Say My Name (Stark International Trilogy, #1) (50)

“So damn beautiful,” he murmurs as his hands touch and stroke and tease and caress. “I wonder,” he says, as he cups my sex. “Do you still taste as good as you look?” He drops to his knees, his hands on my hips, then very gently kisses the juncture of my thigh. I whimper, expecting his mouth on my sex, but he teases me by sliding a fingertip under the thong to find me hot and wet and so very ready. “Oh, yes,” he says. “I think you like this.”

He torments me with his finger, sliding it over my sensitive flesh, then thrusting inside me while my body clenches tight around him, wanting so much more than that simple, complicated, wonderful touch.

When he withdraws, he stands, then traces the finger he’d penetrated me with over my lips. “Suck,” he demands, and I do eagerly, tasting my own arousal and watching the reflection of his in his eyes.

After a moment, he withdraws his finger, then takes my hand. He leads me toward the couch, only to pause by the coffee table. I’m confused at first, and then I realize that he has seen the photographs that litter the tabletop.

I wince, because those are a secret that I am not ready to share.

He releases my hand, then goes to the table. He looks down at the spray of photos that I’d left lying there, then reaches down to pick up several. “Who took this?” he asks, holding up a photograph of the Union Bank building in Las Vegas.

I consider lying, but the photo is important to me, and I do not want to deny it.

“I did.” I meet his eyes, mine defiant.

“When?”

I don’t bother to answer; the picture says it all.

“You were at the grand opening?”

“I was in Vegas for work.” That was a lie. I was in Vegas for the grand opening.

His eyes linger on me long enough that I think he has seen the lie. Then he holds up the photo of the Winn Building. “This one?”

“I go to New York with Damien all the time. And photography is a hobby. I think I mentioned that back in Atlanta. Or had you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten a thing about Atlanta.” His voice is low and steady and his eyes never stray from mine. “Not a single moment.”

I say nothing, but my mouth has gone strangely dry.

“Why?” he asks. “There must be more than a dozen pictures of my buildings on that table. I want to know why.”

“I told you why in Atlanta. I like architecture.”

“I want the truth, Sylvia.”

My name sounds soft on his lips, and I sag a bit, losing some of my defiance. “Maybe I misstated reality a little when I said I didn’t follow your career.”

He cocks his head. “You took all these pictures? Of dozens of my buildings?”

“I like architecture,” I say again.

He returns to the table and pulls out a few of the photos that sit inside the open box. The first are additional shots of Jackson Steele buildings. But under that, he finds my house photos.

He pulls out one, two, eight, a dozen. After he’s spread them on the table, he turns to me again. “I know you like architecture,” he says with more than a little irony in his voice. “But I never saw you as going fangirl over residential buildings.”

“I like to look at houses.” I shrug, because there really is no more to say.

“Why?”

“Does it matter?” I snap. I go to the coffee table and gather them up—small cottages, large mansions, log cabins, adobe pueblos. Some in fancy neighborhoods, some in gangland. Some in places like Brentwood where I grew up.

I toss them all back inside the box.

“Why?” he asks again, this time more gently.

“I don’t know.” It’s only half a lie. I have done this for years—even back when I was a child I would walk the neighborhood with a disposable camera—and I can sit for hours staring at a house, making up stories about the people who live behind the walls. In college, I took photography classes and spent almost all my time shooting houses. Now, it is both an obsession and a passion.

But I tell none of that to Jackson, and I still don’t answer his question. But the truth is, I don’t know why. Because I’m not sure what I expect to find when I look through the lens. All I know is that I haven’t found it yet.

For a moment Jackson says nothing, he simply looks at me. Then he picks my dress up off the couch and hands it to me. “Put it on.”

“But—” I’m not sure why I’m protesting, I only know that I’m confused.

“It’s well after eight,” he says, though his voice sounds tired enough that it could be after midnight. “I think it’s time I take you to dinner.”





twelve


Jackson has my skirt unbuttoned and his hand on my thigh when the waitress pushes open the sliding paper partition to enter the small, private booth.

As she does, Jackson leans over and kisses my ear, at the same time whispering, “Quiet.”

At first I don’t understand what he means, but then his hand slides north and his fingers find my thong. I freeze, terrified that he is going to do exactly what I know he’s going to do. And yet even as I’m fervently wishing that I could slide over to the next colored cushion, some tiny treacherous part of me wants what he is offering. A forbidden touch. A secret pleasure.