Surrender Your Love (Surrender Your Love #1)(35)

Chapter 16

I bit my lip hard as I peered at Jett’s relaxed features from the corners of my eyes. We didn’t sleep together on the shore of Lucazzone’s estate. For some reason he just adjusted my panties back in place and sat up, turning away from me as though to give me enough privacy to regain my composure. My hands shot up his strong back, massaging his lean muscles in the process, hopefully signaling just how much I wanted to go all the way.

“Don’t,” Jett said, holding me off with a simple request. My hands jerked away, as though seared, and somehow his words burned more than fire. No man I ever slept with had behaved like this. If they went down, they would demand that I return the favor. Why didn’t Jett? Why wouldn’t he finish what we started right there and then?

I couldn’t stop the sudden onset of feeling inadequate making me doubt myself. Had I done something wrong? Maybe it was the way I reacted to his touch that put him off sleeping with me.

Even though I didn’t want to, my sex kept twitching at the sight of him. It wasn’t natural and certainly not something I ever experienced before. This dark, sultry, earth-shattering lust had to stop. I couldn’t deal with hot waves of wanting that made being around him—without touching him—unbearable. He was so close and yet so far. The attraction was palpable, and yet I didn’t feel confident enough to act on it. I was in this zone in which things were not black and white, but a blurred in-between shade where nothing made sense.

Jett didn’t say a word as I shrugged back into my clothes and followed him up the path and back to his parked car. We kept silent as he helped me into the passenger side and loped around to the driver’s seat, put the car in gear, and drove all the way home.

His home, I reminded myself, the beautiful house on the lake and the pretend normalcy of a work relationship that wasn’t. Ignoring the sting in my eyes, I peered out the window at the blurred countryside, no longer minding Jett’s dangerous driving. It seemed like an eternity passed before we finally reached his house. The moment the tires screeched to a halt, I jumped out of the car and only stopped as I reached the front door, my back turned to Jett as I waited for him to catch up.

He unlocked the door and let me enter first, then closed it behind us. Avoiding his gaze I hesitated, unsure what to say. In the end, all I managed was a feeble, “Thanks.”

His brows shot up, and a glint of irritation appeared in his eyes. “For what? The ride? My highly appreciated company?” A nerve twitched on his right temple.

He was angry and I had no idea why. My mouth clamped shut. What the hell was wrong with him? How could he change from sensual and passionate to cold and calculated in the blink of an eye?

“Or do you mean for going down on you?” He inched dangerously close. His fingers gripped my chin and forced my face up. His height intimidated me. Peering up his towering body into blazing eyes, I felt tiny and powerless against his caginess. Only he knew what went on inside his mind, and he certainly made no attempt to share it with me.

“Thank you for what, Brooke?” His arm wrapped around my waist and turned me around, pushing me against the wall, his thigh parting my legs in the process. His palms moved up the front of my shirt as his teeth grated my earlobe.

“The contract—I wanted to reciprocate,” I whispered. “You didn’t let me.” I don’t know why it was such a big deal, but for some reason it was. He had made me feel an intense pleasure I had never felt before, and I wanted to see whether I could make him feel the same way.

I wanted to be as special to him as he was to me. I wanted him to surrender to me. To what I could give him.

And where would that take you, Stewart?

Probably nowhere.

“Ah, the contract. You think it’s about giving and taking in equal measures.” He sighed impatiently. His hot breath on my neck made me shudder. “I play by my own rules, Brooke. As they say: sometimes it’s all about you, and sometimes it’s all about me.”

I nodded slowly, wondering where he was going with this. His thumb brushed my cheek a moment before he moved away from me.

“Go take a shower and meet me in my office. I need you to prepare some paperwork for me.”

What the hell?

He was playing mind games or how else could I explain his constant changes? My breath came in ragged heaps as I hurried past him and up the stairs to my room, eager to escape him, if only for a brief time.

***

The shower cleared my head a little. Unfortunately, it didn’t clear my confusion about Jett. I kept telling myself that I only knew him for a couple days, which wasn’t nearly enough to find out how a man ticked. My mother had taught me men were complex, but once you got to their core they weren’t that different from us. Based on my brief encounter with Jett, I begged to differ. In the end he was my boss and not some random guy I dated, I reminded myself. So I didn’t need to understand. All that mattered was doing my job well.

Figuring I had wasted enough time, I tied my long brown hair in a high ponytail, put on clean underwear, a new shirt and slacks, and headed for Jett’s office, not knowing what to expect next.

I found him sitting at his desk, engrossed in a mostly monosyllabic phone conversation with the prevalent words being ‘no’, ‘crap’, and ‘uh-huh’. He motioned for me to sit down on the padded chair opposite him and turned back to the notes in front of him, the frown on his forehead deepening. God, being serious suited him. I discarded the sudden memory flashes of his sexy mouth between my legs, and forced my mind back to reality. He didn’t even bother to look at me as he resumed his conversation. I sat there for a minute or two, trying hard not to tune in, but Jett’s anger was so palpable, it made focusing on anything else impossible.