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His eyes smolder with amber heat that’s melted the icy condemnation of the past. I hated the ice. I love the fire. I lovehim. He catches my hand, leads me out of the elevator, and I’m relieved to find his room a short walk to our immediate left. We stop at his door and nerves flutter in my belly as if I haven’t spent hours with him this very night, as if what happens next will be our first time together. He doesn’t give me time to live inside those nerves though. He pulls me in front of him, his big body behind mine, and even with my coat on I am aware of every inch of hard muscle pressing against me, promising wicked dirty deeds to follow.
He opens the door, and when I would dart into the room, he holds onto me, keeps me with him, and walks me forward while he stays at my back. It’s a power play, one he does well, one that is remarkably arousing, considering how valuable control is to me.
The door slams shut, and I think he locks it, but I can’t be sure. I don’t even try to turn around. There’s too much for me to see, andI wonder if he thinks the same of me. We’re swimming in an ocean, but we’re trying to hide in the sunshine of our passion.
We both know it. Oh, we know it so very well.
He eases us forward into the room and then shifts behind me. His jacket lands on a desk in the living room to my right. Already he’s dragging mine off my shoulders, holding onto me as he drops my coat on top of his.
He catches the hem of my T-shirt, dragging it over my head. It’s barely hit the floor when his hands are on my breasts and he’s leaning forward, his lips at my ear. “Do you feel me the way I feel you, Harper?” he asks, his breath a warm fan on my neck that still manages to shiver down my spine. His lips are a whisper of a touch like his words at my ear.
The words, the feelings he describes, would read undefinable to most, but not to me. We’re in the moment, we’re lost and found together. We’re enemies, lovers, friends. We’re hello and goodbye. We are so many things we may never fully understand. And that’s what he means.That’swhat he feels
“You know I do,” I say, my voice raspy, affected, my hands covering his hands.
“Are you sure about that?”
I’m not afraid anymore, no longer hiding from what lurks in the shadows of my mind. “Let me turn around and ask me again when you’re looking at me.”
“I’m not ready for you to turn around,” he says, tilting my head back and bringing our lips together. “I was never ready for you.” I’d insist the opposite was true, but he doesn’t give me the chance. “What am I feeling, Harper?”
I say what comes to me, and I don’t think before I say it out loud. “Resistant.”
He goes still, utterly still, and then he’s turning me to face him, his hands shackling my waist. “Resistant to what?”
“Me. Us. This.”
Seconds tick by, heavy beats, his handsome face all shadows and stone, unreadable, seemingly impenetrable but I don’t need to see what I already feel. What I know is happening between us. And that’s resistance.
Abruptly he moves, his fingers sliding into the long strands of my hair and twining, almost roughly, as if he’s angry with me or maybe with himself. His mouth slams down on mine, a wicked claiming, all consuming, and just that easily, he owns me, I can’t stop it fromhappening. I don’t know if I really even try. “Does that taste like resistance?”
“It tastes like you claiming control, like you need it.”
His hand slides under my sweats and he squeezes my bare backside. “I seem to remember you liking me in control.”
“I do,” I dare. “I like it a lot when I shouldn’t.”
“Why shouldn’t you, Harper?”
“It’s not what I do. I don’t let other people take control of me or my life, not even my pleasure. That’s not what my father taught me, but it is what this family, the Kingston family, taught me. Because they take and take and take some more.”
“I’m not a Kingston.”
He’s right. For the first time since he’s denied that birthright, I let him. I understand now that it’s not about what he deserves. It’s about who he is, who he’s become. Where he came from. “Exactly. You’re a Mitchell and I like that about you.”
Shadows play in his eyes, a storm in their depths before he’s kissing me again and it’s wild, taut with emotion, demanding. He’s demanding, and when I’ve just lost myself to the passion, his mouth is gone, and he’s tugging his shirt over his head. He tosses it and his hands slip under my sweats at my hips and in a blink I’m naked, so very naked with this man, on every level.
“You do have control, Harper. And I don’t think I like it.”
I laugh, a raspy, choked sound, that sounds as affected as I truly am by this man. “I’m fairly certain that’s the first lie you’ve ever told me.”
“You don’t think you have control?”
“I’m talking about your claim that you don’t like it. I think you do.”
I’m teasing but he doesn’t laugh. “I likeyou,Harper. I like you more than I ever meant to.”
The air crackles and I’m hot all over and there’s a little somersault in my belly. “Me too,” I whisper.
