His hand sweeps up my side, fingers flexing over my ribs, palm covering my breast. My nipple tightens in anticipation of the tug that follows and I moan, my need to touch him almost unbearable. I reach for his shirt, intending to push beneath, but he doesn’t let me.
His fingers close around my wrist and I know he is in that dark place, where he doesn’t let me touch him—but I am in a dark place, too, on edge, ripe with my anger and unwilling to be submissive to him. Challenging his silent message of control, I reach for his shirt with my free hand, and he shackles my other wrist as well and tears his mouth from mine. Our eyes lock, the sound of our heavy breathing filling the air, and the motion of the elevator I didn’t even know was moving sways our bodies. The floor vibrates slightly beneath our feet and I sense that the doors behind him slide open, but still we stand there, staring at each other.
“They don’t get to tell you who I am,” he says. His voice is a rough growl, low and tight. “I do. I tell you and I show you, so you get the truth—not their fabrication of it.” A muscle in his jaw flexes. “Understand?”
My anger and fear dissolve instantly. He’s not pulling away from me. He’s angry that Amber and Tristan might taint my view of him, when he’s already convinced I’ll hate him before this discovery process is over.
“Do you understand?” he demands again when I apparently don’t answer fast enough.
This time I don’t fight the bark of his order, understanding the desperation beneath its surface. “Yes. Yes. I—”
His fingers tangle in my hair again, tugging my head back in that deliciously rough way he does. His dark side calls to me and I no longer fight answering.
“Do not go there without me again.” His voice is gravelly; raw like the emotion I’ve seen in his face and tasted on his lips.
“My going there wasn’t what you think it was.”
His eyes flash with disapproval. He is not pleased, or accepting of what I’ve said, and his mouth closes down on mine, punishing, controlling. His tongue thrusts and tastes before he repeats his words, his fingers stroking my breasts, teasing my nipple. “Do not go there again without me, Sara.”
“I won’t.” The words come out a hoarse groan as his hand strokes a path up and down my side, and back over my breast. His touch is heavy, the air thick, and I’m certain he isn’t convinced. “I won’t go back without you.”
His fingers curl around my neck and he stares down at me, searching my face with such intensity, it feels as if he’s seeing straight to my soul. And I welcome it. I welcome him. Seconds tick by, and I have no idea what he sees or doesn’t see in me, but he drags my mouth to his and kisses me.
The silky hot stroke of his tongue is a shot of adrenaline and desire that spikes through my body and creates a tingling sensation from head to toe. I shudder with pleasure and drink him in, tasting the bittersweet hunger in him, the anger and torment. I burn to touch him beyond where my fingers rest on his chest, to feel hard muscle flex beneath my fingers.
But control is his outlet of choice when there is no whip, no pain. And I am no longer angry, no longer rebelling against his demands. No longer fighting his need for an outlet I have long ached for him to know he has with me, in me.