“I don’t make promises like that, angry girl.”
I would have known he was lying if he promised not to do anything reckless. It’s physically impossible for him to avoid reckless. It should probably be his middle name or something: Zeth Reckless Mayfair. “All right. Then just promise me you won’t keep anything from me again. We’re a team. We’re supposed to be in this together.”
He looks unhappy about it, but he jerks his head once in a downward motion—as good as an oath in blood when it comes to my man.
“And promise you’re not going to kill Mason in the next few weeks. That little girl needs her brother.”
“You know what I need?” Zeth shunts himself closer to me, closing the gap between our bodies on the bed. “I need about ninety minutes with you, naked, here in this bed. And I need it now.”
“Ninety minutes? That’s a very long time. How do you plan to allocate all of these minutes?” I laugh as he relieves me of my coffee cup and sets it back down on the bedside table. My smile is slipping as he leans into me, forcing me back onto the pillow. The mirth in his eyes is still there, but there’s an edge to it now. A casual, secret enjoyment that tells me he knows perfectly well what he’s going to do and he’s going to enjoy it greatly.
“The first ten minutes are going to be me removing your clothes, angry girl. I’m going to torture you as I slip you out of these ridiculous pineapple print pajamas.” He inches his face closer to mine, his eyebrows furrowing ever so slightly. I have to battle with myself not to fasten my teeth over that full bottom lip of his. Goddamn, he’s so sexy. “Pineapples, Sloane? You trying to tell me something?”
My cheeks flush, heat spreading across my face, my lips tingling. He’s done some questionable things to me with a pineapple before. I distinctly remember being very sticky and punch-drunk from his attentions in the aftermath; whenever I smell the saccharine sweet smell of cut fruit in the cafeteria at work, I’m instantly wet, a thrill of adrenalin ricocheting around my network of capillaries and major arteries like a spark chasing down a fuse, heading doggedly toward an impossible and unbearable explosion.
The upper right hand corner of Zeth’s mouth twitches. “I haven’t factored hitting the store for supplies into my ninety minute plan, I’m afraid,” he tells me. “You’re just going to have to make do with my fingers. My tongue. My cock. Promise me you’re not going to be too disappointed.”
I sound like a flustered teenager when I laugh, way too breathy and ruffled given how many times we’ve already fucked, but he does this to me. When he pins me down with that look of seduction in his eyes, I fall into him like light falling into a black hole, unable to deny the gravity that pulls me closer. It’s physics, after all. Physics and chemistry. I can’t fight the laws of the universe, and I sure as hell can’t fight the lust that burns inside me like napalm.
There are people out there that believe in the law of attraction. Each morning they wake up and stand in front of a mirror, staring at their reflections, telling themselves that today money will enter into their lives. They’ll get that job promotion. Their lives will be better and more satisfying in whatever way they desire. I don’t need any of that. I don’t need money. I don’t need a better job, or a new car, or to travel the world. If I were to stand in front of a mirror and plead with the universe for anything, it would be this man, inside me, twenty-four fucking seven, his hands on my breasts and his mouth on my clit. I’m so abruptly turned on that I don’t know what to do with myself, as Zeth pops up onto his knees so he can hover his body over mine, his dark eyes studious picking me apart with the precision of a heart surgeon.
“After the clothes are off, I’m going to spend the next fifteen minutes licking and kissing your body. I want a lesson in anatomy, Dr. Romera. I want to know the medical term for each and every point where my tongue meets your skin.”
“I’m not sure my brain works under that kind of pressure.”
“It had better. Or there will be dire, dire consequences.” Moving swiftly, he ducks, biting down hard and unexpectedly on my collarbone; I gasp, warring between my need to reel away from the pain and lean into it at the same time. Zeth chuckles in a dark, merciless way.
“Then I’m going to go down on you,” Zeth informs me. “I’m going to feast on that pussy of yours. I’m going to stroke my tongue up and down you. I’m going to tease it inside of you. I’m going to eat your ass until you beg me to stop.”
I buck underneath him, trying to squirm away. “No, you’re not!”
He grabs hold of me, pinning me by my wrists to the bed. “What? You don’t want me to eat your ass?”