The elevator ride upstairs is a blur of hands in hair, fingers finding buttons, mouths exploring skin. His hands lift me as my legs go around his waist and my arms twine around his shoulders. Pressing me into the elevator wall, Parker’s mouth dominates mine in a way that should scare me — too possessive, too needy, as if he already owns every facet of me, body and soul.
I’m a foregone conclusion in the circle of his arms.
“You told me not to kiss you in any more elevators,” he reminds me, his voice muffled in the crook of my neck.
“Shut up,” I say, tugging his lips back to mine.
When the ancient freight car clatters to a stop on the sixth floor, I barely have the mental wherewithal to remember to grab my key from the security panel as he carries me into the loft. He growls something against my mouth that sounds like bed so I unwind my legs from his waist and lead him there, walking backwards so my mouth never leaves his. We don’t waste time finding the lights.
When my thighs bump the bed, I jolt back onto the plush white pillows — and Parker follows me down, his body settling over me with delectable, breath-stealing weight.
“It’s fucking freezing in here,” he grumbles against my lips, reaching back to tug off his sweater in one sharp motion.
“Someone once told me…” My fingers trace his bare chest and he groans. “…The cure for hypothermia…” I gasp as his fingers flick open the button of my jeans. “…Is getting naked with the nearest warm body…” My hips lift so he can slide the fabric over my hips. I’m barely holding onto my train of thought.
“Oh, really?” I feel Parker’s grin against the skin of my stomach as his hands slide my shirt up.
“Yes,” I breathe as he pushes my thighs apart. “Do you happen to know…” I pant as his head moves lower, so his mouth is poised over the lace triangle of my underwear. “…If there’s any truth to that theory?”
The final words come out in a breathy squeak, because his hot mouth is suddenly there, pressed against the most intimate part of me, and it’s all I can do not to come up off the bed at the sensation, even through the fabric.
“Darling, I’m happy to test any theory that involves me and you, naked in this bed.” Parker’s voice is a rumble. “But right now, I’m going to fuck you — first with my mouth, then with my hands, and later, when you’re ready, with my cock. So let’s save the discussion of our hypothetical findings until after you’re done coming. You okay with that?”
“Yes,” I whisper, my hands slipping into his hair as he tugs my underwear down to my knees.
“Good.”
And then I don’t say another damn thing, because Parker West and his dirty-talking mouth are all over me, keeping the promise he just made.
Multiple times.
* * *
No one who’s ever met me would make the mistake of calling me mushy. I’m not clingy or emotional. Certainly not one of those idiotic girls who stands in the mirror giggling at herself before a first date, trying out the sound of her crush’s last name tagged on the end of hers.
Sex has always been something of a fun, yet ultimately substance-less endeavor for me. I pick up sexual partners at the bar with the same perfunctory selection I use to buy roses in a grocery store. You know, the commercially produced ones behind those glass doors that always look a little too perfect from their artificial coloring and are typically sanitized of any actual floral scent.
Sure, they’re a pretty pick-me-up in a cheap vase on my kitchen table… for a few days. When their petals start to wither and fall, though, it’s time to toss them in the trash and move on.
No sentimental strings attached.
Which is why it’s so alarming to me that, with my limbs wrapped around Parker, with his body driving into mine in powerful, passionate thrusts that make my head spin, there’s nothing perfunctory about it. Just like everything else in my orderly life, Parker took one look at my rules of intimacy and chose to break every single one.
“Zoe,” he rasps, moving faster. “Open your eyes.”
I don’t fight him — my lashes flutter open at his command. In the past two hours he’s possessed me entirely, orgasm by orgasm, stripping away my armor until I’m laid bare beneath him. Utterly defenseless.
“Look at me, Zoe.”
Through the cloud of lust, I force my eyes to focus. His gaze traps mine, razor-sharp. The hazel of his irises is so bright, so intense, I feel like I could drown in the depths of his stare.
“Who’s touching you?” he asks, pounding into me.
I gasp. “You are.”
“Say my name, Zoe.”
“Parker,” I breathe, arching my back.