He slid off my heels and rolled me partially to the side so he could unzip the skirt and tug it down and off. I’d worn a black thong under my skirt to combat the panty-line issue.
“More than tempting.” Rix bowed his head, his lips close to my hip. I waited for the contact . . . but got nothing. He moved up my body and in a low voice said, “Arms up.”
My shirt was off and gone in a matter of seconds.
“Bra too,” I whispered, and Rix squeezed his eyes shut.
“Trying to see if you can break me?”
Break him?
I didn’t know what he meant, and I was drunk enough to say it out loud. “I don’t understand.”
Rix reached behind me to unclasp my bra and drew it down my arms. With a growl, he tugged the duvet free from behind me before pulling it up over my body.
When he deemed me suitably covered, he met my gaze again. Liquid silver. That’s what his eyes looked like in my drunken state.
“You confuse the fuck out of me. I want you, made that shit clear. You want me, but you can’t seem to wrap your head around it. I don’t like it when a woman changes her mind when I’m rolling a condom down my cock, but I ain’t ever not gonna listen. I’ve put it out there every way I know how, but you’re a different breed, duchess. You’re gonna have to ask for it. Beg for it, even, before we get that far again.”
“I don’t beg,” I said. “For anything.”
“Then I guess we’ve reached a brick wall.”
My glare should have communicated everything I felt, but instead, Rix laughed softly.
“How can you look so fucking beautiful even when you want to tell me to go to hell?”
I blinked against his intense stare, and murmured, “I’ve been to hell. I don’t think you want me to tell you to go there.”
“I hate that for you. I’d kill anyone who hurt you.”
I yawned. “Too late. He’s already dead.”
“I know, and I’m sorry I can’t kill him again.”
My eyes snapped open at the pity in his tone. Reaching up, I grabbed his arm. “Don’t. Don’t even think about treating me differently because of it.”
His eyes widened slightly before they softened. “You got a deal.” Lowering toward me, he pressed a kiss to my temple. “Sleep, duchess.”
A LOW POUNDING REVERBERATED IN my head, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth when I swallowed.
Opening my eyes seemed like the next logical step, but I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to do it. Two hangovers in a week was a new record for me.
I groaned and rolled over—into the warm body of another person. My eyes snapped open, and I registered the weight of an arm low on my hips.
What the hell?
Rix woke as soon as I moved. “You okay, duchess? Or you feel like you’re gonna die?”
“Why are you in my bed?”
“Don’t remember last night?”
I searched my memory and, sure enough, I remembered every single thing. I hadn’t drank that much. “No, I do.”
“Then why are you asking me why I’m here?”
“Because I guess I thought you’d leave after you’d done your good deed of getting the drunk chick in bed.”
Rix’s lips twitched before he gave me a half smile. “I don’t do good deeds because that means I’m not getting anything in return.”
“Of course you don’t,” I drawled, and then slapped a hand over my mouth at the horrible taste. I shot out of bed. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. My head swam, but evened out so I could walk calmly toward the bathroom.
I shut the door behind me and took care of my morning routine. Once my mouth no longer tasted like roadkill, I slipped on the robe on the back of my door, a short and silky one Rix had seen the first night he’d broken in. I ventured back into the bedroom and Rix was where I’d left him—sprawled out in my bed, shirtless, and from the look of the tent under the sheet, pantless.
“Better?” he asked.
I ignored his question and asked one of my own. “Are you naked in my bed?”
A single short nod was his only response.
“Why?”
“Because I sleep naked.”
“Which begs the question why you were sleeping in my bed?”
“Because you didn’t answer my texts last night.”
“Sure, I did.”
He shook his head slowly. “Not with the answer I wanted.”
“You were just worried that I was out with the cop again,” I said, delivering the challenge before I could think better of it.
A harsh laugh came from Rix. “Reminding me of that while I’m naked in your bed might not be your best bet.”
“Why, what are you going to do?”
My taunt was more than ill advised. Rix sprang out of bed and wrapped a hand around my wrist, dragging me back to the mattress and pinning me down. Beneath him, I struggled, but there was no way I could move over two hundred pounds of man unless he wanted me to.
Note to self: Beware of people with lightning-fast reflexes.
“I’m gonna keep you here until I have answers to my questions,” he said. “Starting with, did you see him again last night?”
“No, I didn’t. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“You’re my business, duchess, so I’m gonna have to disagree with that one.”
“Whatever.”
His face came closer to mine. “Do whatever I want to you? Is that what you mean?”