Page 97 of Not That Complicated

Right. Yes. Lead the way. I could absolutely do that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

It was tough with Adamcrowding me, an arm wrapped around my waist and his hips cradling my arse, thighs literally walking me forward, but I managed.

“You are very pushy,” I said as we hit the landing. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“I’m not pushy,” he said. “I’m determined, I’m an opportunist, and I have a strong drive to get what I want.”

“That sounds like an excellent definition of pushy to me.”

“If I was pushy—” he squeezed me and rubbed his giant dick against my arse, “—we’d have done this after the first dead guy.”

I struggled. He let me turn around in his arms until we were chest to chest, but he continued to walk me backwards, eyes focused and intent on my face.

I swallowed hard. His tone had been playful. I’d thought we were easing into things with all the banter. The expression on his face told me it was go-time. “You mean before or after you burned your tongue on the hot chocolate?”

“After,” he said, as the backs of my knees hit the mattress. “You remember, right?”

“You having a tantrum because I called you Juni—”

He ducked down and bit my lip. Hard.

“Ow, dammit,” I complained when he drew back.

“That’s off-limits,” he said.

I tried to be honest with myself. I did work on self-awareness. I attempted to accept even those things I felt conflicted about. Human beings are irrational, messy creatures. It’s possible to feel diametrically opposed emotions at the same time.

Which was another way of saying that I’d stopped trying to convince myself I didn’t like it when Adam got all commanding.

It had confused me at first—how on earth was a man almost a decade younger than me so incredibly sure of himself? Then it had rattled me—who did he think he was? Then it had aroused and seduced me.

I’d contemplated past relationships and hook-ups, imagined any of the other men I’d known treating me like Adam did. Winding me up, brazenly manipulating me. Caring for me, tucking me up in bed. Yeah, no. I’d have invited them to jog on and don’t let the door hit them on the way out. Or do let it hit them, I really didn’t care, as long as they were leaving

This, I concluded, was an Adam thing and not a general thing

But that didn’t mean I was going to just roll over.

“You can’t control me,” I told him snippily.

“Mm-hmm.” He fitted his hands to my waist and lifted me up onto my toes before shoving me back onto the bed. I bounced and he was crawling over me.

I scuttled backwards. “You can’t silence me,” I said.

Adam smiled. He pushed me flat halfway up the bed, straddled my thighs, and sat back. “We both know I can,” he said.

“What a load—oh.” Eyes locked to mine, Adam reached behind himself, grabbed his t-shirt, and dragged it up and over his head. Slowly. Arching his back.

Had that been me, I’d have come out of it with my hair half stuck down and half staticky. Adam’s thick red-blond curls fell over his face in a sexy mop. Theytumbled. He threw his t-shirt over the side of the bed and brushed his hair back off his face with one hand, bicep flexing.

“That’s how I like it,” he said, and patted my chest. “Nice and quiet.”

I scowled. “I am stunned unto silence by your shameless exhibitionism—oh.”

He ran his hands down his chest and sides, all the way to his waistband. Tensing his thighs, he rose to his knees. I lay under him helplessly as he looked down into my face.

He popped the button of his jeans.

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