Bowen kept his gaze glued firmly above her head, pretending fascination with some invisible spot that didn’t exist. “I’m waiting for an answer.” He heard her deep intake of breath. She moved closer and everything inside him seized. “Don’t.” Don’t what? He had no idea what he was asking her not to do, only knew it would break him.
Obviously deciding to ignore his request, she laid a hand on his chest, immediately making him shudder from head to toe. He closed his eyes defensively as her hand traced over his chest, up his neck and into his hair. Oh, God, he wanted to fall at her feet.
Frantically, he searched in the darkness for his anger and gripped it like a lifeline.
When she laid her lips against his neck, that lifeline was ripped from his hands. “Please, don’t leave me. Please stay.” Unable to speak, he shook his head, but it only caused her lips to drag along the heated skin of his neck. A groan left him before he could stop it.
The battle to remain detached growing weak with the sound of her voice. “I’m scared. Stay with me.”
No. Oh, Jesus. She’d said the one thing that could topple the reinforced steel barrier he’d built. At that moment, the only thing that kept it standing was the chance she could be playing him.
Was she really scared or did she just want him to stay? He made the mistake of finally looking into her addictive brown eyes and felt irreparable cracks forming in his wall. Fear. She was scared. With the acknowledgment of that came the need to protect. To erase the fear. He tried to hold it back, to remember what needed to be done tonight. Retribution. Payback. He needed to punish the men responsible for the fear.
Her lips brushed over his, once, twice. She disentangled the hand she’d twined in his hair, letting it coast down his body and linger at his belt buckle.
His body felt ready to snap with the tension, the anticipation of something he didn’t have the right to want.
“I have to go, Sera.”
Her breath raced past her lips.
“Where are you going?”
“You know where I’m going. Don’t make me say it.” Fuck. Her eyes were wet. It stripped him bare. The emotions he’d been holding at bay came rushing in from all sides and he fell back a step, reaching deep to find his determination and coming up empty. Frustration welled in its place, laced with the helplessness he’d felt earlier. “You have any idea what could have happened to you?” He was shouting but couldn’t find the will to care. “What if I hadn’t gotten to you in time? If I’d been one minute later, Sera.
One fucking minute!”
“I know, I—”
“You would have been gone. I wouldn’t have known where to look. By the time I found you—” He broke off, not able to put the horrifying images into words. “Goddammit, I’m so mad at you.
I’m so mad, but all I can think about is how bad I need to fuck you sideways.”
Admitting it out loud sent blood rushing to his groin. As if he’d made taking her inevitable just by vocalizing the suppressed need. It shouldn’t happen, couldn’t happen, not when he had this much chaos knocking around inside him looking for a way out. Her glazed-over expression, the parting of those damp, pink lips, did nothing to ease the growing ache, however. Nor did it help matters when she stepped closer, sexual intention plain in her every movement.
“The first night we met, you said you didn’t fuck around with virgins.”
He’d never heard her curse before and that tiny corruption shouldn’t have turned him on, but it did. All the resisting he’d done since meeting her had caused a painful buildup of hot, surging desire and hearing the word “fuck” falling from her sexy mouth made him want to do just that. No, you can’t. Don’t do it. “I did say that, baby. And I meant it.”
When she curled her fingers in the hem of her dress and drew it up over her head, revealing her sweet, supple body covered by two scraps of fabric, every ounce of self-control within him vanished. “Good, Bowen. Then let’s stop fucking around.”
Sera felt bold.
Bowen’s gaze raked over her, lingering at the tops of her thighs, the place where they met between her legs.
His chest rose and fell with accelerated breaths, hands fisting and releasing at his sides.
Color
appeared
in
his
cheekbones,
making
him
appear
feverish. She almost had him. While this might have started as a desperate attempt to keep him from leaving and doing something he would regret, saving him from himself, it had turned into intense physical need. A need to be joined with him, connected in that final way. To reach where they’d been headed since the beginning.
Determination
humming
in
her
bloodstream, she unhooked her bra and dropped it to the floor. His mouth worked as he devoured the sight of her exposed breasts, teeth sinking into his lower lip with a raspy, masculine moan.