Page 31 of Big Boss
“Do you need my address again?” I manage after a few more heavy moments of feeling his delicious hand against mine.
His laugh is low and deep, and I feel it all over my skin. “No, Erica. This time, I’m taking you home with me.” He hits the gas, and the force presses me back into my seat, leaving my heart racing.
His focus never leaves the road as we hurl around a corner like we’re heading for the checkered flag. “And then I’m going to put you across my bed and kiss you for the rest of the night, until you beg me to stop.”
I suck in a shocked breath. This can’t be happening. Everything is moving way too fast.
Today was already planned. I anticipated the stress of buying a gown and mapped those decisions out in my mind. And I’d even considered having to deal with an awkward or painful social interaction today.
Maybe not as bad as having Caroline Moyer get in my personal space and yell at me, but even that was still on the continuum of what I was reasonably expecting.
But I can honestly say I didn’t plan on kissing Donovan Tate. In fact, the mere possibility of Donovan Tate actually wanting me in a sexual manner has never once crossed my mind, and it’s making my brain short circuit.
“Oh,” I say again, a breathy sound that fills up all the air in the car with my nervous anticipation.
The car slides to a stop at a red light, and Tate turns to me, his eyes running across every inch of my body. I can feel his gaze on me, hot and thrilling.
I swallow hard. “Are you sure? Do friends like us kiss?” I don’t mean for my voice to waver, but it does anyway, and a little knot forms hard and fast at the back of my throat.
Because it’s one thing for him to kiss me in front of everyone at Glitter in an attempt to defend my honor, so to speak, by wielding his bad boy public persona for my benefit. But it’s an entirely different matter if he’s serious about this—about me.
I know who I am, and I’ve made peace with my various quirks and general strangeness. But I also understand why men don’t approach me. I’ve never had an easy time with friends, and even less success with lovers.
My entire sexual experience to date has been a little over-the-clothes fumbling with a teenage boy who promptly denied anything had happened between us as soon as one of his friends asked him about me in public.
Because I was embarrassing. He regretted touching me, and I definitely understood why he laughed about it with his friends. Eventually I got used to being laughed at, like I was nothing more than the punch line to a joke that I didn’t find particularly funny.
But if that’s really true and I am so awful, then why is the best-looking man I’ve ever seen in my life looking at me like he’s dying to see me kiss me again?
Tate’s lips curve up in a slow smile that is far from his public, friendly one. He’s giving me a singularly predatory look, and every inch of my body is aching to become his prey.
“I’m completely fucking certain about what I want, Miss Ridley. And right now there is nothing I want more than to be the man you spend the night with. The one who fucks you until you come. All over my hands, my cock, and my tongue. All night long until you forget about anybody else ever touching you.”
My face heats at the sultry promise in his words, and I feel a rush of heat all over my body, but most especially between my thighs. Is this how desire works? Is it always like this between adults who are about to have sex?
“Nobody’s watching us, Tate. You don’t have to pretend when it’s only us.”
Those words cost me a significant amount of my careful composure, the shield I have had to work hard to develop over time. But if I’m really going to take my clothes off and let this man touch me, I know that everything is going to change between us.
And I need to know that it’s going to be worth it before I take the risk with him.
His smile floods his face, and I ache from knowing that he’s happy and it’s somehow because of me.
“I’m not pretending right now, Erica.” He returns his attention to the road and speeds up until I flatten against the back of the seat. “Are you?”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding. “I would have to be stupid to not want you.” I swallow hard, my cheeks ablaze. “And I’m not stupid.”
Our overlapping hands shift the car into a higher gear and the engine thrums beneath me, but his attention never leaves the road ahead of us. “Nobody would ever accuse you of that.”
I stare at the side of his beautiful face, the knot of hair that I’m dying to unwind, to feel the heavy weight of his silky mane of hair slide across and between my fingers, then along my skin.
“Plenty of people have said they think I’m stupid,” I mutter, more to myself than to him.
“Well then plenty of people are wrong. And mean.” His lips thin out. “But I’m neither wrong nor mean, no matter what people may say about me.”
I swallow hard. “I know you’re not. You’re one of the kindest people I know, at least when nobody is looking.”
A dry, brittle laugh fills up the air between us, but he doesn’t take his attention off the road again.
