“If you think a tiny kiss on the mouth is going to seduce me, now who's the one with ideas inherhead."
His hands tightened and then he yanked me tight into his body. Damn. I knew inciting him was dumb. He’d only push back harder better faster.
This time he didn't kiss my lips. He released my hand, not even pretending to dance anymore and seized my chin.
It didn't occur to me to be afraid of him. Maybe I should be, but not that he'd hit me or hurt me.
Of this.
The moment his lips fastened onto the curve of my neck and then teeth bit gently into tender flesh. I let go. It was the only choice. His kiss constituted a claiming, more than a bruise, a reminder. But fuck, it started a fire from my toes to my ears. And when he licked the spot I used every bit of focus I possessed not to arch into him. Use the ridges of his body to fill my hollows.
He didn't stop there. I stumbled as he pulled away, gripped my hand and dragged me behind him toward a side exit.
“Where are we going? You have a party to host…” My protests sounded half-hearted to my own ears.
He stopped abruptly inside a sitting room off the main ballroom. Another couple kissed passionately against the far wall.
“Get out." He said. Just said it. No yelling, no threats, and the pair fled by us out the door.
I waited. Why would he bring me here? I couldn't keep in my own skin, vibrating with energy. I needed. I don't know what. Not him, not his hands on my body, or his mouth on my skin. But it damn sure felt like I did. Like something which resembled lust.
A biological urge, I reasoned. He pushed specific buttons on purpose. Anyone would react to him. Biological, yes
My rationale didn't stop the tiny squeak I let out when he picked me up by the waist, plopped me on a sturdy mahogany desk, and knelt at my feet.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He looked up the line of my silk-covered legs and tugged a foot from the folds of my dress. When he released the strap on my shoe and it dropped to the floor, I let out a little sigh. And then his big fingers pressed into the sore arch of my foot and not even the Gods themselves could stop the moan that fell out of me.
He chuckled to himself as he went to work on the other shoe and repeated his movements. I stifled the outburst this time, but my face probably gave me away. Head thrown back, eyes shut as I folded my lips inward to keep them closed. He rubbed the tender muscles and then gripped my ankles, one in each hand.
I opened my eyes to watch him slide his hands up from my inner ankle to the inside of my knees, soothing and massaging a tendon I didn’t even know was sore.
My body betrayed me. My thighs opened to give him better access. For the first time, he spoke through the haze. “Women are complex creatures. Unlike men, who stir at the brush of a woman’s fingers. Women need more work to be seduced. They need to feel safe, comfortable, tended too. Even if that attention is rough, or gentle. A woman yields more in her seduction than men usually do.”
He ran his finger up the line of my shin again and I managed to speak through his ministrations. “Do you have a lot of practice seducing men, then?”
His silence prompted me to open my eyes. He stood now, and I tracked my gaze up his wide chest to his tattooed neck before meeting his eyes.
“I use every tool I possess to get what I want. If it’s money, violence, sex…it doesn’t matter. I do whatever it takes to get the job done.”
I found my voice through the endorphins. “And this…demonstration? What job does it accomplish?”
He leaned in, captured my face and met it with his own. This kiss was not gentle. His lips parted mine forcefully and he swept into my mouth as thoroughly as he did my territory. He commanded control with his tongue, his lips, his teeth. Even the soft press of his fingertips on my cheeks saidyou’re mine.
I fell into that kiss. He could have claimed my soul with it. And then his lips were off mine and onto my neck, then my shoulder and collar bone. He kissed and licked and nibbled a trail from the one corner of my shoulder to the other. By the end of the trek, I held on tight to his head and pressed his face into my skin. He knelt on the floor again to get more level access, I had to lean down into him now.
His voice reached me from far away. “This is what I want.” The voice said cutting the fog. “I want you to surrender. Stop fucking—” a bite followed his last word. “Fighting me at every turn.”
His words broke through the pleasure his mouth left trailed on my body. I took a moment to process before pulling his head away from me by his hair.
The reaction earned me a growl and a glare from his position at my feet. He must have realized he lost me because he jerked himself from my grip, stood, and buttoned his jacket. “Why do you keep fighting me when you’ve already lost? Are you waiting for me to kill you? Is that the requirement of your surrender?”
I considered his words before answering. “It’s not in me to surrender.”
“So we are going to spend the next…however long…fighting every turn? Neither of us will get what we want that way.”
“How do you know what I want?”
