Already dark in the half-light from the fire, his eyes searched my face, before traveling down my body. “You like this, Christa? Me giving orders?” His gaze was hard on mine now, curious, and sharp as diamonds.
“Yes.” The word came out embarrassingly hoarse. Less than a whisper.
“You want me to stop, or you like something different, just say so. No safe word, no pretending or bullshit. Just plain English. You want it, you ask and it’s yours. Got it?”
Heart thumping a million beats per minute, I stared at him, the moment suddenly overshadowed by flashbacks of dates gone bad. Men who’d wanted porn scenarios instead of reality. I’d been truly frightened with a couple of those guys.
I concentrated hard on him. If ever there was a time to be scared, this was it, wasn’t it? Absolutely alone at this enormous man’s mercy, I should feel fear.
“You need to stop?”
I shook my head.
His brows lowered and, for the first time since we started making out, there was a hint of indecision there. “Then tell me. Tell me you like the way I’m…being.”
I looked at Micah, who’d saved me, taken care of me, and now wanted me to tell him exactly what I wanted in words.
The answer was crystal clear. I’d trust this man with my life. And he was offering the stuff my fantasies were made of.
“Don’t stop, Micah. I like it.”
“You sure? ’Cause this is working for me, but honestly, anything would work, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to. For any reason.”
I nodded, embarrassingly eager to move on with this, to see where he’d take it. How far. “Yes, yes. A lot.” I couldn’t help a hint of whininess. “Comeon.”
He straightened with a self-satisfied compression of the lips.
“All right.”
The look he gave me now was subtly different. Meaner, more remote. No longer the guy who’d blushed at dinner, but the stranger I’d known since last night. The kind of guy who pulled women from falling cars one day and fucked them senseless the next.
Our dirty weekend had officially begun.
Slower than before, he looked me up and down, made a show of it, arrogant as hell. We were doing what he wanted, his grim smile told me, on his time. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen, the hottest I’d ever felt.
“Use one hand to pull up your shirt.Myshirt.” His words lit me up like a Christmas tree.Show me your tits,I wanted him to say.Make it crasser, filthier. Take advantage of me. Make me feel dirty.
Oh, wow. Who the hell was I? Could I be the strong woman who kneed her asshole boss in the crotch and still want to be this man’s…object?
My eager hand didn’t give me time to think about it. It reached down, grabbed ahold of the fabric of this man’s shirt, suddenly the sexiest thing I’d ever felt against my skin, and yanked it up.
His eyes gleamed, fierce and hungry. I could have sworn I felt them on my skin, touching, weighing, heating me as they went.
“Nice.”
Oh, crap, that one word, so freaking innocuous in everyday conversation, so banal, so absolutely useless, was like a jolt of electricity to my weirdo wick.
“Big, soft. Overflowing.”
Why? Why did him talking about my breasts as if they were something on display in a shop window, instead one of my most tender, sensitive parts, turn my insides to molten lava? My hips strained up, needing pressure.
“Stop that.”
I froze, as if caught, trapped, terrified, and blinked. My eyes were huge on him, sucking him in like oxygen, willing to take just this if he wouldn’t let me touch.
I drank him in, from the shorn, dark hair clinging to his skull, over his wide forehead, thick straight brows, low above those deep-sunk eyes. They’d been light today, blue, I was pretty sure, but now they were all pupil, daring me to dive in. A devil luring me into the depths. And, for a few strange seconds, more than his touch or the sight of his body, I wanted to explore that brain of his, to visit his dark places, learn them, wallow in them, maybe brighten them.
With a start, I emerged from whatever strange limbo I’d gone to. What the hell, man?
