Lovegame(44)

“Fuck,” he mutters as his fingers curl around the front of my hip, rubbing at the sensitive skin of my abdomen, my navel, my mons. “You go under so easily.”

I don’t know what he means, don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing and right now I’m too far gone—too far under, to use his words—to try to figure it out. And so I just whimper as I stand there, arching my back a little so that my ass presses against his hard cock.

“Don’t!” His hand clamps down on my hip hard, holds me in place.

I cry out then, and it’s a sound I don’t think I’ve ever made before. Half-pleasured, half-distraught, it hangs in the air around us for several long, tense seconds. And then he’s wrapping his arms around me. Burying his face against my neck. Pressing wet, openmouthed kisses against the fragile skin there.

Immediately, I feel less bereft.

“Trust me,” he says.

Any other time I would laugh at him. Trust him? I don’t trust anyone, let alone the writer sent to pry into my life for a magazine article. But right after he asks it of me, his teeth nip sharply at the join of my neck and shoulder and my whole body goes limp. And I know that even if I don’t trust him—even if I never trust him—I’m still going to surrender to him.

Still going to give him anything—everything—that he asks of me.





Chapter 13


Who are you?

The words are on the tip of my tongue. There are so many other questions I need to ask, so many others I’ve waited months to have the answers to. And yet, right here, right now—when my hands shake with desire and my dick aches with the need to be inside of her—this is the question that matters most to me.

Who is Veronica Romero? More, who does she think she is? I’ve only known her a few days and yet already I’ve figured out that how she perceives herself is as different from how the world perceives her as it is from who she actually is.

But as I stand here, burning with both questions—and with a need I can’t deny—I see her eyes in the reflection of the glass. They’re dark and hazy and far removed from the woman who stormed into this hotel room less than an hour ago.

She’s in subspace now, weightless, unmoored, drowning in sensation. Instincts I didn’t even know I had tell me that I could push her a little harder, take her under a little more, and she’d answer my every question. Tell me anything and everything I need to know.

And while that might be the easy route, that doesn’t mean it’s the right one. Taking advantage of her sensuality—of her trust—would make me an even bigger bastard than I already am. And while I’m willing to bend my rules quite a bit to get the answers I need, I’m not willing to break them completely.

No matter how much I want those answers.

No matter how much I want her.

So instead of pushing Veronica toward the very subjects I’m growing more and more certain she doesn’t want to speak of, I lick my way down the slender column of her neck, pausing every few seconds to suck bruises into her tender skin.

She smells good, tastes good—like honey and vanilla and the sweetest, ripest berries—and the need for more of her claws its way through me. The need for all of her. I bite down softly—I can’t help myself—and she moans a little. Arches into my hands, into my lips. The need grows fiercer and for several long seconds it’s all I can do not to yank my own pants down and push her panties out of the way so that I can slide inside of her. So that I can f*ck her the way I’ve been dying to from the moment she walked out of that kitchen—out on me—last night.

Only the knowledge that anyone passing by can look up and see us keeps me from doing just that. I don’t mind pushing her comfort zones a little, don’t mind doing whatever it takes to get her hot. But when Veronica Romero finally comes undone in my arms, when she finally drops the mask, I’m going to be the only one to see it.

So instead of f*cking her right here, while we’re both on display, I suck one last love bite into the delicate skin behind her ear before I pull back.

She whimpers at the sudden distance between us. The sound has me growing even harder, has heat skating along my nerve endings even as I soothe her by stroking a hand down the center of her back. She shivers at the simple touch and I relish her reaction, relish the responsiveness that is so much a part of her even as I wonder where tonight—where this—is going to leave us in the cold light of day. Where it’s going to leave me and the project I’ve spent the last three years pouring my time and energy and heart into.

But then she whimpers again, calls out my name, and any thought that isn’t her—that isn’t this—gets buried in this agony of want.

I reach out to touch her—to put both of us out of our misery—but a little voice at the back of my head keeps me where I am, just out of her reach. Just out of her sight.

“Tell me something about you that no one else knows.” The words are torn from me before I can think better of them, and once they’re out, they hang between us for several seconds in the sex-laced air.

I wait for her to answer, but she just stands there, head bowed and body sagging forward as if she no longer has the strength to hold herself up. It’s such a marked difference from the woman she normally shows the world that I almost cave. Almost pull her into my arms and carry her to the bed where I can make love to her slowly, sweetly, with the care that I’m beginning to think has been sorely lacking in her life.