Theo hugs her. Sadie pulls her in. Anna kisses her cheek. Sterling says something and she laughs.
She doesn’t look at me.
Not once.
My jaw won’t unclench. My shoulders won’t loosen. Every muscle in my body is locked, coiled, held together with nothing but the fragile threads of politeness.
She smooths her palms over her dress as she walks and I remember how the warm fabric feels against her skin, between her thighs…
And then she’s gone. Actually gone.
No glance back.
No invitation.
No hint that she even remembers I exist.
Just her back and the sway of her hips as she disappears down to bed.
What the fuck!
Daisy says something beside me. I answer – short, clipped, probably rude, but I can’t force anything else out. If she seriously thinks she can just fuck the fuck off to bed and leave me hanging…
I’m already striding after her. I don’t care who sees, what they think; in that moment, all I’m thinking of is her and me and this damn need that’s choking me up from the inside.
The door to her cabin is closing when I fly up to it, one hand braced on the frame, one foot wedged against the door.
She looks up at me, mouth open, breath tight, pulse racing beneath her skin.
‘You’re playing with fire, Baby Girl,’ I rasp, the warning clawed out of me.
Her chin lifts, eyes burning with something fearless and reckless and utterly undoing. ‘Then make me burn.’
She throws my command back at me, and that’s all it takes.
I’m over the threshold in a heartbeat, the door swinging shut as my mouth claims hers in a kiss that ain’t pretty. A kiss I’d forbidden from the get-go. A kiss I know, even as I take it, is wrong. But I’m done caring.
The world stalls, then surges, violent and dizzying. Twenty-five years of want crashes into a single breath, and I’m too far gone to stop it. I want it. I want it all. The slide of her lips, the rasp of her breath, the sound she makes when my tongue slips deep.
I walk her back until she hits the wall, hands everywhere, breath everywhere, tearing my mouth from hers only to taste her skin, her pulse, her heat through silk.
She cries out when I bite around her nipple – punishment for bringing me to this point. And she gives it right back. Nails piercing my skin. Fingers tearing at my hair.
‘You think you can walk away from me,’ I rasp against her skin. ‘You think you can look straight through me and just…leave.’
I drop to my knees, bunching her dress beneath my palm, and pressing it to her stomach as I pin her to the wall. ‘You think you can tease me with this…’
I hold her gaze as I run my tongue along her laced slit, and her breath catches, thighs trembling, knees buckling.
‘…then take it away.’
She bites into her lip, shakes her head.
‘Too fucking right, Baby Girl. This is mine.You’remine.’
I growl it into her, working her through the thong, sucking her juice from the lace. Who needs swanky dessert when this exists? Filthy. Perfect. Addictive as fuck.
She cries out my name, one hand gripping the clothes hook above her head, the other sinking into my hair, pressing me deeper.
