“I don’t want you to think it’s because I don’t want you. I want you like I’ve never wanted anything. But I’m not good for you, Shay. I’m not…good.”
My heart is a sucker for this man. He stares at me with such seriousness on his face and in his eyes and voice, trying to tell me why we can’t be together, but I can barely hear him over the pounding of my pulse. It’s a roar of kiss me kiss me kiss me in my ears, deafening me.
I sit on the edge of his desk and close my eyes, trying to block it out.
A moment later, he strokes a hand over my hair.
“Are you really okay?”
His voice is soft, close to my ear. I nod but don’t open my eyes because I want him to keep touching me.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t sleep. Was it because of me?”
I nod again, inhaling his scent and enjoying his body heat. He must be standing very close.
“Shay. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I don’t want to be the cause of your sleepless nights.”
“It wasn’t a bad thing. It was just that I woke up and remembered you called me baby the other night. You called me baby when you were taking care of me, just like you did that night at the hotel.”
There’s an electric pause before I open my eyes and look up at him. He’s inches away, gazing down at me with ravenous eyes, his hand on my hair, his lips parted. The pulse in the side of his neck throbs.
I flatten my hands on his chest and whisper, “I want you to call me that again but while you’re inside me.”
Because I’ve got my hands on his chest, I feel his reaction to my words. His heartbeat starts to gallop, and his abdominal muscles tense. He draws a sharp breath. He gathers my hair in his big hand and makes a fist around it.
That simple gesture gets me so hot, I almost moan out loud. I stare up at him with my pulse flying and my nipples hardening, begging him with my eyes to put his mouth on mine.
Eyes burning, he breathes, “What are you doing to me?”
“The same thing you’re doing to me. Please, Cole. Please kiss me. You can send me away after that. I promise I’ll go if you ask me to, but please just kiss me again before I lose my mind.”
His lids flutter. His voice turns gruff. “Stop begging. You’re fucking killing me.”
“Please.”
He closes his eyes and groans. I stand, slide my hands up his chest and wind my arms around his shoulders, then brush my lips over his with feather-light pressure. Against his mouth, I whisper, “Please.”
His voice turns guttural. “This is a dangerous game you’re playing.”
“It’s not a game.”
His erection is stiff against my hip. His breathing is erratic. I know he’s close to snapping and losing control of himself. He’s right on the razor’s edge of letting go and crushing his mouth to mine.
So to try to push him over, I lick his lips from one corner of his mouth to the other, the stroke of my tongue whisper soft. Then I ever so gently take his lower lip between my teeth and bite down.
He reacts so fast, I can’t comprehend how it happens.
In a whipcrack move, he turns me around and pushes me facedown onto his desk. I’m bent over the edge of it, my breasts flattened on his blotter, my bottom pressed against his crotch as he stands behind me.
With one hand on my hip and the other curled around the back of my neck, he leans over and speaks into my ear in a voice so hot and rough, it makes my legs shake.
“You don’t want me to lose control of myself, pretty girl. You don’t want me to let the monster off its leash. I played nice that night we spent at the hotel, but nice isn’t what I am. I keep telling you I’m not good, but you refuse to listen.”
I’m shaking with excitement. I can’t catch my breath. My panties are soaked, and he hasn’t even touched me yet. I think if he pinched one of my hard nipples, I’d spontaneously combust.
“You are good. You are.”
He growls in frustration. Yanking up my skirt, he spanks my ass several times in quick succession. The blows are sharp and stinging. Then he pulls my skirt down, hauls me off the desk, and leads me to the door with his hand around my upper arm.
He pulls the door open. He pushes me through it. I spin around and gape at him, my face hot, my pussy wet, my ass burning.
Without another word, he shuts the door in my face.
I flatten my shaking hands on the door, then rest my forehead against it, trying to catch my breath and calm the butterflies in my stomach.
My entire body sizzles with need. I might light this entire building on fire from how hot he made me.
After a few moments, I hear his gruff voice. “Don’t make me open this door again. Go.”
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You get to decide unilaterally?”
“Yes.”
“And you think I’m just going to roll over and let you do that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not giving up, Cole.”
“I’ll hire a new assistant if I have to.”
“No, you won’t.”
He doesn’t answer for so long, I think he must’ve walked away. But then I hear a heavy exhalation.
“You’re right. I won’t. Go back to your desk, Ms. Sanders. This conversation is over. And stop reading those goddamn romance novels!”
I stand there listening to him breathe raggedly. He mutters a curse. I picture him dragging his hands through his hair, fighting with himself not to open the door and pull me back inside again so he can kiss me, and I fall for him a little more.
“I don’t care if you’re a monster, Cole. Whatever you are, good or bad, I want you.”
He growls, “You don’t know me.”
“I know you’re not a narcissist like Chet. And I know you care about me.”
“Why do you have to be so goddamn persistent? Why can’t you just believe that I have your best interests at heart when I tell you to walk away?”
“Because you made the mistake of giving me everything I needed the first night we met. Because the more I see of you, the more I want. And because I decide what’s in my best interests, not you. And by the way, if that little show of dominance was meant to scare me, it had the opposite effect. I’m ten seconds away from an orgasm. Have a good day, Mr. McCord.”
I turn around and walk shakily toward the elevators but decide to take the stairs instead. I need a moment to put myself back together before I return to my floor. I’m not sure if anyone else has arrived yet, and I’m a mess. So I turn and head to the Exit door on the other side of Marion’s desk. It leads to the stairwell between floors.
I step onto the concrete landing and into the cool, echoing hallway, but before the door closes behind me, Cole barges through it.
Cole
She shouldn’t have said I gave her everything she needed. She shouldn’t have said she wants me, good or bad.
She shouldn’t have said that thing about being ten seconds away from an orgasm either.
But she did, and now both of us are fucked because the monster inside me has smashed its chains.
I push her against the raw cinder block wall and take her mouth, thrusting my tongue inside so I can taste her. She’s sweet, soft, warm, delicious…that surprised little moan coming from the back of her throat makes me even harder.
My hands rove all over her body, squeezing her tits, her waist, her succulent ass. I break the kiss to pull her skirt up her thighs and drag her panties down to her ankles. When I straighten and look at her, she’s all wide-eyed and trembling, her cheeks red and her pretty mouth wet.
I put one hand in her hair and the other between her thighs and take her mouth again, kissing her greedily as I fondle her cunt.
She’s slippery and hot, the bud of her clit swollen. She wasn’t lying: she’s ready for me.
When I thrust a finger inside her, she shivers. I add another and she moans.
I put my mouth next to her ear and speak through gritted teeth. “You’re gonna be quiet, baby. You’re gonna be a good girl and take my dick right here in this stairwell, and when you come, you’re not gonna make a fucking sound. Understood?”
She nods, biting her lip.
“Belt.”
She fumbles trying to unclasp my belt because my hand is still between her legs, and I’m finger fucking her, and she loves it.
“Zipper.”
She undoes the button on my fly and pulls the zipper down.