My poor heart was fighting to break out of me as he slowly walked back toward the bed. I didn’t much care to look at his room, but his bed was across the door, just like in both my old rooms. He never once broke eye contact as he moved ever so slowly, his teeth over his bottom lip, his eyes on fire as they roamed up and down my body.
Then he sat at the edge of the bed.
“Come here,” he ordered, and it was like he pulled at my limbs with invisible strings. I was moving, shaking knees and all,feastingmy insatiable eyes on the looks of him. Time’s Teeth, how did he even exist? Something so perfect shouldn’t have been possible.
“Stop.”
I did. My feet were glued to the wooden floor instantly, and I was still three feet away from him.
March closed his eyes for a moment, rubbed his face. Pushed his hair back. But when he looked at me, he didn’t seem calmer or more composed. On the contrary—he lookedhungry.
“You want to escape yourself—fine. I apparently can’t tell you no.” A flinch. “But you’re going to do exactly as I say tonight.”
My shoulders felt a little lighter instantly.
I swallowed hard. “Yes.” He wouldn’t have even suspected that I wouldn’t if he knew what it was like inside my head. If he knew what he looked like to me. What he felt like.
“If you don’t, I won’t ask twice. Iwillkick you out.”
Did he mean that? I wasn’t sure, but it excited me, the fact.
“March,” I whispered—he had to know that he had me. He had to see how I was shaking with need, how desperate I was to be near him.
“Take it off,” he said, and all the blood of my body rushed to my cheeks instantly. Because he was back to grinning now, eyeing my nightgown. He wanted me to takethatoff, and I only had my panties on underneath.
My mouth opened.
“Iwon’task twice.”
Fuck.
His brows raised in challenge. He looked like he was really enjoying this, too. What in the world was I going to donow, when I knew for a fact that hewouldkick me out without hesitation?
I said yes,I reminded myself. I said yes when he told me to do as he said—and it had been easy to give up control with my words. Maybe it would be easy to give up control with my actions, too.
Sparetime save me, I wasnotsleeping anywhere but on his bed tonight.
So I closed my eyes and reached for the straps of my nightgown, and pushed them off my shoulders so fast it could have been funny.
Velvet and lace around my feet. The air of the room felt colder against my bare skin, and my cheeks were still boiling hot, but my thighs were clenched, too. I wasmoreturned on than a second ago—probably because of the way his grin fell and his eyes darkened and his hands pulled up in fists over his knees.
I was breathing so heavily the sound of it filled my ears.
Until March said, “Turn around.”
Not sure how I hadn’t melted on the floor together with my nightgown by now—the heat in my body was scorching hot.
My eyes closed again and I was shaking, but I turned around, somehow convincing myself that it would be easier if my back was turned to him.
It wasn’t.
March stood up, and I felt it in the way the air shifted.
March came closer—I heard the sound of his bare feet against the floor. Holy Hour, it was a miracle my legs hadn’t let go of me yet, and the suspense was slowly killing me still, but…it was alsovibrating.It was also giving me life.
He stopped right behind me, close enough that if I leaned back, I would touch his chest. Hisnakedchest.
Fingertips on the sides of my waist, moving down,trailing the small of my back. March whispered something under his breath but my heart was beating in my ears, so I didn’t hear it. His fingers on my skin were all I could focus on.
