Page 31 of Crashed
He was in there awhile, then finally the door swung open and he walked out. Her eyes dropped. No more erection. His hair looked rumpled, sticking up like he’d thrust his hand in it repeatedly.
He hadn’t…had he? No. Why would he go and jerk off when she was lying naked and—despite her protests—more than willing in his bed? He climbed back in, wrapped an arm around her waist, hauled her against his front, and threw a heavy thigh over hers.
Then did…nothing.
“Um…Deacon?”
“Yeah?”
“Are we going to sleep now?” Despite what he’d done to her, repeatedly, for some reason asking the man if he’d just rubbed one off in the bathroom felt a bit too—intimate.
“Uh-huh.” He buried his face in her hair and inhaled, then mumbled against her shoulder. “And don’t move from this bed, Alex. I mean it. If I wake up and you’ve run off into the night, I’m coming to get you and dragging you back.”
“What if I need to pee?”
Hot breath skimmed her skin as he chuckled quietly.
“Wise-ass.” He tightened his arm around her waist and rested his hand on her belly. “Go to sleep, little viper.”
She’d played up to the nickname she, Rusty, and Piper had been given in their teens, but she’d never liked what it implied, never liked it when people called her by it, but when Deacon said it, she kind of did.
“But aren’t you…are we…”
“Sleep.” His voice did that growly thing he was so good at, and she started to get all hot and bothered again. Damn him.
What was he doing? Was he trying to ease her into this whole arrangement they had going on, to be nice, sensitive to her feelings? What? Did he respect her? God, she didn’t want that—that wasn’t what this was about. She couldn’t handle him treating her like she mattered.
“Stop it,” he said into the silence.
“What?”
He gave her another squeeze. “Thinking. I can hear you from here.”
“Yeah? What am I thinking?”
He sighed. “You want to know why I haven’t fucked you yet.”
Okay. The guy was a damn mind reader as well as a control freak and a major pain in the ass. “Maybe. Um, so why haven’t you?”
Deacon nuzzled behind her ear, his tongue darting out to tease the skin there. “We don’t need to rush this thing. And anyway, I like the buildup, the anticipation.”
Bullshit. But no way was she calling him on it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the truth. In fact, she knew she didn’t.
The man who’d asked her to be his sex toy and occasional date several days ago was all about instant gratification.
Deacon West didn’t take time to smell the roses. The journey was just another delay. Anticipation another obstacle in the way of reaching his final destination. He treated everything in his life like a business transaction, and, she’d found out recently, that included sex.
She didn’t want him to respect her, and she sure as hell didn’t want him to worry about her feelings. “Don’t be nice to me. That’s not what this is about.”
He stilled and was quiet for so long, she thought that maybe he hadn’t heard her, that he’d drifted off. But then he said, “You think I should treat you like a whore? We have a history. I care about you, whether you like it or not, whether you welcome it or not.”
She bit her lip against the unwanted emotion bombarding her, had no idea how to reply.
He didn’t say anything else after that, just lay there holding her. Like she mattered. Like he cared. Her stomach flipped, and not necessarily in a good way. The urge to get up and run was almost overwhelming, but she knew he’d do what he’d threatened and come after her this time. She couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk his sisters seeing them together.
Dammit. How would she get to sleep now?
Her mind turned to the garage, to the job she loved. The reason she was lying here with Deke in the first place.
