“How can you ask me that?” he cried.
“It’s true, and I don’t care who you are or what you could do to me. I don’t give a fuck. I don’t want anything from you, so don’t think you can just give me a building and a million dollars and it will make things all fine. It won’t.” My hands started shaking, and my knees wobbled. “I’m saying everything that should have been said,ever.”
“Good, let’s hear it,” he challenged, almost sounding like he wanted me to throw whatever I had at him.
“Yes, sure. I just wish I knew what to start with. How about the part where you didn’t have the patience to wait for me while I was in Europe, and I come home to not just find you engaged to my sister, but she’s pregnant?” I couldn’t help the sickly feel that clenched my stomach as I recalled the incident. It was the kind I wasn’t likely to forget. No wonder I was so messed up. “Or the part where you actually married her, and I had to pretend to be the happy maid of honor? Or no… I know, let’s take it right back. Maybe it’s the part where you made me think you loved me when really you were just screwing with my damn mind and you wanted her the whole time. Then years ago…” My voice shook as I remembered my recent stupidity. “Either you were bored or you missed Marissa so much you thought you’d screw with me even more, and I allowed you to do it.” A tear ran down my cheek, and I hated myself for it. I didn’t want to cry in front of him. And it was worse because all he did was look at me. “I allowed you to screw with me again. Then you just left me. What happened? Did you wake up and remember that you saved the wrong sister? I bet you wish it were me who got blown up.”
That was the first time I’d ever said it out loud. And it hurt me to physically say it, but it was the truth in my world.
I thought it was the truth for him too, but the minute the words left my lips, something changed in his expression. It darkened, showing every ounce of the dangerous man he was, and he growled. Reaching for the glass paperweight on his desk, he launched it, and it smashed against the wall, shattering into pieces.
Then he moved so quickly toward me I barely had time to register that he’d moved. I said I wasn’t scared of him, but the fear of God gripped me when he rushed at me and took hold of my shoulders and shoved me hard against the wall.
My breath stilled, and my heart pounded in my chest. His hair swished over his shoulders when he tilted his head to the side.
“Go ahead, kill me. It would hurt less than what you did before.” I didn’t know where my voice came from, but I spoke. I spoke through more tears that streamed down my cheeks.
“You think I want you dead? You think I would hurt you?” The pain in his voice spoke directly to my heart and held my attention.
My lips parted. I wanted to scream and say yes, but I couldn’t. It took a different set of guts to waltz up here the way I had like I was out for blood. It wasn’t like I didn’t know who he was.Whathe was. A mobster, a criminal. It took a different set of guts to face my fears.
But to me, he was still Claudius. Still the guy I met all those years ago who ordered the peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich so I’d remember him.
His eyes, flat and unspeaking, prolonged the moment, and I swore every single emotion I’d ever felt pulsed through me. Then his gaze dropped to my lips, and it was like he’d just remembered something.
When he looked back to me, I saw something else that I never thought I’d see again. It was the same lust-filled look he’d given me four years ago, the same lust-filled look he’d worn years before that when he took my virginity, and the same look he’d had every time we were together.
I pulled in a breath trying to clear my head, trying desperately to fight the pull of the spell that was about to take me. But… it was too late.
It was already riding on the tail end of that pulse of emotion. Reaching my soul.
As he lowered to my lips, I moved to him too. Even though my brain screamed at me, telling me to run, run far away and never dare look back. I moved to him, giving in to the call of passion. I moved to him and lost myself just like that first day I met him.
His lips crushed down hard to mine, and that grip on my shoulders tightened painfully. It was the kind of pain, though, that I could relish because he was holding me like he was trying to get closer to me. Like he couldn’t get close enough.
The strong hardness of his lips sent spirals of ecstasy through my entire being, and the heady sensation to devour me with the cruel ravishment of his mouth made me return the kiss with reckless abandon. I abandoned everything. All that I said, all that I felt, and it was just us. His release of my shoulders allowed me to run my hands through his hair the way I used to, and he’d drop to the crook of my neck. He did it, and it could have been that we were always like this. Shivers of delight coursed through my soul as he touched me and kissed me, tearing at my clothes. Tearing at my soul.
The little blouse I wore came off and went flying somewhere. He practically ripped my bra off me and filled his palms with my breasts, squeezing and kneading, making me moan against his lips. His lips, which barely left mine.
We kissed some more with that raw, hungry desire, then he pressed his cock into my abdomen and leaned down real close to my ear. He pushed harder, and my knees buckled.
“Remember this, Angel, the next time you think I don’t want you. This is what you do to me. Only you.”
All I could do was stare.
All I could do was stare as his words sunk in.
Right now, I wanted him too badly to really think about what he was saying to
me.
I arched my back into the wall as he pressed me up against him and went to his knees with a wicked, sinful smile. He slid my skirt right up to my waist, parted my legs, and moved my panties to the side so he could slide his fingers into my core. I gasped at the mind-numbing sensation and cried out when he pressed his face right between my thighs and pushed his tongue into me.
Fuck,it was too much, and yet I wanted more. He licked the already hard, sensitive nub of my clit and continued licking in short even strokes, tasting me. I ran my hands through his hair, holding him there, relishing the thrilling wave of orgasm that built, rose, and took me. It took me to a higher plane of ecstasy, and I could barely breathe.
He didn’t give me a chance to recover. Or think.
He stood, undid his pants, and pushed them and his boxers down, unleashing the massive length of his cock. I needed him, wanted him, craved him inside me, and no sense on earth could reach me now.
