Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(11)

Not f*cking likely, I decided, reaching up into my skirt and tugging my panties off with a few impatient movements. I tossed them to the floor at his feet and turned my back on him.

I could hear his breathing change as I contorted my arms behind me and unzipped my dress. I tugged it down my hips as I strutted across the room toward a tall antique dresser. I gripped the edge of it and shot him a look over my shoulder.

I was nude by then, wearing nothing but stilettos and a bad attitude. “Go ahead,” I told him. “Talk.”

I wouldn’t admit this aloud under heavy torture, but as I watched him approach me, I began to tremble. In fear. Trepidation. Horror.

Anticipation. Pleasure. Delight.

When he got close, I turned my face away.

His hands, those big, beautiful, terrible hands of his, brushed my hair over my shoulder an instant before his lips touched my nape.

Head to toe, I shivered.

“I don’t have all night,” I told him, making my voice hard to compensate for the fact that my insides had gone utterly soft. “You don’t have to do your hours long foreplay with me.”

He chuckled into my skin. “It’s your fault, you know. You’re the reason I’m obsessed with foreplay. Remember when we were teenagers? When we made out for hours? God, you made me wait forever.”

His voice was so full of sweet nostalgia that I had to make light of it.

Had. To.

“If you cry while we f*ck I’m putting it online,” I quipped.

He laughed and tried to turn my face toward his.

Going in for a kiss, I knew.

I hated his kisses.

Hated. Them.

Hated. Hated. Hated.

I wrenched my chin out of his hand and pressed my body back until my ass was flush to his crotch. He was hard as a rock, bulging through his slacks.

I rubbed against him, teasing him into action.

With a groan, he started kissing my neck again, both hands going to grip my breasts.

I circled my hips, working against him shamelessly. I knew what it did to him, knew he was a hair trigger the first time we made any contact after a long parting. I didn’t care. If I got him to embarrass himself before he’d even taken off his pants, all the better.

Humiliating him was a bonus, as far as I was concerned.

No such luck. He knew all my tricks.

He wrenched away suddenly, breaking contact. His hands went to my hips and he tried to turn me around.

“No,” I said firmly. “Like this. I want it just like this.”

The Bastard wasn’t having it. And he was much, much bigger than me, the f*cker.

He picked me up like I weighed nothing and carried me straight to bed.

I let out an embarrassing little squeak as he tossed me on the mattress, then followed me down before I could scramble away.

Still fully clothed, he wedged himself between my naked thighs, pinning me.

Slowly, eyes watching me all the while, he cupped my face in both hands.

“I don’t think I have to tell you this. You already know it, but—I miss you. Even your bad attitude, I miss.” His voice was clear, vulnerable, and succinct.

Shut up, I wanted to snap at him. But it would reveal too much about what his words did to me.

“The feeling is not mutual, you f*cking stalker,” I told him, voice fraudulently collected.

He just smiled and pressed his mouth to mine.

I turned my head away, gasping, “Don’t kiss me!”

He gripped my chin in his hard hand and turned my face back. His defiant gaze bored into mine as he melded our lips back together.

A feeling of raw, violent need quaked through me.

“Fuck you,” I snarled into his mouth.

“Yes. That, too,” he breathed back. “But first—kiss me, angel. Please.”

It was the please that did it. Dirty fighting bastard that he was, he knew how to use that word in the most devastating way—absolutely effective in its rarity.

With a moan, I gave in.

Kissing him ruined me. He knew it.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one out for blood here.

His lips were my own personal hell.

They were either his biggest lie, or his greatest betrayer. Every kiss he’d ever given me, when we were in love or in hate, told me how he cared. Told me how he longed. Craved. Pined. Mourned. Despaired. Told me he was as desperate for me as ever.

I hated him for it, and I couldn’t get enough, my hands driving into his hair, nails scoring against his scalp, tongue diving in to taste his liquor sweet breath, clashing with his as unwanted whimpers escaped my throat.

I let it go on for way too f*cking long. I have no defense for myself there.

It was too good. Too sweet. Too bitter. Too pleasurable and too painful.

I lost myself so completely that at one point, I even let my hand pull at the chain around his neck, fingering the cursed object that it held, which was a complete slip-up. As soon as I realized I was doing it, I jerked my hand away.

Finally, it was my sex drive that put an end to that torture. I was throbbing from the inside out and addictive as it was, kissing him was not enough to physically satisfy me.

It was one of the few times in my life where I could say that my libido worked in my favor.

I started tearing at his shirt, wrenching at the front until buttons flew, shoving it off his shoulders, then pushing impatiently at his chest when it caught on his elbows.