Page 7 of Atonement

She eyes me with bitterness right before her mask slips and I see the burning lust she’s denying herself. She knows I’m right. She knows only I can satisfy all her wildest dreams. And I will. But first…

“Say it,” I repeat the same demand from when I walked in the room and find a sick sort of satisfaction when I see her flinch.

“Why?” she hisses, knowing exactly what I need to hear as she moves in closer. “So it teases you with empty promises of a past life we’ll never be lucky enough to return to.”

She laughs in my face and I almost break, my control slipping at a rapid pace as she continues to attack me with the dark truth I’ll never be free of.

“Oh, Ace,” she says as she cocks her head to the side and studies me. “You really are a fool, aren’t you?”

My cock betrays me as it stirs to life. There’s something about her disobedient mouth and the feel of her body pressed against mine that has always been my damn kryptonite. She continues to analyze me as I stare back and attempt to break down her walls. But it’s useless. She won’t give me what I need, and for that, I refuse to give her what she wants.

Harshly, I throw her arm down to the side causing her to slightly stumble back out of my frame. She looks offended, taken aback that I would let her go so easily. But she’s not fooling me. I know the Queen before me too well. It's a disguise. Her finest trick. A play to get me off the game so I don’t see when she quickly takes her next turn and stabs me in the damn back.

“Better an irrational fool than to ever believe a word you say, Mags,” I growl out in anger. “Remember that, when you're begging me for something you need right when you need it most.”

“And what is it you need most?” she taunts.

I don’t blink. I don’t breathe. I don’t swallow over the lump in my throat because it might suffocate me if I give it enough room. She's called my bluff, and she knows it. I try to play her, poker face for poker face, as we stand toe to toe in the middle of the room and we’re suddenly thrown back to where we started.

Air electric.

Suffocating.

Racing. Stimulating. Arousing.

“Exactly what I thought,” she laughs as she goes to step around me. “The perv at the club Thursday had bigger balls than you’ll ever have, Ace.”

She stifles a scream as I spin her around, quickly grabbing both her wrists and pushing her up against the nearest wall. Excitement stares me in the eyes. Desire trembles through her soft body before longing sets in across her breathtaking features. I push my hard frame-up against hers, caging her in against the wall, and feel her breathing suddenly stop as she drops her gaze to the floor.

Clasping her arms together in front of us with my right hand, I quickly free my left. Lifting her chin slowly and forcing her face back up, I wrap my hand around her throat to stop her from looking down again and force her head back against the wall, violating her free will and making her look me directly in the eye.

“What you think,” I echo, throwing her words back in her face as I lean in and feel her quick breaths rapidly falling against my lips. “Tell me, Magnolia. What do you think?”

She goes to speak, but my next move cuts her off as my lips fall to the corner of her mouth and I hold them there, keeping her hostage and breathing her in with deep controlled breaths.

“Tell me, what do you think, Sweetheart, when I do this,” I whisper, as my mouth falls to the side, kissing the skin of her cheek before slowly falling to her neck. I get lost in the moment as I taste her porcelain skin and my tongue slides against her neck slowly, tenderly, with deliberate hot strokes as I savor every inch of her. Her chest presses firmly against mine in wanting, my mouth licks lazily up the side of her throat and pauses right under her ear. She sucks in a breath, and I smile against her trembling flesh knowing only I will ever have this kind of power over her. Slowly, I open my mouth and suck down hard, biting lightly and feeling my cock grow hard when I hear a moan fall from her lips.

“Does it make you... irrational?” My warm breath feathers against her ear a moment later. The word snaps her out of her haze as she attempts to fight me off, pushing and straining against my hold, but it only makes me tighten my grip and push her further into the wall. She surprisingly lets me, and shit, all that does is make me crave her more. “Does it steal,” I softly murmur, watching as goosebumps break out across her skin, “all your logic, Sweetheart?”

“You wish...” she begins to say, but my hand around her throat quickly covers her mouth, silencing her before she can finish.

“You have no idea what I wish, Magnolia.” My grip tightens and she instantly fights back harder, but I see the truth under her heated stare, and I’m fueled with the need to break it out of her. “Stop pretending. Because I’ll tell you right now, all I ever think about, is you.”

I step back quickly, before either one of us has the chance to do something they regret. Before either of us takes this a step further. Either by fucking up against the wall, the floor, across the table on the far side of the room, or worse, by killing one another like we both probably secretly have wanted to for years. Death is a welcome sentence for the hell we’re still forced to walk through. Shit, after what we've been through, hell should be easy.

I watch as she fights for breath that won’t come fast enough while we silently stare into each other’s eyes. When she’s finally regained some control, she yells, “Agree? You think I agreed to this? Oh, Ace,” she chuckles. “I’d never agree to work the same job as you. A promise I made to myself and stuck to for seven damn years until I was forced to take this assignment.”

I search her eyes to see if she’s telling the truth but can’t see through all the past that’s clouding my better judgment.

“In fact,” she says, taking a step forward as I involuntarily take a step back. “I’d never agree to live in the same country as you, let alone the same house while we’re on an assignment if I didn’t have to. You want me to stop pretending? Fine! Watch your fucking back, Declan. If I were you, I’d keep both eyes open. Even when you’re fucking sleeping.”

She pushes past me in a blind rage and I let her go. I relinquish all the fight I have left in me for the moment, as my heart bleeds wondering if she’s telling the truth. Tonight, she won. But fuck, she’ll always win. Which is undoubtedly the hardest truth for me to swallow when it comes to my only weakness.

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