Rival(38)

“Come here,” he commanded, and I curled my toes, staying planted where I was.

When I didn’t budge, he softened his voice.

“Please?” he asked.

He planted himself in the chair and looked at me through the mirror, waiting.

He leaned back, slouching, with his legs about a foot apart. His chest glowed smooth in the barely lit room, and I had to lick my lips, because I was so thirsty all of a sudden.

This is ridiculous! I planted my hands on my hips, trying to look away but always reverting back to his gaze.

Okay, screw it.

I dropped my hands and walked over slowly, trying to look bored. Madoc took my wrist and led me around the front of the chair, yanking me down into his lap.

“Hey!” I argued, trying to stand up again, but his hands held my waist.

“Trust me.”

I huffed, but I stopped, if only to see where this was going.

“What do you want?” I snarled, inching my ass up his body, because straddling his thigh was . . . yeah.

“Look.” He tipped his chin up. “Look in the mirror. What do you see?”

“What do you mean?”

What the hell?

“Open your eyes!” he barked, and all of the hairs on my body shot up.

Shit. Yeah, you could never tell when Madoc was going to go from easy to scary, but it was always sudden.

Reaching around, he twisted my chin toward the mirror, and I sucked in a breath. “What do you see?!” he shouted.

“You and me!” I blurted out. “Madoc and Fallon!”

My heart was racing.

I looked at him through the mirror. I sat on one side of his lap, so he could see from the other side, and we stared at each other, my chest rising and falling more urgently.

“That’s not what I see,” he said in a low voice. “Those names mean nothing to me. They’re simple and empty. When I’m with you, I don’t see the daughter of a gold-digging bitch and an Irish drug lord or the son of a crooked lawyer and a vegan Barbie.”

I almost wanted to laugh. Madoc had an ironic way of looking at the world.

But he wasn’t smiling. He was scowling. He was dead serious, and I knew from experience that his genuine moments were few and far between.

He reached up, threading one hand into my hair while the other hand rested on the chair.

“I see everything I want for as long as I can have it,” he continued. “I see a woman that wears the cutest little scowl like she’s two years old and was just told she couldn’t have candy. I see a guy that went and got an apadravya piercing, because he wanted to live in her world for even a little while.”

I closed my eyes. Don’t do this to me, Madoc.

“I see a beautiful woman with a knockout body and the guy she drives insane with wanting her.”

His hand moved to my neck, stroking up and down.

“I see a thousand nights of kitchen counters, showers, pools, and couches where he’s going to f*ck her until she screams.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I see her eyes and how they look when she comes.”

My nipples hardened, and I had to start sucking in air. Opening my eyes, I could see his blue ones, shining like crystals, watching me.

“I see the guy that went so crazy when she left that he tore all of the shit off his walls, thinking she hated him.”

My face cracked, and my eyes watered; the lump in my throat had grown too big for me to swallow around.

“Madoc—”

“I see,” he cut me off, trailing his hand over my stomach and into my lacy top, “the body he sucked rain off of last night and he wants in his mouth right now, because, baby, you are torturing him.”

He leaned in, kissing my upper arm in soft, sensual kisses, trailing over to my back. He flipped my hair over my shoulder, digging his lips into my spine and going up as I dropped my head back onto his shoulder.

“Madoc . . .” I gasped, tingles spreading down my back.

His lips . . . oh, my God, his lips.

His hands were both under my slip-bra, kneading and squeezing as I started rolling my hips into him.

“Goddamn, look at you.” His breathless voice made my sex clench.

I opened my eyes, seeing what he saw.

A young woman in lingerie, sitting on a man’s lap backward with his hands up her shirt. Our eyes met, and the heat made me want to tear him apart with my teeth. I wanted him.

Fuck, I wanted him.