Page 32 of The Boss
“You’re not,” she said, and the soft laugh in her voice went to his head like smoke andfire.
“Tonight I am.” He sat back, the separation a considered denial, and watched the hunger in her eyes go molten. “Say out loud why you went to your knees.”
Color rose high in her cheeks. She held his stare like a challenge. “Because I wanted you.”
He believed her. So did the Brand. But he wanted more, always more. “Say you like the taste of me.”
Her lips parted, tongue darting against her lower lip before the smallest smile curved. “I like the taste of you.”
His control slipped another inch. “Say you want more.”
“I want more.”
He exhaled, long and rough. “That works for me.”
Silence stretched until it became a second skin. Outside, asiren wound up and faded. The city kept moving, indifferent to the fact that the axis of his life had shifted in a two a.m. living room with a woman wearing his shirt and nothing else. He realized with the cold clarity that came in battle that nothing about tomorrow would be the same as yesterday. He wouldn’t allow it tobe.
“Tell me about the bomb,” he said. “Every detail.”
She blinked at the pivot but followed him. She told him what she knew: that the arrangement had arrived late, loggedby a guard who’d frowned at the delivery, that the hesitation in the hallway had saved them precious time. She never saw the flowers herself—she’d already been upstairs in his office. He listened, asked questions, filed answers away with precision. He made her repeat the times twice, satisfied when shedid.
While they talked, he didn’t stop touching her. Couldn’t. He drew circles on her knee with his thumb. He smoothed his hand up her thigh when she lost her place, just to watch her fight for it. He traced the line of her wrist, the delicate bones under skin, the place where her pulse leaped when he looked at her like he meant to devour her.
He did. He would. Notyet.
“Back to your brother,” he said. “If he sees you in public, will he come to you or will he watch?”
“Watch,” she said. “He likes to calculate angles.”
“Then I’ll make the room a circle. No angles.” He wasn’t joking. He saw the way her mouth almost smiled at that and wanted to taste it until she couldn’t hide her hunger.
He rose without warning and she caught her breath. He took her hand, pulled her to her feet, then simply lifted her, settling her astride him. His shirt fell to frame her thighs like a curtain, atease and a promise. The move stole the oxygen from the room. Her hands gripped his shoulders and her eyes went wide and dark. Heat spilled through both of them, molten and binding.
“This isn’t patient,” she whispered.
“This is strategic.” He slid a palm up her spine, each vertebra like beads on a rosary. “I want you right here where I can see your face.”
“Leif.”
His name on her mouth was a sin he’d beg her to commit again and again.
He held them there until he had her measure again, until the sharpest need flattened into something he could ride without losing control. “Say it again,” he murmured, reminding her of the words she’d already given him. “Tell me what you wanted—what you told me before.”
“I wanted you,” she breathed.
“And now?”
Her thighs tightened around his hips. “I want you more.”
He smiled with teeth and then tested the edge of her control the way she had tested his. He took her wrist and brought her fingers to his mouth, sucking the two middle ones in to the first knuckle, slow and obscene, watching her pupils blow wide while he did it. The sound she made went straight to his cock. He drew her fingers out and lifted her hand to his Brand, palm to palm.
“Touch me there,” hesaid.
She did. The contact stroked every nerve ending. He’d never believed in anything he couldn’t buy, break, or bleed. He believed inthis.
She dragged her fingers down his palm and he groaned. “You’re unfair,” hesaid.
“I’m yours,” she corrected softly, and then she kissed the corner of his mouth in a quick, reckless brush that tasted like surrender and promise.
