Page 63 of Maneater
“I’ve never wanted to hit someone more than I did watching you flirt with him on the fucking CCTV. I’m so fucking lost for you that I’mstalking you, scraping through soundless camera feeds for the smallest snippet of you.”
Her breathing halts, her eyes wide and panicked as she looks over my face, and I lift a hand from where it’s braced on the door, moving a lock of her hair back behind her ear. It’s gentle, a stark contrast to how I actually feel in this moment.
“You were right,” I confess. “Every time I saw you sitting across from some asshole we both know didn’t deserve you, all dressed up and beautiful and way too fucking tempting for your own good, I’d be pissed it wasn’t me. So yeah. I was jealous tonight. And I was jealous of Jeff on the hike and at the pool bar, and when you were flirting with Horace, and every single time I saw you out with someone who wasn’t me. Is that what you want me to tell you? Is that?—”
But suddenly, my rant is over, cut short. Because then she’s kissing me.
Somehow, it’s even sweeter than the time in the coatroom, hotter than the time in Dante’s office, because she’s the one taking the reins. Her fingers are in my hair, tightening her grip to pull me closer to her as I dip to devour her, to match her energy. We kiss like that for long, hot moments before her tongue slides against my lips, and I take over, a hand moving to her jaw to hold her where I want her. Her hips start to move, shifting and grinding against where I’m already hard for her, and I move my hand from her jaw to her hip, pulling her further into me.
Her lips move down my neck, tasting and licking and sucking, each kiss going straight to my cock.
“I thought you weren’t going to kiss me again until I spilled some deep-seated secret,” she murmurs against my skin, and I laugh at how I completely forgot about that threat of mine.
“I don’t fucking care if you’re in the CIA right now, Josie, not when the promise of tasting you is fucking suffocating me.”
She moans at my words, and a satisfied smile pulls at my lips.
And in that moment, I know it’s true: I don’t care who she is or what she’s doing here, because in my gut, I know she isn’t here tomess with me or my hotel. I don’t know why she’s here, but right now, I don’t fucking care.
TWENTY-SIX
JOSIE
It started with me kissing Rowan, but now he is undeniably kissingme.
“I knew you’d break,” I moan as his lips move over mine, as his tongue tastes me, needy and frantic in a way that makes my mind fuzzy and my common sense blur. There’s just him and me and the feeling of his skin on mine. His hands are moving to my hips to hike my skirt up. I wonder if he’s going to fuck me here, against this wall.
I’d let him. Right now? I wouldabsolutelylet him.
“You’re such a fucking brat,” he growls against my lips.
“What are you going to do about it?” I whisper, my pussy clenching, a dozen possibilities of what Rowan Fisher coulddo to merushing through my mind.
Finally, he pulls back from the kiss to look me in the eyes, a wide smile on his lips. “Whatever I want.”
My heart skips a beat.
Men like this don’t usually do it for me. Men who are all ego and swagger. Men who think they can get any woman with a mere smirk. It’s why I’ve been confused by my attraction to Rowan since I met him, but suddenly, I get it.
He doesn’t think he can getanywomen.
He thinks he can getme.
And that makes all the difference.
Before I can give any kind of witty response, his hands are moving, his knees bending, and he’s lifting me and moving through, from what I can tell, a relatively empty office, toward a desk in the center of the room. He sets me on the very edge, then uses his hands to help situate me, hiking up my skirt.
“Does this…does this mean you’re done avoiding me and pretending you’re not wildly into me?” I ask as he peppers kisses down my neck, my skirt now bunched around my waist. He steps closer, so his body is against mine. The only things between us are his pants and my underwear. He lets out a laugh, the full, free one that I’ve only ever heard him use when he’s talking to me.
“Yeah. I guess it does. There’s no point in it, after all.” His lips move down my neck as his hand slides up my thigh, his thumb brushing along the gusset of my wet panties. We groan in unison as he does. “I can’t seem to resist you.”
“You’re stuck in my trap,” I whisper, my hand moving to his neck to pull his face to mine.
“Gladly.”
I want to say something, argue, or gloat, but I can’t because his hand is going up my thigh, then down into my underwear, his hand cupping my pussy and sending all rational thoughts from my mind. My hips arch into him, desperate for something, anything, but he just holds me there.
“Because when I’ve got you like this,” he whispers, hand tensing against me. “You’re all mine.” His finger slides through my center, pressing against my entrance but not going any further.
