Beautiful Bitch(9)

She followed my body, moving to straddle my lap. With both hands, she reached forward and toyed with my tie.

“What you said outside . . . ,” she whispered. “Maybe we do need to talk some more.”

“Okay.”

“But if you don’t want to do it now, we can go to your room and you can do everything you want to me.” She lifted her gaze to my face, dark eyes searching. “We can talk later.”

“I’ll talk about anything you want.” I swallowed, and smiled up at her. “Then I’ll take you to my bed and do everything I want.”

I could hardly catch my breath. I reached up to undo the top button of my shirt, but she caught my hand and pulled it down, her eyebrow raised in silent question.

Slowly, she undid my tie until it was wrapped around her fist like a boxer’s tape. I was so turned on by this power in her that when she moved my hands to the side of the chair, I didn’t really notice. My cock grew uncomfortably hard, and I shifted my hips to adjust the angle in my pants, my heart pounding beneath my ribs. What the f*ck was she going to do?

“Tell me you love me,” she whispered.

My heart was racing and my blood seemed to pound through my veins. “I love you. Wildly. I’m . . .” I’d imagined this a thousand different times, but this moment felt way too loaded and my words came out in a breathless rush. Taking a deep breath and closing my eyes, I murmured, “I’m wildly in love with you.”




“What happened?” she asked, stopping about a foot away from me, her arms crossed over her chest. I could see she was preparing for a professional battle on my behalf, but I wanted her to fight a far more personal one.

“Nothing work related,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “I . . .”

I drifted off, staring at each part of her face in turn: her eyes as they narrowed in concentration, the full lips she’d pulled together in concern, her smooth skin. And, of course, I let my eyes drop to her breasts because she’d pushed them together and . . . well, f*ck.

“Are you looking at my chest?”

“Yes.”

“You sent me the bat signal so you could look at my tits?”

“Settle down, firecracker. I sent you the bat signal because I miss you.”

Her arms fell to her sides and seemed to stutter, fingers fumbling to straighten the hem of her sweater. “How can you miss me? I stayed over last night.”

“I know.” I knew this side of her. Forever knee-jerking back to self-preservation.

“And we had all weekend together.”

“Yeah, you and me—and Julia and Scott,” I reminded her. “And Henry and Mina. Not alone. Not nearly as much as we’d anticipated.”

Chloe turned her head and looked out the window. For the first time in weeks we had a perfect, sunny day, and I wanted to take her outside and just . . . sit.

“I feel like I miss you all the time lately,” she whispered.

The knot in my chest unwound a bit. “Do you?”

Nodding, she turned back to me. “Your travel schedule sucks right now.” She leaned forward, cocked an eyebrow. “And you didn’t kiss me goodbye this morning.”

“I did, in fact,” I said, smiling. “You were still sleeping.”

“Doesn’t count.”

“Are you looking for a fight, Miss Mills?”

She shrugged, struggling to repress a smile as she studied me carefully.

“We could skip the fight and you could just suck on my dick for ten minutes or so.”

Without another beat passing, she stepped close and slid her arms around me, stretching to press her face into my neck. “I love you,” she whispered. “And I love that you sent the bat signal just because you missed me.”

I was struck silent, for probably too long, and I finally managed to croak out an “I love you, too.”

It wasn’t that Chloe wasn’t expressive; she was. When we were alone, she was—physically—the most expressive woman I’d ever known. But whereas I told her often how I felt, I could count on two hands the number of times she’d actually said the words “I love you.” I didn’t need her to say it more, but each time she had, it affected me more profoundly than I’d anticipated.

“Seriously, though,” I whispered, struggling to regain my composure. “Maybe I just need a quickie over the desk.”

She laughed, shaking her head against my neck and reaching between us to palm my cock. I knew this game, and it was entirely possible she was going to do something mildly threatening that would thrill me as much as it terrified me. But instead of looking at me with danger in her eyes, she turned her head to suck on my neck, whispering, “I can’t smell like sex in this meeting with Douglas.”