Managed (VIP #2)(76)

I raise my camera, capture the image as I talk. “Your nose is big and hawkish.”

He visibly flinches, and I know I’ve hit a rare sore spot with him. I don’t stop, though.

“There’s a bump on the bridge, and it lists slightly to the side. I’ve often wondered if you broke it at some point.” I take another picture, noting the way his brows lift in surprise.

“I was fifteen,” he says. “Three boys jumped me on the way back to my room.”

My heart gives a great thump. “Stubborn nose. You take hit after hit, but never back down. I’d bet good money you never let those boys break you.”

“I would not kneel,” he whispers. “That’s when they broke my nose.”

I take another picture, my focus narrowing on his eyes. Those glorious eyes that can appear like glacial ice or the Caribbean Sea, depending on his mood. They burn like blue flames now.

“Did they also give you the faint scar bisecting your left eyebrow?”

“No. That was my dad.” He glares, as if daring me to pity him.

I don’t do that. But I do hurt for him.

“You have two permanent lines between your brows,” I tell him, moving on. “You frown when you read your phone, watch TV, or listen to others talk. It makes you appear stern and vaguely pissed off, but it’s really that you put the whole of your concentration into every task.”

His breath becomes agitated, the wide, muscled expanse of his chest lifting and falling.

“Your body.” A lump rises in my throat, my mouth going dry.

Silence falls.

“My body?” he prompts, low and forceful. He’s reclined in his seat, spread out like a damn feast, but tension rides through his muscles, making them bunch.

“It is perfect. A work of art.” Lickable. I take a shuddering breath, lift my camera back up, and take a shot of his torso—defined abs, tight pecs, little nipples. Utterly lickable. “You work hard to maintain that body, which I’m sure some would think is due to vanity.”

“It’s not?” His voice has gone rough, agitated and thick.

“No. You use your body like a weapon, a perfect shell so no one bothers to look too closely at the real you.”

He shifts in his chair as if he’s fighting the urge to flee. I push on.

“And you do it to be strong. Because you hate weakness.”

With a rush, his breath leaves him, and he sags in his chair. “Yes,” he rasps. “Only I believe you are my greatest weakness now, chatty girl.”

My camera lowers, and I stare at him, unwilling to hide my hurt. “You hate me?”

He blinks as if trying to break out of a fog. Color tints his cheeks, and his breath kicks up once more. “I think,” he says, “adore would be the better word.”

Oh. Hell.

Those intense eyes fixate on me, baring his soul. It is filled with pain and need. “You are my greatest weakness because I have no defense when it comes to you.”

Warmth rushes through me. I blink rapidly, my lips quivering, caught between wanting to smile wide and feeling the strange urge to cry. He’s split me wide open. And I know exactly how he feels, because suddenly I want to hide from this too.

Sex is one thing; what is before us is something more. I thought of him as my friend, a man I wanted to bed. But, if I let myself, I will completely lose my heart to him, a man who refuses to let himself commit to anyone.

I force myself to lift the camera, focus it on him, make my voice light. I probably fail, my hands are shaking, my voice is too breathy. “And yet you don’t want to f*ck me.”

It’s supposed to be a tease. We both know it’s not. And I’m cursing myself for speaking because I know he’ll volley right back. I feel it in the air, and my heart starts to pound.

Gabriel smiles then. It’s the smile of a predator: a slow curl of the lips, his eyes narrowing on me. A deep rumble sounds in his chest. “You believe that, do you? Shall I tell you all the ways I want to f*ck you, chatty girl?”

I make an incoherent sound, my insides swooping wildly. “Tell me.”

“You talk of scars,” he says. “You have one too. On the right side of your upper lip.”

“An Indiana Jones moment gone wrong when I was six.”

His eyes crinkle, but he doesn’t smile. His expression borders on pain. “I’ve wanted to suckle that little bump from the moment I noticed it on the plane. Every time you talk I want to tongue that lip, taste your soft mouth.”

I breathe harder, setting the camera aside.

“It drives me to distraction,” he says, “wanting to hunt you down at all hours of the day. Just to hear your voice, see those lips move.”

I can’t talk now, and my lips are parted, flush and wanting.

He doesn’t seem to mind my silence. His gaze moves over me like a hot hand. “The nights are the hardest. But I suspect you know that.”

“Yes.” It’s a strangled whimper.

“I lie there holding you, telling myself I will not roll you onto your back. I cannot push up those thin shirts that taunt me with the shape of you to finally find out if your nipples are pale pink or blush brown.”

He takes a deep breath, and his abs clench, drawing my eyes to the thick rise of his cock, growing visibly harder as he speaks.