“Yeah, I’m aware of that. But that wasn’t what this morning was about.” The last thing I want to do is open up this can of worms here, in the middle of this party, but right now I don’t think I have a choice. She’s written me off—I can see it in her eyes—and I’m not about to let that happen.
“I’m sorry,” I finally tell her. I’m stumbling over the words like a teenager with his first girl, but I push through, determined to be as honest with her as I can. “Look, I think we both know I lost it a little bit last night and…I don’t do that. I just don’t. So when I woke up and saw all the bruises I left on you, it freaked me out. That’s not an excuse for all but shoving you out of my hotel room, but it is the truth. The idea that I hurt you—”
“You didn’t hurt me and you know it.” She tilts her head back, lifts her chin, and I know it’s because she wants me to see the bruise on her jaw. The bruise I very deliberately gave her last night and the bruise I even more deliberately exposed in the ballroom. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you like the fact that I’m covered in marks that you gave me.”
And there it is, my biggest regret—and my biggest fear—laid out between us. I start to deny it, to tell her that I feel nothing but shame for what I did to her last night. I can’t, because there’s a huge part of me that loves the fact that my touch is branded in her skin. It’s the same part that was unpleased when I realized she’d managed to cover up all the bruises and love bites, the same part that made sure to uncover at least one—for my eyes and for the eyes of everyone else at this party.
The profiler in me wants to run from the implications while the man in me wants nothing more than to mark her, to brand her some more. Anywhere, everywhere. Until the marks she already bears—the scars she’s borne for far too long—finally fade away.
I don’t say that, though. I don’t say anything. Then again, I don’t have to. Veronica already knows.
Why she isn’t doing anything about it? is the question I can’t answer.
She should be turning away, making a mad dash into the house in an effort to get as far away from me as she can. With her past, she has every right to be terrified of the darkness in me. God knows, I am.
She doesn’t run though, doesn’t even put a few inches of space between us. Instead she just watches me with those eyes of hers and I’m reminded, again, that this is Veronica Romero I’m tangling with. Brilliant actress and sex goddess extraordinaire.
It will take a lot more than a mere man to make her retreat.
Inside the ballroom, the DJ puts on something slow and sultry and strains of it make their way through the closed glass doors. For a moment, I think about pulling her back into my arms. Think about dancing with her on this small, dark balcony with nothing between us but the night.
If we were different people and these were different circumstances, I would do it. I would slow dance with her, bring her flowers, woo her like she so richly deserves. But things are what they are and right now it would serve both of us if I take a few steps back.
So I do. It’s hard—harder than it should be after four days—but I manage it. At least until she takes my hand, brings it to her lips. She kisses my knuckles, the back of my hand, the tips of my fingers. At this point, I’m so hard it’s painful. My dick throbbing, my every muscle tense, my focus solely and completely on her wicked red mouth as she slowly sucks my index finger into her mouth.
She uses her tongue on me, licking, stroking, swirling it back and forth along my finger before biting down softly, so, so softly, on the tip of my finger. Heat explodes through me and it’s all I can do not to pull her panties down and shove myself inside of her.
She must see it in my eyes, feel it in the tension of my body, because suddenly she pulls back. Lowers my hand to the top of her breast. Then she’s pushing down on my finger and using the wetness of her own saliva to guide my finger back and forth across her breast.
Again and again she does it, until seconds later, I see it. Another, darker bruise.
Another mark I put on her last night, this one more obvious—and more intimate—than the one on her jaw.
I really do almost lose it then, my hands clenching into fists and my dick leaking pre-cum like a sixteen-year-old with his first girl. To hell with the party, with the guests, with the goddamn glass doors that anyone glancing this way can see through. To hell with the article or the book or the secrets that neither one of us want to share. If fucking her is all there is for me—for us—then I’ll take it and be fucking grateful.
Except Veronica’s having none of it. In the second it takes me to get my brain to function, she twirls away from me and opens the balcony door.
“Wait,” I tell her as I wrap a hand around her upper arm. “Stay.”
“You set the rules last night, Ian. And you know that isn’t how it works.” She glances back at me. “Staying isn’t what either one of us does best.”
And then she’s gone, slipping out of my grasp and back into the party without a backward glance.
What stings the most is, she’s right. The parting shot is the move we both have down cold.