Текст книги "Playing with Fire "
Автор книги: Kate Meader
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Crystal Ballroom at the Knickerbocker Hotel exuded all the grandeur and glamour of 1920s Chicago. A gilded domed ceiling shone above crystal chandeliers, each one dripping with opulence the likes of which Alex had only seen in magazines or on TV. This was not her scene at all.
But it was most definitely Eli’s. The room was filled with arrogant lawyers, top cops, city dignitaries, and Chicago’s glitterati. These were his people, he was their god made flesh, and while everyone looked great in a tux, no one looked as born to this dazzling world as the man at her side.
Thankfully, she didn’t have to move too much in her heels—everyone came to pay homage to the mayor. He made a point to include her in every introduction, and if someone barely acknowledged her or dismissed her with a cutting glance, that someone very quickly fell out of favor with Chicago’s most powerful man. The conversation would sputter and die, and the offender would shrink away in confusion, unsure of what he’d done to merit the mayor’s silent censure. Through all the bowing and scraping, Eli kept his hand glued to her waist, the heat of his palm a brand on her sensitized skin through the barely there silk. All these people vying for his attention, and Eli’s focus was singularly on Alex.
The woo was strong with this one.
After another forty-five minutes of “Mr. Mayor, I need thirty seconds of your time,” Alex’s eyes wandered to the beautifully set tables, willing the dinner gong to sound (or however these people announced the arrival of the real food). The tiny, albeit delicious, hors d’oeuvres of crab and avocado were not cutting it, and if she grabbed the third glass of champagne calling her name, she might start to get sloppy.
And then her stomach growled, because she was all class.
Eli turned away from a bouffanted woman who was complaining about dog poop problems in the Streeterville and squeezed Alex’s waist. “Hungry?”
“Oh, God, no, my stomach is always this chatty.”
The killer dimple popped in to say howdy. “Let’s get you something decent to eat.” With a polite smile, he abandoned the dog poop lady and headed toward the tables.
Everyone followed. Now that was power right there.
The seating was boy-girl-boy, so she found herself with Eli on her right and the police commissioner on her left. Over the appetizers of one measly prawn and an oyster mushroom sculpted to look like a flower—uh, really?—the commissioner’s wife voiced her fascination that Alex was “showing those men how it was done.” On her other side, the commish made conversation with Alex’s breasts before switching his attentions to the almost comparable rack of the woman to his left. Eli was busy schmoozing, so Alex took a moment to enjoy the relative peace of not having to make stilted conversation with anyone.
Her clutch, sitting on the table, started to dance. With a quick glance to ensure no one was looking, she pulled it to her lap and extracted her phone.
It was from TSN. Or The Sex Ninja, as she had rechristened Eli in her contacts.
Are we boring you?
She texted back: More like starving me.
He leaned in, his breath hot against her cheek, his scent like a drug. “You ate your first course too fast. I prefer when you linger over each juicy morsel.”
“As it was barely enough to satisfy a chicklet, lingering was never an option. And since when am I here for your entertainment?”
“Since I entertained you awhile back.” He smirked. “Twice, if I recall correctly.”
Heated remembrance flushed her body. “Nobody likes smug, Mr. Mayor.”
“I think you like me any way you can have me. You’re just too damn stubborn to admit it.” His words whispered across her skin and then his knuckles followed suit, glancing over Darcy’s tattoo of Logan’s name. Alex had noticed he took every opportunity to touch her since he’d picked her up at her house. Know what else she noticed? That she loved every second of it. The last few weeks without his attention had left her craving those magic digits of his in a seriously bad way.
“Fairly sure that like is a word I will never use when thinking about you, Eli.”
His wicked mouth moved closer to her ear. He breathed her in, and just that inhale, like he needed her scent to keep him sane through the madness of his life, was enough to set her body vibrating with need. “I’ve been subsisting on memories these last two weeks, Alexandra. The sounds you made when you came, the grip of your soft, wet flesh around my fingers. I’d say like is a rather tame word for what’s happening between us, don’t you think?”
Holy. Wow.
She was saved from having to answer—as if she had any possible coherent response to those erotically charged words—when the entrées arrived. As the mayor’s plus one, she was served first, and she was glad of the chance to quell her thundering pulse and enjoy some sorely needed relief from his unrelenting potency.
“Now, savor every bite, Alexandra. I want to feel your enjoyment.”
Mmm. Time for a little payback in the tease department. Once assured that everyone else was occupied oohing and aahing over the beautiful presentation of the entrées—lamb, which Alex adored—she dipped her finger into the rich sauce drizzled over it and sucked. Slowly.
A touch obscene, she suspected.
A graveled growl sounded to her right. Definitely a touch obscene.
She faced him and bit down on her lip, all innocence. “Did you feel my enjoyment, Eli?”
“Acutely, you witch.” He placed his phone on the table, and her gaze was drawn to the bright screen’s message thread. Another smile gathered pace inside her.
“Thorn? What happened to Splinter?”
“You got an upgrade.” That devil mouth curved in faux resignation. “I suppose I’m still an anonymous string of digits in yours.”
“A girl’s gotta keep her secrets.” She popped her phone back into her clutch, ensuring she powered it off first so he wouldn’t see the nickname she’d given him. That gorgeous head was already big enough. “Now hush with the barely adequate flirting, and let me eat in peace.”
His laugh drew the stares of their dining companions, and her ovaries went kaboom. He tangled a finger in her curls, held it there for a beat, and let go on a sigh.
During the dessert course—a milk chocolate torte with hazelnut and violet (delish, but so tiny)—the police commissioner rapped a mic to begin his speech. Behind him, a large photograph of Weston Cooper faded in as if projected from the heavens. His image had been a prominent fixture during every news story about Eli at the last election. Now Cooper Senior—or Coop as the commissioner referred to him—stared out at the audience from beyond the grave, the spitting image of the man beside her.
“Coop was one of the finest men I knew,” the commissioner was saying. “Would give you the shirt off his back, the dime in his pocket, his last cigar.”
As he droned on about the sainted Coop, Alex’s gaze slid to Eli, or more accurately Eli’s right hand. As the commissioner’s speech ramped up, Eli’s grip on the steak knife handle he’d been holding tightened. To the point that she worried he might squeeze it into matchsticks.
She leaned in. “We okay?”
He turned, and what she saw pinned her back: undiluted disgust. His irises had darkened so much they swallowed all the blue. Blinking, he dropped the knife, its clatter against the plate enough to pull him back to being the charmer the world knew.
“Just fine.”
“And now to accept the first Weston Cooper Justice Award, Mayor Eli Cooper.”
Amid thunderous applause, Eli turned to Alex and gave her a brief wink before heading toward the podium, his progress slowed by the claps on his back and outstretched hands he shook on his way up. He was right—cops loved him. Once on the dais, he clasped hands with the commissioner and turned the glass trophy, shaped like a scale (for justice, Alex assumed) over in his hand. Clearly, a speech was expected, yet Eli merely stared at the award for several uncomfortable moments.
“A few words, perhaps, Mr. Mayor?” It took this interjection from the commish and nervous titters from the audience to drag Eli back from wherever he had gone. He let out a good-natured chuckle and seemed to compose himself as he began to speak.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a privilege and a pleasure to be here with you this evening. The Chicago Police Department is a stellar example of men and women protecting and serving our great city, and sacrificing their safety for the better good of our citizens.” He looked at the award again. “Unlike the brave Chicago police officers, as well as the other remarkable first responders who put their lives on the line every day . . .” His gaze sought out Alex when he said that. “My father didn’t go to work expecting that any particular day might be his last. Wearing a suit and making speeches for a living isn’t the noblest or most dangerous of professions, as I’m sure every lawyer—or politician—in this room will tell you.” The crowd laughed at the jibe. Eli’s smile was patient. Phony.
Something felt really off about this.
“But he got caught up in something beyond his control and he paid the price for it. He would be very pleased that his name is being carried on with this award. He was a great believer in justice.”
He arced his gaze over the room. “Thank you.”
The commissioner’s wife was a lovely woman, but if she didn’t stop talking very soon, Eli was going to fly into a murderous rage.
“. . . Your father was so generous with his time. It always amazed me considering the long hours he worked, but come Thanksgiving, he was the first to sign up for the homeless shelter lunch . . .”
His father had never been one to resist a photo opportunity, all credits he was storing away for that mayoral run he planned to make. Eli’s gaze wandered to the award on the table. Its glass glinted, the little sparks of light like shards in his eye.
“. . . Sara would have made a wonderful mayor’s wife. She was Bill and Elizabeth Cantor’s daughter, wasn’t she? Of the Lake Forest Cantors?”
His mother had been North Shore royalty who married down when she fell in love with an idealistic young law student at the University of Chicago. The tone was clear. Alexandra Dempsey was no Sara Cantor Cooper. With her unkempt curls, vibrant tattoos, and exotic skin tone (Is she Middle Eastern? Eli had overheard at the next table), his date was not mayoral wife material. She wasn’t even mayoral date material. But he wasn’t looking for anything beyond a mutually beneficial arrangement. Both in and out of bed.
She had left a few moments ago to visit the restroom and he was already antsy, his fingers itching to stroke her golden skin and twine her unruly hair. Just keep her near. It made no sense, but having this firecracker of a woman by his side tonight was about the only thing getting him through. During the speech, he had come close to smashing that award to the floor and screaming the truth about Weston Cooper. Letting the world know that his father wasn’t the hero everyone thought he was. Just the opposite, in fact.
A fraud. A criminal.
Seeing her out there, watching him with those big green eyes, had calmed him. Alexandra Dempsey as therapy. Go figure.
And he needed his next fix. Scanning the room, he found her standing over at the bar, talking to—Christ, that motherfucker Michael Martinez. Protectiveness lashed over Eli with such violence it shocked him to his core. He could tell from the change in her body language that she and the good detective weren’t merely shooting the breeze about the Hawks’ latest debacle on the ice.
Just as Eli was about to walk over and make a damn fool of himself, Alexandra left Martinez and headed his way. That she was pissed to all hell was as clear as the crystal chandeliers above their heads, and her ire added an extra tilt to the sexy switch of her hips.
She came to a stop, fists clenched, her entire body an ode to barely tethered control. Predictably, his cock jumped to attention. She refused to make it easy and he loved it.
“I’m leaving now.”
“We haven’t danced yet.” He stood and covered her fist with his hand.
“I don’t want to dance,” she grated.
“Just one, honey, then I’ll take you home.”
He led her to the dance floor and gathered her in his arms. Already a warship of a woman, in heels she stood almost as tall as him, yet her body slotted in perfectly with his. She rested her palm lightly on his shoulder, barely touching him, just the minimum necessary to get her through the next three minutes. She couldn’t avoid his chest, though. The heat of those breasts, the ones he had sucked deep and dreamed about for months, lit a fire inside him.
Come fly with me . . .
Couples swayed quietly on the dance floor to Tony Bennett’s croon. It was all so polite, the last word he’d use to describe the woman in his arms.
“So what did Detective Martinez have to say for himself?”
“You know very well. You threatened to fire him if he didn’t end our date.”
He affected a bored sigh. “Actually, I told him if he laid a finger on you I’d beat him down to traffic cop.” He drew back to look at her. “I can do that, you know.”
Those green eyes flashed. “How can you be so high-handed about it? How. . . why would you even do that?”
“Because he wasn’t right for you.”
“Who are you to say who’s right for me?” She palmed his shoulder, pushing, but he retained his hold at the small of her back. “How dare you use your power like that?”
“You’re happy for me to use my power to solve your Cochrane problem.”
“Oh, you mean the blackmail-me-into-fake-dating-you scheme? You can forget about it. I’d hate to think what else you’d demand of me in return. How you’d use it to get some advantage. Because that’s all I am to you—a means to an end.”
The timer on the bomb in his brain did what it had been resisting for three weeks: it finally hit zero.
“Goddamn it, Alexandra, I’ve been clamping down on every muscle in my body trying not to take advantage of you. I only have to think of you and I’m as hard as steel. I only have to see you and my mouth waters, remembering what you tasted like and how wet I made you.” He squeezed her hand and pressed her body against his subtly, showing her exactly how he felt. “I only have to stand inches away from you to imagine the sheer ecstasy of burying my cock deep inside you.”
Remembering where he was, he lowered his voice to a strained whisper. “You want to know why I told Martinez to dump you? Because I overheard him talking to someone about how you were falling out of that dress, how great your tits were, and how he couldn’t wait to get you on your knees. He was so damn disrespectful he’s lucky I didn’t break his nose on a urinal and flush his head down the toilet.”
Her mouth wobbled. “I—I can take care of myself. I didn’t ask for your defense.”
“I know. I know you’d never ask for it. In this case, I had information you weren’t privy to, so I made the call to remove him from play.”
“Oh, for my own good, I suppose.” Her growl traveled a straight line to his harder-by-the-second dick. “So you can talk about what you want to do to me, but—but he can’t?”
“My mind might be a cesspool when it comes to the things I’d like to do to you, Alexandra, but it’s a private cesspool. I’m not sharing it with my buddies. I’m not broadcasting it to the world, though anyone in this room could look at the two of us and understand exactly what we want from each other. The only person who needs to hear my plans is the woman who’ll be on the receiving end of every filthy, depraved thing I plan to do to her. Maybe you’re looking for a bad boy or a good guy. Well, you won’t find him in me. What you will find is a man who knows how to treat his woman.”
“You’re not playing fair,” she said. Moaned.
“Fuck fair. I’m a no-good, dirty, rotten bastard who knows what he wants and will fight like hell to get it. I’ll destroy anyone who says a word against you, who lays a hand upon you, who gets in my fucking way. But I won’t accept compromise. I won’t make the choice for you or allow you to use the circumstances—me looking handsome in my tux, you feeling gorgeous in that dress—to put any kind of gloss on this. I’m not promising you the fairy tale. I don’t believe in it. But if you come to me of your own free will and spend a night in my bed, I promise you won’t regret it. I will show you what it means to be worshipped.”
She was breathing heavily, the beautiful swells of her breasts lifting with her discomfort. He planned to make her a whole lot more uncomfortable.
He buried his nose in her neck, breathed her in. “You know that buzz you get through your skin when we’re together. Talking, bickering. Just being. I know this crazy chemistry between us spins your insides like it does mine. But I won’t push you anymore. You know what I want.”
“Tell me.”
Christ, she was killing him.
Killing. Him.
“You, in my bed, begging me to take you somewhere you’ve never been. Screaming my name. Coming all over my cock. That’s what I want. If you decide that you don’t want to explore this, it will wound my pride, but I promise that I’ll absolve you of all duty to my campaign. I won’t talk to you, text you, interact with you in any way except for what’s necessary to protect you from Sam Cochrane. This decision is yours, Alexandra. It will always be yours. You don’t have to say a word now. In fact, I like the idea of you being stunned speechless because you’re going to use these moments of quiet to think about it.”
She looked at him as if he had just escaped an asylum for the criminally insane.
“Th-think about it?”
“C’mon.” He steered her back to the table to pick up her purse and wrap, then through the ballroom to the exit. People tried to stop him and talk, but he ignored them. He had their vote, and even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter.
“Eli, what are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, just kept an eye on the straight line to the door. There were probably a million places he could take her—a hotel suite, a conference room, a damn closet—but that’s not how it would go down. Not tonight.
Outside, he found Tom, who had signaled for the cars to be pulled around. Eli shucked his jacket, caped Alexandra’s shoulders, and steered her toward the town car.
She stared at him, astonished. Any other time, he’d be enjoying it, but he was too wound up.
He opened the back door. “The driver will take you anywhere you want.”
“That’s it?”
“I’m taking the SUV home with my security detail. The drive’s about twenty minutes and I’ll wait another half hour. If you arrive before that time is up, I won’t get drunk and I won’t try to manage my hard-on by myself.”
Her brow knitted. “What the hell are you playing at, Eli?”
“If I get in the back of that car with you now, I will fuck you, Alexandra. Have no doubt. I’ll kiss your breasts and suck your nipples and lick between your insanely gorgeous thighs. You’re so damn responsive that I’ll have you coming in seconds and begging me for more.”
“Now wait a—”
He brushed his mouth across hers, needing a little something to tide him over. Her indignation tasted so damn sweet and he prayed it wasn’t the last time he would have it on his lips. “I need you to sit in the car for a while. Inhale a breath. Call a friend. Take the time I’m giving you.”
“And if I’m not there?”
He could feel a pained smile shaping his lips. Lake swimming was lovely this time of year, but he doubted even those icy depths would have any impact on his raging boner.
“Then I’ll be hungover tomorrow and hoping to God my serious case of blue balls doesn’t make me murderous during whatever campaign shit I have to deal with.”
He stepped back in the knowledge that if he didn’t leave now, the town car would soon be a-rockin’. As he turned, his last image was of his furious hellcat toeing her sexy heel and looking like a swift kick to the groin was in his future.
“You are a grade-A dick in the highest order of dicks, Eli Cooper.”
He battled a smile and called out over his shoulder, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Some days the supply of curse words was insufficient for her needs.
Alex peeled off the heels she was crap at wearing and set them beside her in the seat well of the town car. Wiggle, wiggle. Exposing her feet to the heated interior provided not nearly enough of a distraction from her tumble of thoughts, especially as the jacket she wore smelled of Eli. Another one of his nefarious moves, that knuckle-dragging shyster.
He might as well have raised his leg and peed all over her. She did not need his protection. She had overbearing brothers for that.
But for all his bossiness, for all his interfering know-it-allness, the connection between them was irrefutable. Like fire, it had no choice but to seek out oxygen. It needed it to exist. She wasn’t sure what point she was trying to make to her muddled mind, but she knew that his mouth on hers might help her catch her breath. His hands on her breasts and his fingers stroking between her thighs might help inflate her lungs. This man would be her personal self-contained breathing apparatus.
The things he had said to her on the dance floor, his laundry list of wicked wants: if that was the seduction, what the hell would the sex be like? On the other side was the stick: I won’t talk to you, text you, interact with you in any way. Could she stand to sever their connection and deny herself this pleasure? The very idea that her body—not her heart!—refused to let her walk away from this was troubling in itself. A woman in control should be able to toss off a ta-ta, loser and never look back, right?
She thought back to Kinsey’s words about separating out the orgasms and just enjoying the (cock) ride. Easier said than done. Could she make it as easily done as said? Time to see if she was as kick-ass as she claimed to be.
Finally, Eli’s SUV pulled up outside his house. (So she’d headed straight to Lincoln Park and beaten him by five minutes—he was not the boss of her.) Slipping her feet back into their high-heeled prisons, Alex opened the town car door and, less than gracefully, clambered out into the biting January chill. No going back now. The windows of Eli’s car were dark tinted, so she couldn’t see him, but it only enhanced the cloak-and-dagger nature of it all. Not that she needed extra thrills with Eli—on the anticipation scale of one to ten, everything was turned up to eleven with him. He excited her like no man she had ever met.
The passenger-side door opened, and a long, suited leg stepped out followed by the body of the hottest guy on the planet. He saw. He froze. His lips moved and then he moved, stalking toward her with terrifying purpose. She backed up one step but he was on her in a flash, his hands curving around her face, his mouth hot and needy.
“You’re here,” he whispered between all-consuming kisses.
“Of course I’m here,” she said. He tasted of fire and longing. It intoxicated, overwhelmed, and affirmed she had made the right call. “Did you really think you could scare me off with your daytime Emmy reel submission of ridiculous ultimatums?”
He quirked a relieved grin, and that he had actually entertained doubts that she might come touched her deeply. “I thought you’d do what you were told and take the time to think it through. Be sure.”
She splayed her hands on his broad chest. His tie was undone, as was the top button of his shirt. She had plans for the rest of those buttons.
“I want you, Eli.” She swallowed down the lump of vulnerability threatening to ruin her ’tude. “And thirty minutes or whatever buffer you thought was necessary was just another thirty minutes I couldn’t spend naked with you.”
He closed his eyes at that, like she had said the most perfect thing.
A cough sliced through the dark. “Mr. Mayor.”
Eli touched his forehead to hers, almost in apology. “There are some things that need to happen first, honey. Security things.”
“Oh.” Over his shoulder, Thing hovered, his face like a rusted-over lock. Eli pulled her aside to let the man pass.
“He needs to check the house first.” Enthusiastic my-master’s-home barks echoed from the house as Thing opened the door. “And then Shadow needs to be walked.” Eli looked annoyed, and while she wasn’t annoyed, it made her nervous. Any delay and she might pull a typical Alex Dempsey fuck-my-filter move and say something blatantly unsexy.
“Would it be better if we just got busy in the car?”
“Not a chance. We’re going to be classy and do it in a bed.”
Do it. She wanted to giggle like a schoolgirl. Eli steered her up the stoop and through the big oak door. Predictably, Shadow went nuts, but not on Eli. He jumped right on Alex like he was greeting an old friend.
“Whoa, boy!” She laughed, glad of the distraction and a chance to bury her trembling hands in something warm and soft—before she wrapped them around something hot and hard. Oh, God, she was as excited as this big old puppy.
“I’ve been replaced,” Eli said indulgently. “So fickle.”
“He’s just a fan of the new and shiny. Like all men.”
Thing descended the stairs. “All clear.”
Eli nodded and handed him Shadow’s leash.
This was not well received. “You know I can’t do that, Mr. Mayor. I can’t leave my post outside.” Embarrassment bracketed his mouth as his glance flicked over Alex with a look that said, “Not even so you can get laid.”
“Just up and down the block. Your partner is still outside and you’ll never have to take your eye off the house.”
“Mr. Mayor, this ain’t up for negotiation.”
“Tom,” Eli said in that authoritative tone Alex loved. “Have you met Miss Dempsey?”
Thing turned suspicious eyes on her. Grunted.
“Not only is this woman capable of hauling thirty pounds of equipment—”
“Forty.”
“Forty pounds of equipment up a gazillion flights of stairs. Not only can she save the lives of men twice her size before she’s had breakfast, but I would happily put my safety in her hands and trust that she could crush the nuts of anyone who tried to harm me.”
She pressed her lips together against a smile. That had to be the sexiest thing she had ever heard.
Eli laid a hand on the security guy’s arm. “Dog. Walk. Now. I’ll set the alarm and you can drop him off in ten minutes.”
Thing’s lips were set in a mulish line, but apparently there was a threshold to his insubordination, and he let Eli muscle him out the door.
“Eli,” Alex murmured, gesturing at what he’d forgotten.
He opened the door again, put the leash (now attached to dog) and a poop-bag in the hands of a stone-faced Thing, and sent Shadow out for his nightly walk. On shutting the door again, he breathed out a sigh of relief.
“It’s not easy being king.” Before she could respond, he had locked both of his hands in hers, dragged them up above her head, and covered her body with his hard, muscular one. “But I do so enjoy it very, very much.”
Then he ravaged her mouth royally. Holy mamacita, his kisses could cure world hunger. He could win gold at the Olympic Games of kissing. He—
A gentle rap on the door interrupted her crazy internal commentary. “I don’t hear the beep,” Thing muttered like a grumpy ghost from the other side.
Eli smiled against her mouth, released her, and entered some numbers on the panel to the left of her cheek. Beep.
He stood back and scrubbed a hand over his chin. “As tempting as it is to take you against this wall, I’ve been dreaming about this moment for some time and I want to do it right.” He held out a hand. “Come to bed with me, Alexandra.”
She took his hand, thinking hell yes, and something else far more terrifying.
If he kept asking nicely, she might just be willing to follow him anywhere.
The mayoral lair was cool grays and dark greens, very masculine, and oh so Eli. A full-length mirror stood sentry against the far wall. She giggled, unable to contain her nerves.
“What’s so funny?”
“Is that where you spend hours asking who’s the fairest of them all?”
“I like to do a daily check-in. Thirty minutes max,” he said good-humoredly. With a couple of clicks, the fire in the hearth sprang to life, the heat quickly spreading needed warmth over her goosefleshed skin.
He shaped his chest to her back and stood her in front of him facing the mirror. Eyes glued to hers, he slipped his tuxedo jacket off her shoulders and threw it over a nearby chair.
As usual, his intensity made her nervous, so she started babbling. “I still have the one you gave me the night of the fire.”
“Lucky jacket, draped all over this beautiful body.” He brushed his hands over her tattoos with something like reverence. She shivered. “Your ink does things to me, Alexandra.”
And you do things to me, Eli Cooper. Dangerous, yearning things. She blinked those treacherous thoughts away, scattering them to the four corners of the room. The clothes might be coming off, but the Kevlar would remain firmly in place around her heart.
He unzipped her dress, shrugged it from her shoulders, and peeled it down. She stepped out of it and he threw it over a chair. The fact that the last time they’d been in such close quarters he’d teased two orgasms from her within the span of three minutes should have created some semblance of self-confidence as she stood before him, yet she felt more exposed than ever in his towering presence.
“Not fair that I’m half naked and you’re fully dressed,” she pouted.
“It’s fair. It’s perfectly fair.”
He moved her hair aside and kissed her neck, tenderly, unfairly. His eyes never wavered from watching her in the mirror.
“Not fair,” she whispered.
Velvet kisses of worship trailed the top of her spine and followed a slow, sensual descent. With the back of his knuckled hand, he skimmed her flame-lit skin, leaving dancing sparks in the wake of every touch. The curve of her stomach, the side of her breast, the flare of her hip. The sensations were incredible.
“Not . . . fair.” She closed her desire-heavy eyelids and absorbed the unbearable eroticism of a man taking his time. The men she had been with before seemed so immature now compared to Eli.
But really, she didn’t want to miss a thing, so she dragged her eyes open. Avidly, she watched as he pulled his tie off and let it fall to the floor. Next his cuff links, which he placed on the dresser.
