Dollars (Dollar #2)(52)

I wanted to be here.

With Elder.

He huffed when I didn’t respond, growling with impatience. “Michaels gave me a report on your healing last night.” He glanced away, his attention landing on a young boy running across the street with a scruffy dog on a piece of string. “He said the stitches will begin to dissolve soon. That your tongue is well on its way to normalcy.”

I kept pace beside him, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He was right, though. The swelling receded every day, and the sharpness from the stitches was already beginning to soften. Although eating couscous at lunch today had been tricky. The tiny granules had escaped into my cheeks, and I didn’t have the dexterity to find them.

His voice darkened. “Once I know you’re healed, there won’t be any more excuses, Pim.”

I know.

“I want what I deserve. I need things from you.”

I know that, too.

“I’ve been more than fair—”

I skidded on a loose piece of gravel.

My arms flew out to catch my balance. My bruised bones bellowed against upcoming impact.

But I never fell.

One second, I was falling; the next, I was not.

As if we’d danced this dance before, Elder’s hands gripped my waist, his fingers digging protectively into me, keeping me upright.

The electricity when we’d first met licked like wildfire from him to me, crackling and spitting. Everything that’d happened on his yacht up until now was deleted. We were back to square one when he’d walked into the white mansion in his stain of black and demanded one night with me.

The penny he tried to give me for my thoughts.

The way his pinkie grazed mine.

The way his lips descended and his tongue captured and that damn kiss that ruined everything. All of it drugged us until we were lost.

I shivered as things inside me sprang awake. Things that weren’t just dormant but had never had the chance to bloom. Things a woman felt, not just a girl. Desire I’d only just sampled but now ricocheted through me like a rocket.

He sucked in a breath, his fingers pressing harder. Too hard. Not hard enough. Bruises tried to enlist a panic attack. Instinct tried to make me flee. But Elder…he was the anchor keeping me steady. I didn’t tremble from fear but interest. I didn’t gasp from terror but attraction.

In the Moroccan sunshine, his skin turned a molten honey while his hair carried nightmares itself. His eyes, with its secrets and hidden windows, were wide and full of dazzling heat.

His head bowed as his hands dragged me forward. Without thinking, my body turned supple, bending into him as my chin tipped up.

Whatever this was, we didn’t choreograph it. Something else did. Something neither of us could ignore.

His hands slipped around my back, bracing me against his body. My belly hit his waistband and my spine arched as he pressed his hardening erection into me.

I didn’t think about where we were or who was watching. Nothing else existed but him and me and whatever this searing connection was.

“Fuck…” His eyes dropped to my lips.

I licked them, not in invitation but because my mouth watered for a kiss. His kiss. The kiss I wanted because his hands were on me in protection, not damnation. The kiss I wanted to build on the one he’d given back when my existence had been ripped apart.

One hand gripped my lower spine while the other crept up my back. He wasn’t gentle; he didn’t apologise for pressing bruises or gathering me so tight I couldn’t breathe.

I didn’t care.

For some reason, his violence was acceptable, not just accepted…wanted. Desperately wanted.

My fingers came up, clutching his biceps as he bent me deeper into him. His every muscle, his every breath and heat, fed into my body, making me wet for the first time since I could remember.

I didn’t know how to describe it as my body shed its hardened exterior and swelled and liquefied. It took back what had been stolen and lusted. Lusted after being taught lust was so awfully wrong.

His breath scattered over my lips as he dragged me the final distance.

My eyes fluttered to half mast, entirely drunk and willing and wanting and waiting and—

“Shit.” Elder stumbled, pushing me away so I wouldn’t trip with him. His face etched in feral need, waging with anger at the interruption.

His head whipped to the side just in time to see the dog on the piece of string barrel down the road with the kid in tow. He must’ve run into us, locked unmovable in the street.

As suddenly as the moment had happened, it ended.

Elder wrenched his hands from me.

I sucked in a ragged breath, unable to control the leaping lemmings that’d replaced my blood.

What the hell was that?

And what would’ve happened if the dog hadn’t run into us? Would we have kissed? Would we have lost ourselves in the middle of a congested country where public displays of affection were a criminal offence?

Spinning on his heel, Elder clamped both hands on his head, staring at the sun. With his back to me, I didn’t catch what he said, but his curse curdled the perfumed air with untold frustration.

While away from the intensity of his stare, I wiped my lips, flinching at how sensitive they were. Dropping my hands down my front—trying to get myself under control—I shivered as my nipples tingled against the dress.

The foreign wetness remained slick on my inner thigh. Not wearing underwear made what’d happened unmistakable. A rainbow of pride filled me that even after two years of abuse, after promising I would never tolerate sex or lust, my body had found a way to heal just enough to accept a kiss.