Echo (Bleeding Hearts #1)(53)

“Doesn’t it?” He took a seat beside me and uncorked the champagne like a pro. “I wanted to take you out, but I also wanted to have some privacy. This seemed like a good compromise.”

I chewed at my lip as he poured each of us a glass of champagne. It was a nice gesture, but it was still out of character. And being the woman that I was, I couldn’t accept it without asking the nagging question that lingered in my mind.

“But why did you want to bring me here?” I emphasized.

His fingers flirted with the stem of his glass, distracting me for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a little over the top,” I said quietly. “It seems like a big romantic gesture. Something a man would do for his girlfriend, not his… well, whatever we are.”

He leaned back and stretched his arm across the chaise to tease the skin along my neck. “You are my girlfriend.”

“Am I?” I asked in confusion. “Because I don’t think we’ve ever established that.”

“It was implied,” he argued. “When I say that you belong to me Brighton, it isn’t for show.”

“It was implied we had an agreement,” I said. “Not a relationship.”

Ryland frowned as he sat back and mulled over my words. “I can see how you might think that. But in my mind there has never been any question.”

“Well, there has to be a question,” I persisted. “You never even asked me, Ryland. You assuming doesn’t make it so. You haven’t even told me how you feel about me.”

Ryland leaned forward and tugged me into his lap. “Is that what this is about? You want to know how I feel about you?”

I shrugged like it didn’t really matter. We both knew that it did, though.

“The last thing you said on the subject wasn’t exactly nice.”

There was a long pause of silence that threatened to swallow me whole. Ryland continued to touch me, stroking my back and kissing my neck. And despite my need for his assurances, my body was melting beneath his hands. He knew it too, this power he held over me.

He needed only to touch me to remind me. Or to look at me with the lust that ran thick through his blood. One word uttered in the warmth of his voice, and I was irrevocably his. He owned me, and he knew it. Did it ever matter what his feelings were? I was doomed to love him regardless.

“I can’t tell you the things you want to hear,” he said finally. “I could give you a thousand pretty words, but they wouldn’t change anything. I’m not your hero. I’m not the man you want me to be, and someday soon, you’ll understand that. You will loathe me, and I won’t blame you. But even then, I doubt I’ll be able to let you go. Our feelings are irrelevant, and that’s the truth. But the fact that I want you so much should tell you how I feel about you, baby girl. I waited five years for you.”

My eyes were glassy, and I hated it. Hated that he always managed to make me feel like this was a hopeless situation. Like everything was a riddle to him.

“What do you mean you waited five years?” I croaked.

His fingers traced the line of my collarbone, dipping beneath the silky material of my dress and allowing it to fall off the slope of my shoulder. It hung precariously by the stiffened peak of my nipple, and Ryland skimmed it with his thumb as he spoke.

“I wanted you to have a chance to experience life,” he said. “Life before me.”

“You make it sound like you’re ruining my life,” I joked.

He didn’t laugh.

He traced along the opposite collarbone, pushing the material off the other slope of my shoulder. Again, the material sagged until it caught on my nipple, allowing the swells of my breasts to be seen with each heavy breath.

“You have the most beautiful skin,” he murmured against me. “A perfect canvas, just like you said that first day in my office.”

As if to prove his point, he dragged his teeth down my neck, sucking and nipping at me until I was clutching his hair in my hands. “You tease me with every blush, every smile, every innocent look on your face.”

His hand slipped inside the top of my dress, playing with my erect nipples before he gave up and pulled the material down around my waist.

“Someone might come in here,” I whimpered.

“So let them.” He captured my nipple between his teeth and flicked it with his tongue. “Let them see me f*cking the most beautiful woman on the planet. It would be my pleasure to make every man in here covet what belongs to me.”

His words drenched me, and he knew it. He slipped his other hand beneath my dress, coaxing his way up my thigh with strong, warm fingers. When they slid beneath my lace thong, he had to peel the fabric away from my skin.

He stuffed me full of his fingers with a groan as he continued to milk my breast with his mouth.

“I’m going to make you come so hard you scream,” he threatened.

I clutched at his neck, not wanting to believe the conviction in his voice. But when he adjusted my pelvis and crooked his fingers, he hit the same sweet spot he knew I couldn’t resist. He slammed his fingers in and out of me roughly, the sounds of wet slapping noises echoing off the walls of the room.

I was too aroused to be embarrassed, and I bit into his shoulder to keep the noises at bay while I jerked in his arms.

“That’s it, baby girl,” he praised me. “Come hard for me. Fucking drench me.”