He didn’t move; his chest didn’t even rise and fall on ragged breaths. Like hers did.
“So you’re wrong,” she said, surrendering to her earlier need and reaching for him. His hand shot out, quick as a snake, and encircled her wrist, his grip firm but not bruising. The dominance of his hold throbbed low in her belly. Her heart thudded against her sternum, but not in fear. Excitement. Need. They both streamed through her, one a sizzling current, the other fierce and liquid hot.
Testing him—pushing him—she lifted her other hand, cupping his face and half expecting him to evade her. But he didn’t. He remained still, rigid. Yet, he let her hand mold to the blade of his jaw and the hollow of his cheek. The bristle of his five o’clock shadow abraded her skin, and she logged it as another sensory memory to hoard and savor.
“I know you better than anyone else. More than the people who only see what you permit them to. More than the brothers who left you to fix what was so broken. More than the women you’ve allowed to touch your body.” She traced the curve of his bottom lip with her fingertips. “Does that scare you, Josh?”
She deliberately used the shortened version of his name, increasing the charged intimacy snapping between them like a loose live wire.
With a low rumble, he cuffed her other hand, trapping it against his mouth. His teeth sank into the fleshy heel of her palm, and her groan rolled out of her, unbidden and unrestrained. The flick of his tongue against the same flesh, as if soothing it of the tiny sting, drew another moan from her, this one softer...hungrier.
“No, you don’t scare me, Sophie,” he said, nipping again at her. “Because that would mean you had the power to hurt me. And I don’t trust you enough to give you that power.” Tugging on her wrist, he eliminated the negligent amount of space separating them, and she shivered as her breasts crushed his chest, her thighs pressed against his. His erection nestled against her belly. Whatever air remained in her lungs evaporated into vapor at the evidence of his arousal. For her. All for her. “But I want you. As much of a goddamn idiot it makes me, I want to fuck you until your voice is raw from screaming my name. Until you come around me, squeezing me so hard that my dick is bruised. Until my body aches from giving both of us what we need.”
Oh. God. Each erotic word stuck her like tiny blows, her sex clenching over and over. Begging for the carnal image he drew. Pleading to be filled, taken, branded. She trembled, harder this time, thankful for the hard body and grips on her hands that held her up.
But doubts and threads of fear wound their way through the fiercely pounding desire. If she were smart, if she’d truly learned from the past, she would halt this...this thing with Joshua before it went any further. At the very least, she could be in danger of losing her job for a serious conflict of interest if anyone found out about this. But not even her career trumped the very real terror of being that woman she’d been with Laurence. Her love for him had turned her into someone she hadn’t known, dependent on his approval, his affection, his attention. She’d almost lost everything over him—her career, her future, herself.
She wasn’t in love with Joshua, though. The lust turning her into this clawing, biting sexual creature demanding to be satisfied was unprecedented, but that was physical. Chemical. Not emotional.
As long as she kept her fickle, hardheaded heart out of this, she could give her body what it craved and protect herself.
“One night,” she said, almost wincing at the note of desperation in her voice. And how he, again, went still, that multihued stare boring into her. But neither made her rescind the condition. “One night,” she repeated. “No strings. No expectations. Just two people beating back their demons together.”
God, why had she said that last part? It revealed too much.
And Joshua didn’t ignore it. Releasing her wrists, he cupped the nape of her neck with one hand and cradled her hip with the other. Holding her. Steadying her. And because it would be only for the night, she allowed herself to lean into his strength. To depend on it.
“You have demons, Sophie?” he murmured, his gaze roaming her face as if already searching out the answer for himself rather than trust her to give an honest answer to him.
Smart man.
“Don’t we all?” she countered, and it would’ve been flippant if not for the rasp betraying the power of hers.
“I’ll exorcise them,” he growled, pulling her impossibly closer. “We’ll exorcise them together.”
His mouth crushed hers.
On a whimper, she willingly, eagerly parted her lips for the sweet and wild invasion of his tongue. Impatiently twisted hers around his, dueling, parrying, meeting him thrust for thrust, stroke for stroke. With her hands free, she fisted the lapels of his tuxedo jacket, not caring that she was wrinkling the clothes that no doubt had cost thousands. Nothing mattered except the taste of him, the power of him, the raw passion he whipped to a frenzy in her.
Greedy for more, she rose to her tiptoes, the stilettos she still wore aiding in the endeavor. She opened wider for him, silently demanding he take more, give her more. The hand on her nape shifted upward, tunneling through her hair, twisting, tugging. Tiny pinpricks danced across her scalp, and every one of them echoed
