I felt a set of eyes on me and turned. Colson was speaking to someone—a man I didn’t recognize—but his stare was on me. And because I knew that gaze from Lush, I knew he was mentally undressing me.
I forced myself to look at Troy. “You’re asking me to give in.”
“I’m asking you to be reasonable.”
I smiled at my friend. “Troy, you know that’s not who I am.”
“Will you make an exception?”
I glanced at Colson again. Why did he have to be so devilishly sexy?
“Sophie?”
I sighed, fixing my stare on my friend. “Damn it, I’ll think about it.”
NINE
COLSON
Ineeded to get out this anger. I needed a fucking release. With Ellie at her mom’s and Walker finalizing the new menu for Horned, having us come to his house tomorrow for the last round of tasting, I had an evening with nothing on my schedule.
There was only one place I wanted to go.
The scent of Lush was already filling my nose before I even walked through the door—that was how badly I had been anticipating the night. And once I was inside, my back against the edge of the bar, holding a tumbler of icy liquor while I scanned the room, I felt electric. My skin tingled as the beat of the music passed across me. The waiting, the expectation drumming through me as I visually hunted.
Who?
Where?
How would tonight look?
Those questions were suddenly answered, my eye-stalking coming to a screeching halt the moment my gaze landed on her.
Sophie Rivers, what are you doing here?
I was sure she hadn’t seen me. She was tucked in a pocket of the bar, holding the stem of her martini, looking more gorgeous than ever. The anger I’d seen at the gala several days ago was missing from her beautiful expression. What I saw instead, as she focused on the top of her glass, was a longing so deep that my dick hardened.
Fuck.
This bar was overflowing with women. It wouldn’t take more than a few seconds to link fingers with one, flash her a smile, and lead her down a hallway filled with endless sexual possibilities.
But none of them could satisfy the craving I had to feel Sophie’s submissive, naked body beneath mine. To watch her swirl her tongue around the barbells that pierced the crown of my dick. To have my ears full of her aggressive screams.
I downed my drink and set the empty on the bar top and moved toward the outside of the horseshoe-shaped area, the route taking me the long way, which I wanted. The tease was all part of the game. As soon as I reached the halfway point, I began to smell her. The citrus nagged at my nose, reminding me of the way the lime had clung to the inside of her thighs when I licked them. How the orange was the strongest behind her ear, a spot so soft and sensitive.
She never looked up as I got closer, her eyes staying on the liquor as though it were talking to her. So, when I stood behind her, my fingers fisting and straightening, deciding what I was going to do with them, I assumed she didn’t know I was here.
I stretched my arms across either side of her, caging her between them, and my hands landed on the bar before I leanedmy chest into her back. It was a risk, considering how much she hated me, but this was Lush. She was here to be touched.
“Have you been waiting for me?” I whispered into her ear.
Her body tightened from the sound of my voice, her muscles—at least the ones I could feel—contracted.
“That’s why you came, isn’t it, Sophie? You want my mouth.”
“Colson—”
“Whatever you’re going to say, save it. You’ve been fighting me nonstop since you walked into the Daltons’ office. Don’t you—even for a second—want to have that fight taken away? Have it fucked from your body?” My lips went to her neck, but I didn’t press down; I let them hang in the air, but when I said, “What happens here doesn’t leave here,” my breath was hitting her skin.
