Most likely he was going to make a run for it.
She even tried to head him off before he could—and then he cut in. He gave her a little scoffing laugh. “Give me a break. I could do that ten times over and not wear myself out,” he said, so casually and with such a note of eye roll in his voice that it felt like getting whiplash. She almost didn’t turn to look at him, in case it had done a number on her neck.
But in the end she had to.
It was important to see how serious he was before she said what she wanted to. And there it was, his expression half cut by darkness but still somehow clear as day.You must be fucking joking, it said. Like all he cared about was driving home his incredible sexual prowess.
“You fucking show-off.”
“It’s not really showing off if it’s a simple fact.”
“Oh, so you can just go all night, then, I suppose.”
“Of course I can. If someone wants me to.”
She tried to smother her reaction to that.
But she knew he had heard her breath catch.
It was the reason his gaze darkened. The reason he shifted a little, just like in the elevator. Like a hunter sensing prey, she thought, and knew she should be nervous, maybe even recoil. But then he said, “You like the sound of that, Em?”
And his voice was all low and rumbly. She felt his thumb stroke over her knuckles—practically an embrace from someone like him. Plus there was that thing, the thing on the end. The name he used for her, suddenly sliced down to something even more endearing than before.
It was very hard to fear.
Or even fight.
In fact she almost moaned ayes, and the only thing that stopped her wasn’t either of those two emotions. It was thinking of that scoreline. “I like the sound of doing something for you,” she said.
But all she got was an eye roll.
“Oh, what’s the matter, don’t like being in debt to a man you hate? Well, you’re not, because that’s not how it works. I mean, Jesus, you really think making a woman feel good in a way she never has before isn’t enough of a goal on its own? Like it’s not something I could just want for its own sake.”
“Well, you know, it’s not usually the case.”
“I can see that, considering how weird you seem to find this. Despite how often you must have just laid there, letting him have the thing he wants while you get nothing at all.” He shook his head, blew out a breath. Carried on before she could protest. “Did you ever think maybe you getting something you want, once, might be less of an unfair tip of the scales and more of a single drop on one sky-high end that doesn’t even shift them at all?”
“But what they did isn’tyourfault.”
“Maybe not. I love doing something about it all the same.”
She didn’t know when she’d started breathing hard.
But she definitely knew she was doing it now. It sounded loud in the tense silence that followed. Loud, and just a little shaky. And of course he knew what itmeant. Somehow he always knew, and yet never seemed to care. Never wanted to humiliate her for it.
The opposite, in fact.
“Yeah, that’s it. Let yourself love that feeling. Let yourself enjoy the idea that someone loves making you come. That maybe they’ve been imagining it all the way through dinner, through those movies. Ways to go about it, things you might like. Having you on your side, up against a wall, letting you ride me, me riding you. Maybe spreading your legs, getting between them, licking that slick little cunt,” he said, so deliberate about it there could only be one conclusion.
He wanted her to breathe even more unsteadily.
He wanted her to blush, and squirm, underneath the sheets.
And she did, she did. Even as that nervous part of her tried to protest, she did.
“You’re just saying things to make me not focus on the point.”
“Is it working?”
