Revealing Us (Inside Out #3)(33)

Chris’s ingers close around my wrist and I know he is in that dark place, where he doesn’t let me touch him—but I am in a dark place, too, on edge, ripe with my anger and unwilling to be submissive to him. Challenging his silent message of control, I reach for his shirt with my free hand. He shackles that wrist as well and tears his mouth from mine. Our eyes lock, the sound of our heavy breathing illing the air and the motion of the elevator swaying our bodies. The loor vibrates slightly beneath our feet and I sense, rather than see, the doors behind Chris slide open, but still we stand there, still we stare at each other.

“They don’t get to tell you who I am.” His voice is a rough growl, low and tight. “I do. I tell you and I show you, so you get the truth—not their fabrication of it.” A muscle in his jaw lexes. “Understand?”

My anger and fear dissolve instantly. He’s not pulling away from me. He’s angry that Amber and Tristan might taint my view of him, when he’s already convinced I’ll hate him before this discovery process is over.

“Do you understand?” he demands when I apparently don’t answer fast enough.

This time I don’t ight the bark of his order, understanding the desperateness beneath its surface. “Yes. Yes, Chris. I—”

His ingers tangle in my hair again, tugging my head back in that deliciously rough way he does. Dark Chris calls to me and I no longer ight answering. “Do not go there without me again.” His voice is raw, like the emotion I’ve seen in his face and tasted on his lips.

“It wasn’t what you think it was, Chris.”

His eyes lash with disapproval. He isn’t pleased, or accepting, of what I’ve said, and his mouth closes down on mine, punishing, controlling. His tongue thrusting and tasting before he repeats his words, his ingers stroking my breasts, teasing my nipple. “Do not go there again without me, Sara.”

“I won’t.” The words come out a hoarse groan as his hand strokes a path up and down my side, and back over my breast.

His touch is heavy, the air thick, and I’m certain he isn’t convinced. “I won’t go back without you.”

His ingers curl around my neck and he stares down at me, searching my face with such intensity it feels as if he’s seeing straight to my soul. And I welcome the invasion. I welcome him. Seconds tick by, and I have no idea what he sees or doesn’t see in me, but he drags my mouth to his and kisses me.

The silky hot stroke of his tongue is a shot of adrenaline and desire that spikes through my body and creates a tingling sensation from head to toe. I shudder with pleasure and drink him in, tasting the bittersweet hunger in him, the anger and torment. I burn to touch him beyond where my ingers rest on his chest, to feel hard muscle lex beneath my ingers.

But control is his outlet of choice when there is no whip, no pain. And I’m no longer angry, no longer rebelling against his demands. No longer ighting his need for an outlet I have long ached for him to know that he has with me, in me.

I tremble with the caress of his hand over my waist, traveling to my hip, and curving around my backside to irmly pull me hard against his thick erection. His palm skims upward to the small of my back and lattens, molding me even closer. I moan into his mouth and he groans in response, his tongue delving deeply, hot with growing demand, with a palpable urgency. And his hands are everywhere, touching me, stroking me, caressing me, driving me wild and, before I know what’s happening, he’s shoving my jeans down my legs. I blink and my boots are gone, and I’m half naked in an elevator with the doors locked open.

Chris turns me to the wall and his hands slide, slow and irm, possessively down my waist and over my hips. Feeling his gaze rake over my body, I am wet and weak in the knees. He cups my cheeks from behind and steps forward, pressing his lips to my ear. “Tonight I want to spank you, but I won’t. Not when it would be punishment. I won’t ever do that to you. But don’t think that means I won’t want to.”

I understand Chris. I don’t know how or why, but deep in our souls we connect, and I know what he is doing. He’s showing me a hard exterior, but all I see is vulnerability, a need that tonight has sparked to show me a darker, more dangerous side of himself, and have me not run for cover.

“You can’t scare me away, Chris. So throw all the words you want at me. I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere. And in case you forgot, I liked it when you spanked me.”

His hand inds my stomach and then presses deeper between my legs, until his ingers tease my clit. “Maybe this time I’ll tie you up and log you.”

“Do it.” His ingers stroke into the silky wet V of my body, and I am panting, barely able to speak, but I swallow and somehow inish my challenge. “The more you push me, the more I push back, Chris.”

He nips my earlobe and I can feel him unzipping his pants.

“So you say,” he murmurs.

“So I know.” Throwing caution to the wind, I press onward, trying to unleash the pent-up energy in him he always bottles up until it explodes. “Only one of us is running. Only one of us is afraid of what I have yet to discover, Chris.”

The air crackles and his hand goes to my waist, ingers lexing into my lesh, and I revel in the certainty I’ve succeeded in taking him to the edge. “You think I’m running?” he demands.

“No. I think you’re trying to make me run, so you can blame me if we fail.”