His fingertips hover just above my cleavage and, too embarrassed to look at his face, I stare at his throat. He swallows hard. The vein that’s visible just above his shirt collar pounds a little faster.
The part of me still in touch with my survival instincts wants the pain of cleaning and re-bandaging the wound to be over.
A new part of me, a reckless, wild, self-destructive part I’ve never met before, wants to see Rem’s reaction when he strips off my shirt and sees my breasts.
“Keep going,” I whisper, letting that foreign part of my brain take over.
I can hear the thud of my heartbeat as Rem doesn’t stop, the slide and release of each button making the world around us feel smaller and smaller until nothing exists except the skim of his fingers and the heat of his skin.
When Rem is done the fabric hangs loose, the two halves of my shirt exposing a line clear down my chest but still covering my breasts. I don’t need to look down to know my nipples are hard pink points visible through the white.
Rem knows it too. His reaction is subtle, but there. A tick of his jaw, a flash in his eyes. I stop breathing when he lifts one hand and places a single fingertip in the hollow at the base of my throat. The pressure so light, the heat extraordinary. He draws that finger down slowly, trailing over my breastbone, between my breasts, down my stomach, dipping into my bellybutton, before landing on the top of my pants.
I want him to hook his finger there, to pull me close, to take whatever he wants to take, to shut out everything but the slip of his skin against mine, his powerful body capturing mine, his strength surrounding me.
I don’t realize I’ve moved until his head jerks up, his eyes unreadable as they slam into me. I’m touching his face, my thumb tracing the corner of his lips. My other hand is on his shoulder, fingers seeking the hair curling over the back of his collar.
Rem stands stock still, his palms flat on the counter on either side of my hips. I dig my nails into the back of his neck.Drag my thumb across his lips. He drops his mouth open and I feel the wet slide of his tongue across my skin.
The next thing I know, Rem has pulled me flush against him. My thighs are spread wide around his hips. He’s grabbed my left hand, holding in an unbreakable grip. His erection is thick and heavy against my stomach.
His body is so hot it feels like it’s on fire. But his eyes are cold as ice.
“What do you think you’re doing,piccola?”
“I…ah…” The hard tone of his voice bursts my lusty bubble and I blink at him, the haze of insanity dropping as fast as my body temperature.
“This isn’t a game. I can’t tell what your next play is, but I do know that seducing me isn’t going to get you there.”
“Game? Play?” I stare at him dumbstruck, my anger from before returning to a boil. “I’m partially naked in my totally destroyed apartment, vulnerable to a degree I’ve never been in my life, and you think I’m playing games?”
“What am I supposed to think,bella? You’ve made your hatred of me pretty clear. But I need to make something clear as well—just ‘cause I stopped a bullet from killing you doesn’t mean I trust you.”
“Ironic coming from the man who broke into my house.” I squirm on the counter, but Rem’s grip doesn’t loosen, and my side just feels worse. “You’re absolutely right. I hate you. You distrust me. I tried to seduce you as part of my nefarious plot for world domination. You’re holding me captive—again!—for yours. We’re enemies, Rem Cosenza. Amidst all the shit I can’t even begin to understand, that one statement is absolutely true.”
“And yet,” he says, his breath coasting across my bare neck as that smell from last night’s dream invades my senses. “You want me to fuck you.”
Talk about seduction as a nefarious plot.Jesus. Heatexplodes between my legs at the same time I bite his neck, hard.
“Fuck!” Rem rips me off him, anger and something more feral flaming his face. The stoic bad boy is gone. In his place stands a man ready for a war. “You fucking bit me. Again.”
I glare at him, trying to ignore how much my lady parts like the feel of his body between my teeth. “You’re holding me down,again. Consider it the price of not learning your lesson the first time.”
Rem’s curse is long and low, a vitriol of Italian that I don’t know but understand perfectly. Rem wraps his long fingers around the back of my neck. His thumb meets my lips, touching me just as I’d done him. “You and your fucking defiant mouth.”
“You and your fucking bossy one.” I can’t stop myself from saying it. Just like Rem can’t seem to stop himself from pushing his thumb between my teeth.
I catch it and bite.
His eyelids flutter. I feel his dick pulse where it’s pressed against my stomach.
He drags his thumb free, and I have to kill the impulse to suck it back, to twirl my tongue around it and see if I can make him groan.
“I do hate you.” In some part of my brain, that isn’t a lie.
“I know,piccolina. So angry. So defiant. And yet…” Rem touches the diamond ring where it’s still on my finger. “You haven’t taken this off. Do you know what that means?”
I try to pull free of his grip. Unsuccessfully of course. “That you shoved a ring that’s too small onto my hand and now it’s stuck?”
