Hard Rules (Page 25)

“You know the answer.”

“You’ll stop what you aren’t even doing yet.”

“And I won’t either, if you don’t shut your eyes again.”

The look she fixes me with is fierce, as are her words. “I hate you right now,” she declares, and she shuts her eyes.

“Angry sex,” I approve. “Sounds good to me.” I loosen my tie and walk to a table, folding it and setting it on top, reaching for the top button on my shirt, but a master at forcing my own control, I decide not to undress.

Instead, I grab a chair and carry it with me, setting it in front of her. Close. Really damn close the way I want her body to mine, but I don’t touch her. I want her to feel me looking at her, wanting her, planning every place I intend to lick and touch. Her breasts, with her sexy, rose-colored nipples puckered into tight balls. Her flat trembling belly. Her naked sex that will know my tongue sooner than later and then finally, her lovely, heart-shaped face, where her teeth worry her bottom lip. And what I see in her is exactly what I’m after. Nervous excitement. Arousal.

“Shane,” she whispers, telling me I’ve taken her to the edge, where I want her.

“Open your eyes,” I order, and the moment she blinks and finds me sitting in front of here, I cup her backside and lift her into my lap, straddling me, the angle forcing her weight onto the railing.

“Shane,” she hisses, panic in her voice. “Damn it. What if the glass breaks?”

It’s the reaction I’d expected, and it ensures she is one hundred percent here with me. “Easy, sweetheart,” I murmur, my hand flattening on her belly. “It’s reinforced and there’s horizontal steel bands supporting it.” I look her in the eyes, letting her see the certainty I instill in my voice. “But I have you and I won’t let you go.”

“You’re sure.”

“One hundred percent.” I soften my voice. “Relax.”

She inhales and then exhales, and with that breath, I feel the tension in her body ease. I lean over her and press my mouth to the spot between her breasts, cupping one of them, and I have no doubt my stare smolders as I pin her with it. “Trust me.”

Now she shuts her eyes of her own accord, as if that word is not one she can process as a possibility. She confirms much of what I’ve pieced together about her life. Someone hurt her. Someone made her vow not to trust. Holy fuck, I get it. Too well and I understand fully that my path to trust with this woman is earned. What I don’t understand is why it matters so much to me. I could be fucking her now. I could have fucked her five times over.

I finger her nipple, softly at first, and then rougher, tugging and teasing. Soft sounds of pleasure slide from her parted lips, her body arching toward my touch. She is all but panting, telling me she is as on edge as I am. My mouth finds that spot between her breasts again, trailing over the curve of her breast, toward her nipple. Her head tilts back into the light wind, with no regard for her weight on the wall any longer. Holding her between the shoulders with one hand, the other anchoring her hip, I lower my head to lick one nipple, and then the next, sucking in the same order.

“Shane,” she pleads again, and damn if I don’t like how my name sounds on this woman’s lips. What I want now is her quaking uncontrollably.

Caressing down her hips, my hands glides over her belly, to the V of her body, my index finger flicking her clit. More of those sexy sounds slip from her throat and I move lower, exploring the slick, wet seam of her body until she is squirming. Then, and only then do I slip two fingers inside her and maneuver the chair and our bodies to bring my mouth to her belly, and lick a path toward my fingers.

My mouth lingers where she and I both want it to be, one second, two—

“Shane, damn it,” Emily breathes out.

My lips curve and I lick her clit and then suck deeply, losing myself in the sweet, salty taste of her, licking here and there, and everywhere, my fingers pumping against the rocking of her hips. Too soon, she stiffens, her body tightening around my fingers, her entire body trembling a moment later. I ease the licks into soft caresses, my fingers to gentle strokes, until she collapses, the tension in her body turning to soft, limp satisfaction.

That is until reality has her eyes going wide. “The glass. I’ll fall.”

I answer by flattening my hand at her back and lifting her from the wall to sit fully on top of me, my palm moving the back of her head to drag her mouth to mine. “Now I taste like you,” I proclaim, my lips slanting over hers, my tongue stroking deep, letting her taste my hunger mixed with that sweet, salty mix of her arousal.

Her hands come down on my shoulders, and I know the moment she realizes she can touch me now, her fingers flexing, her tongue stroking more fully against mine. She leans forward, and one of her hands finds my hair, gripping it, not teasing it. “You have to get undressed,” she announces, and suddenly she leans back, grabs the top of my shirt above my buttons and yanks, to zero result.

She pales, and looks appalled, blood rushing to her otherwise pale cheeks. “In my mind that went much differently.”

I stare at this woman who truly defies everything I expect from a woman, a smile playing on my lips. “Not as you planned?”

“My secret’s out. I’m not exactly what anyone would call a seductress.”

“I like you just the way you are,” I say, the rage of my body, wiping away my smile. She turns somber.

“You don’t even know me.”