So instead of pushing Veronica toward the very subjects I’m growing more and more certain she doesn’t want to speak of, I lick my way down the slender column of her neck, pausing every few seconds to suck bruises into her tender skin.
She smells good, tastes good—like honey and vanilla and the sweetest, ripest berries—and the need for more of her claws its way through me. The need for all of her. I bite down softly—I can’t help myself—and she moans a little. Arches into my hands, into my lips. The need grows fiercer and for several long seconds it’s all I can do not to yank my own pants down and push her panties out of the way so that I can slide inside of her. So that I can fuck her the way I’ve been dying to from the moment she walked out of that kitchen—out on me—last night.
Only the knowledge that anyone passing by can look up and see us keeps me from doing just that. I don’t mind pushing her comfort zones a little, don’t mind doing whatever it takes to get her hot. But when Veronica Romero finally comes undone in my arms, when she finally drops the mask, I’m going to be the only one to see it.
So instead of fucking her right here, while we’re both on display, I suck one last love bite into the delicate skin behind her ear before I pull back.
She whimpers at the sudden distance between us. The sound has me growing even harder, has heat skating along my nerve endings even as I soothe her by stroking a hand down the center of her back. She shivers at the simple touch and I relish her reaction, relish the responsiveness that is so much a part of her even as I wonder where tonight—where this—is going to leave us in the cold light of day. Where it’s going to leave me and the project I’ve spent the last three years pouring my time and energy and heart into.
But then she whimpers again, calls out my name, and any thought that isn’t her—that isn’t this—gets buried in this agony of want.
I reach out to touch her—to put both of us out of our misery—but a little voice at the back of my head keeps me where I am, just out of her reach. Just out of her sight.
“Tell me something about you that no one else knows.” The words are torn from me before I can think better of them, and once they’re out, they hang between us for several seconds in the sex-laced air.
I wait for her to answer, but she just stands there, head bowed and body sagging forward as if she no longer has the strength to hold herself up. It’s such a marked difference from the woman she normally shows the world that I almost cave. Almost pull her into my arms and carry her to the bed where I can make love to her slowly, sweetly, with the care that I’m beginning to think has been sorely lacking in her life.
If I thought it was what she wanted—what she needed—I would do just that. But if I’ve learned anything the last few days, it’s that coddling Veronica, giving in to her, is the last thing that will get me anywhere. She needs a firm hand, someone who won’t back down just because she’s a star. She needs someone who can set boundaries and keep them, even as she batters against them.
Fuck, just thinking like that makes me uneasy. Makes me wonder what the fuck is happening here and if I need to back the fuck up. Because, before I met Veronica, I never thought about a woman in terms like these.
I never paid any attention to power exchange and what it means in the bedroom.
I sure as hell never imagined that I’d be locked in the middle of a game of sexual dominance with one of the sexiest women in the world.
Yet here I am, determined—desperate, even—to give her what I know she needs.
Because I am, I silently wait for her answer. Silently wait for the words that will free us both.
It takes a while before they come, before she finally clears her throat and whispers, “I don’t like flowers.”
It’s a relatively unimportant fact compared to everything I want to know, and relatively impersonal, too—something that anyone could hear and not think twice about. I almost dismiss it, almost pull her tank top over her head as I demand more from her. But there’s something in the way she’s tensed up, in the way she’s braced herself like she’s waiting for a blow, that makes me think there’s more to the story than Veronica is letting on.
So instead of brushing her answer off, I pitch my voice low and soft as I ask, “Why is that?”
But she’s already talking again, deep in her own head as she continues, “I don’t know why people think giving someone flowers is romantic—once you cut them they’re just one more dead thing that smells terrible. One more thing that will decay and wither and eventually dry up and turn to dust.”