaze strokes over her body, watching her take off the remainder of her clothes. I’m not even attracted to blondes, usually. Yet every inch of her—from her pale hair to her pale skin, to the pale neatly trimmed V of her body—arouses me and spawns a million fantasies of what I could to do her if I had more than one night.
In some far part of my mind, I grapple to be myself, to take charge. I need to control this woman before she does what no other woman has, and truly controls me.
As if she wants to prove she can do that and more, she drops to her knees in front of me, her hands sliding up my thighs. “I’ve thought about”—she runs her teeth over her bottom lip—“what it would be like to make you—”
I don’t let her finish the sentence. Warning bells go off in my head. She’s just a few licks from taking me where I don’t want to go. To have me at her mercy, not the other way around. I have her on her feet, backed against the desk again, before she knows what’s happened. I press her hands to the desk. “Don’t move them until I say you can move them.”
Her lips curve into a smile. “You can fuck me, Mark, but you don’t get to control me.”