Page 16 of A New Year's Toy

My eyes connect with hers. We’re both spitting fire, swirling and entwining in an uncontrollable blaze of wrath and desire.

“No,”—I press my forehead to hers, reveling in her staccato breaths. Dipping my free hand into a jacket pocket, I extract what I planned to put to good use after our lunch—“you don’t get how much your Daddy cares for you. And if you need proof, I’m more than happy to demonstrate it.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nola

“Spread your legs.”

Alistair’s lips barely brush mine, cautious not to ruin my lipstick. He applies an identical harsh-thoughtful nipping at my jaw—doesn’t bite, doesn’t suck. Doesn’t leave marks.

It’s a challenge to reconcile his care now with the man who—even when done elegantly—dragged me out of a meeting. My meeting.

He swore he’d be a bystander, a delicate wallflower. Him and his full one-eighty pounds of pure muscle in an expensive suit. He promised.

I scan his eyes, searching for the answer as to why he went back on his word. There has to be one. I need to believe it, that he didn’t veto my business just because.

It has to be there, hidden beneath his silence.

But he gives me nothing. His half-longing, half-raging eyes exude his control of me. I’m not curious anymore. I’m mad. His promise is off the table, and so is my submission.

“No.” It’s my turn to refuse him. My temper rises at the sight of the glass butt plug in his hand next to his pants pocket. “Tell me what was so fucking wrong that we’re here. Doing this, instead of me signing the deal for my shop.”

“My Nolita.” He tugs my skirt up.

I push it down. “Don’t fuck me. Not when we’re talking boundaries, Alistair.”

“I didn’t intend to.” His head angles up to meet me, his dark gaze morphing into a deadly shade of black. “However, I’m beginning to worry you won’t listen.”

My lips scrunch in my attempt to calm myself, to annihilate the imminent wave of tears. In these short five months of our relationship, Alistair has unearthed parts of my personality I didn’t know existed. He’s studied them, analyzed them.

The erudite man he is, he applies his mental dissection of me to read me better than my own parents do.

He’s right.

Despite questioning him, despite my brain demanding logical answers, my heart isn’t in it.

In the conference room, I was already crossing the finish line. I envisioned these new high-quality products in my shop, the sales I’d run often to make them accessible to a wider crowd. Rhodes would’ve loved these. He would’ve shared my enthusiasm. He would’ve approved.

Whatever Alistair would’ve said, at my heightened level of eagerness, would’ve been shut down. In the present moment, though, as he pushes the butt plug on my chin, my focus and trust return to him. To listen.

“Spit.”

I don’t bother turning him down or demand he explain this very minute. I’m in Alistair’s world, cognizant that whatever he says or does is for me.

I spit.

“Very good.”

Someone presses down the door handle on the outside, rattling it in an attempt to figure out why it won’t open.

“Occupied,” Alistair thunders.

A rush of French expels from the other side of the wall, accompanied by loud banging.

Alistair replies in his calm and frightening tone.

The woman on the outside quiets, then the heels of her boots click toward the distance.

---