“Sit.” He gestures to the coffee table behind me, and when I obey, he lifts my foot to his thigh. The pads of his fingers slip beneath my pants to skim my calf and ankle in a sensual audit before he unbuckles my heel and sets it neatly on the floor, repeating it all on the other side.
Goose bumps trail beneath his fingertips, and my breathing grows shallow. This simple act, even with its tenderness and precision, shouldn’t be so captivating, but I’m enamored by another glimpse of the Axel Noire very few see.
“Take off your shirt.” He’s so in control, but his strained, lust-drenched tenor delivering that betrays how undone he is.
A fire ignites inside me. I want to be the one to undo him, to test his resolve, to sever his last shred of restraint. I drag my top up in an excruciatingly slow sweep, so slothful that a growl rumbles from his chest as I near my breasts, and my pulse ratchets higher with a boastful victory lap.
Before I’ve even laid my blouse on the table beside me, he hums his approval. “So beautiful.” Again, it’s rough and hoarse and wanton. “Stunning, Zara.”
It’s then that I clock the awe in his expression, the wolfish glimmer in his stormy blues, the barely-hanging-on tint to his features. His gaze traces the outline of my lacy red bra with avid hunger. That voracious veneration sizzles in my every cell, a live wire of tension and thrill.
“Pants,” he says, and based on his untethered stance, it must be taking all his willpower not to rip them off me.
Though once I fiddle with the button and zipper, lifting my hips to slide them down, he does take over, peeling them off me with a litany of curses. He tosses them with my top and rubs his hand over his mouth, as if he’s at a loss for what to do with me.
“Breathtaking,” he murmurs. “I could just stare at you.”
I slant my head, my hair cascading down the side of my breast and my confidence burgeoning under the glow of his appraisal. “That sounds like torture.”
His eyes narrow. “Maybe you deserve to be tortured after going to dinner with Cash.”
“I’d tell you to punish me, Mr. Noire, but …” I flick my gaze to his erection, which is warring valiantly with his trousers, before I flash a coquettish grin, not wanting the mood to be sullied. “I don’t think I’d be the only one tortured.”
His lips curl ever so slightly at the corners, and a splash of obscene fantasies twinkles in his eyes. “There are ways around that.”
Since we’re discussing a penance for my offense, it’s on the tip of my tongue to rebuke him for suggesting I marry a mobster, but I think, I hope, I need to believe that he wouldn’t have been able to let me do it. That even if this is only one night, handing me over to someone would be inconceivable.
Delusions are like a weighted blanket, and I find myself seeking that comforting cocoon more and more with this man.
Even if his marriage suggestion was authentic, I won’t derail this moment by revisiting it. And if he feels even a fraction of the connection I do, accepting a dinner invite from Cash was a brutal wound I was wrong to inflict.
He elevates my legs to bracket his thighs and glides the coffee table closer so I’m right where he wants me. In a blink, he has my breast cupped in his large hand and his teeth issuing a piercing reminder of my transgression through the lace of my bra.
Even through the fabric, his touch is magical. Branding. Like he’s reaching somewhere deeper, somewhere fresh. He’s only focusing on my breasts, but I feel him everywhere. A flutter seizes my stomach. Heat pools in my panties. A twinge needles my bones. His eyes hitch to mine as he sinks into my sensitive nipple again, and an unbidden whimper blasts out of me.
I hiss, and he sucks. He bites, and I buck.
Knead and nip and soothe and sting.
Pain is a balm for my battered soul, a reminder that I’m human, that my last breath has yet to come. And his bestowing it is restorative. Even if its intent is punishment.
I’ve never wanted to please someone more. To be accepted and understood and forgiven.
To be his.
That’s not on the table, but …
“It wasn’t really … it wouldn’t have gone anywhere.” It’s not quite an apology, but it’s all my flustered mind can manage.
“Why?” he growls against my skin, and it drips with the unhinged vulnerability he tamps down so well.
“Because of you,” I whisper, wondering if this is a mistake, if he’ll view me as one of his many groupies who worships the idea of him, the mirage of what being with a Noire would be like, without ever seeing the complex man who carries the world andsacrifices so much of himself. Or if he’ll believe that I’m using this as another means to execute my mission. None of that is true. But I’m willing to risk it if there’s a chance he’ll grasp how much he already means to me, so I tack on, “Because I wanted this.”
“Good answer,” he praises as the clasp on my bra bursts apart, and the lingerie floats down my arms, leaving my breasts bare to him, cooled from the lingering touch of his mouth. He snatches the garment and places it with my clothes. And in what appears to be a reward for my honesty, he skates his knuckle over my silk panties as his other hand splays over the small of my back, keeping me where he wants me. “So wet for me.”
Wetis not an apt descriptor for what I am. Niagara Falls maybe. And we’ve only just begun. It seems excessive. It certainly is for me. By the part of his lips and his intense glare, I’d say he approves though.
I arch into his touch, pleading for more, and he taunts me, testing various pressures, riling me up, only to withhold as I grow closer to my peak. And I know he intends to evoke a level of torment, to be the one in control, to determine when I touch him or whether I stay put, but I scoot into his lap anyway. I work best on instincts. And I need him. My arms hook around his neck, and our faces are so close.
