Empire of Desire(Empire #1)(47)

I grab her by the chin and use it to lift her head. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“I like the back of Chris’s Harley and you’re not going to take that away from me.”

“You will end it and that’s final.”

“No.”

“You don’t want me to fucking make you, Gwyneth.”

I can tell she’s equal part scared and excited by the way she flinches a little.

“Do you want me to make you? Is that it?” My voice lowers as I rake my gaze over her modest curves and those legs that have been over my shoulder not twenty-four hours ago.

She watches me intently but doesn’t say anything, so I continue, “Do you want me to pound my fingers into that tight pussy of yours again until you scream? Or maybe I will use my cock this time and fuck you so thoroughly, you won’t have the space of mind to think about any kid.”

Her lips part open and she sucks in a sharp breath before she says, “If you want me to stop, then you stop as well.”

“Stop what?”

“Picking up Aspen.” She clinks her nails hard, the sound escalating with every second. “Stop smiling at her, flirting with her, all of it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I saw you yesterday. You went out together for lunch and never came back.”

“Because we had meetings with judges.”

She scrunches her nose like she used to do whenever Martha made the mistake of not including her favorite drink with her meal. “I still don’t like it—her in your car, I mean. So if you don’t want me on the Harley, don’t let her in your Mercedes.”

I can’t resist smiling at how she negotiates. She’s all uptight and serious, too, making a mountain out of a molehill. All her assumptions about me and Aspen are unfounded, but I don’t correct her, because she looks weirdly adorable right now.

“And then what?”

That catches her off guard, causing a frown to crease her forehead. “Then?”

“What happens after Aspen isn’t in my car and you’re not on the back of the bike?”

“I…don’t know.”

“Are you going to behave?”

I hear the sound of gulping as she stares up at me with wild eyes. “Should I?”

“Good girls do.”

“But I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

“Yeah, I’m a bit crazy. You know, like when I kissed you that day. So I don’t think I can be a good girl.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I’m a bad girl, though.”

Fuck me, the way she talks in that aroused tone makes my dick so hard, it’s painful.

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“We have to do something about that. I can’t have my wife and intern be a bad girl.”

“I agree. You should do something.”

I let go of her and her shoulders hunch, in disappointment, I believe, but she has no fucking idea what I have planned for her.

Because I crushed the last log of guilt I have and I’m going to swallow her, consume her until she realizes she shouldn’t have messed with me in the first fucking place.

Until she regrets not choosing safe and boring.

I stride back to behind my desk, not missing the way her eyes follow me, then sit down and beckon her over. “Come here.”

She approaches me slowly, like a scared kitten, but she isn’t. Scared, that is. Not in the least.

Her eyes have brightened and her clinking has stopped.

I open my legs and tip my chin at the space between them and she complies, her cheeks hollowing with how she sucks on their insides. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to teach you to behave.”





18





Gwyneth





He’ll teach me how to behave.

That’s what he said. That’s what I heard, and yet I still can’t believe it.

I can’t believe a lot of things since last night.

When I woke up this morning, I thought maybe, just maybe, it was all a dream and I was still stuck in it, but then I smelled him. Those notes of spice and woods lingered on my sheets and on me long after he left my bedroom.

So it couldn’t have been a dream, because Nate never goes into my room. Never.

Oh, and my panties were missing. Yup. I slept all night without underwear and kept rubbing my thighs together in a desperate attempt to recreate the friction but failed miserably.

So I left early this morning because I didn’t know what would happen if I saw him hovering over me at breakfast. That’s what he does sometimes since he moved in. He hovers, leaning against the counter with his legs crossed at the ankles and drinking from his coffee until he makes sure I’ve eaten something. Because apparently, drinking my milkshake doesn’t count as breakfast.

And I didn’t want to be babied by him. I also didn’t want to be faced with his strict features and punishing eyes or the fact that he might pretend nothing happened.

It would have killed me slowly, and I wasn’t ready for the D-word yet. But here I am. Once again under his scrutiny, and he isn’t pretending that nothing happened.