I briefly close my eyes, but they don’t stay shut. It’s as if they open on their own to soak in the rest of him. The spread of his shoulders and chest underneath the perfectly tailored black tuxedo jacket and white dress shirt. The edges of black-and-gray ink peek above the collars, and neither the formal wear nor the bow tie can harness the sexual charisma or wildness he literally wears in his skin. The black pants skim over his trim waist and powerful, thick thighs, and I fidget, squeezing mine together, seeking to assuage the near-painful ache pulsing in my pussy. It’s been a week since he’s touched me, since I’ve inhaled his decadent scent, since he’s stretched my walls. Since I’ve screamed his name so loud, so hard, it leaves my throat raw.
I foolishly believed a week’s distance would dampen his impact, his power on me. If “I can show you better than I can tell you” were a person…
“Sam, if you don’t mind, I’ll escort my fiancée from here,” Asad says, his tone not seeking permission but informing him.
He may be speaking to my godfather, but his gaze doesn’t leave me. Those eyes search mine, as if seeking for the objection or argument he expects me to throw his way. If we weren’tin front of most of the fashion industry’s royalty and business world, I just might. But… I wouldn’t embarrass him like that. Even if he wouldn’t afford me the same courtesy when he damn near cut off one of my fingers.
“I do mind, but all fathers have to give up their daughters someday,” Sam says with a wry smile. He kisses my temple and squeezes my arm before treading down the stairs.
“You look… stunning, Ember,” he quietly says. His arm lifts, his hand hovering near my cheek, but then he blinks and lowers it. Part of me is thankful because I don’t know what his touch would do to me, how it would shake me. But the other half? It already misses something that it didn’t have.
“Thank you.” I part my lips to say something else—anything else to dispel this awkward cocoon we’ve found ourselves in while the world moves on below us. But I’m at a loss. There’s so much I want to say that it all crowds into my head like a BOGO sale, but only “thank you” slips free.
Then he lifts my hand and brushes his lips across my bandaged finger.
A gasp escapes me before I can trap it. The noise silences. And it’s just the two of us in a ballroom full of people. No, it’s three of us. Him, me, and this thick, tangled mess of… emotion that I’m afraid to unravel. Afraid to touch at all…
“Let me guess,” I say, voice even, cool, removing my hand from his grasp and ignoring the tremble. “You’re sorry and you’ll never do it again.”
He stares at me, and it takes a will straight from the ancestors not to look away.
“Not that way, I won’t.”
The threat and promise linger between us as he leads me down the stairs at his side. They settle into my chest and lower, between my thighs, andgoddamn, theremustbe something fundamentally wrong with me.
I want to forgive him. Want to sink into his arms and turn back the clock to the last night we were together on the balcony,in his bed. But that block of ice right between my rib cage won’t allow me to make that move. Won’t permit me to do something as foolish as easily believe in his words again. I’m torn in two, confused, ashamed because I should hate him, butGod, I want him.
Crave what that night prematurely promised.
The sensation of all eyes on us has me wanting to swipe at my exposed skin. After so many years of existing in the shadows, being thrust into the spotlight is surreal and disconcerting. And doing so on Asad’s arm only deepens the oddity of it all.
The crowd parts for us—for him—like he’s carrying a stick and they’re a roaring sea. The display of reverence and fear only sharpens the ache in my pussy and damn the cut of this dress that doesn’t allow underwear. Wet dampens my inner thighs, and I swallow a groan. A week without him and minutes in his presence has transformed me into a walking, breathing nerve ending. One that’s seconds from pulsing in orgasm with just the slightest touch.
He did this to me.
He introduced me to pleasure, to lust, to fucking.
And now I’m in its thrall. Its submissive.
As if on cue, the live band set up on a raised dais at the far end of the room start playing a stylized version of “You” by Jesse Powell, and Asad ushers me to the middle of the ballroom and takes me into his arms. There isn’t even room for daylight between our bodies. And if I didn’t know it before, I’m clued in now that Asad gives zero fucks about propriety. Not when he cuffs my wrists and lifts my arms around his neck, then smooths his big palms down my arms, over my ribs and hips, and presses them to the bare space just above where my dress begins again. Several of his fingers rest right on the upper swell of my ass.
His head lowers over mine, those carnal lips capable of such devastation brushing against my temple, the top of my ear, my hair. He surrounds me—his big, hard body, strong arms, fresh, woodsy musk. And for the first time in days, my heart calms. My soul is at rest. I can breathe fully, with full lung capacity.
I close my eyes, fighting against the truth even as I press my lips to the hollow of his throat. My mind might war against this… visceral connection. But my body, the most primal part of me, has accepted what it’s struggling against.
He isn’t letting me go.
And I… I don’t know if I want him to lose me.
Oh God.Oh God.Those thoughts are more dangerous than the man holding me so close right now.
“I missed you.” I shiver at both his lips caressing my ear and the quietly spoken words. “And not just the grip of that perfect pussy you took away from me. Or the pretty-ass fuck faces you make. Or how your breath catches just before you cum all over my dick.” One hand stays at the small of my back while the other travels up my spine, tapping each disc as if they’re keys on a piano, and he’s playing our special song.
Shut up, my mind, my soul rails.Shut up, shut up. You don’t mean it. You can’t and hurt me. You can’t and allow other people witness my pain, my emotional nakedness and vulnerability. You can’t and have put me in a place of ridicule.
But my body, my silly, foolish body, and that equally silly and useless organ beating behind my sternum don’t listen to common sense. Won’t let us be safe.
They want us to dive off the cliff into troubled waters named Asad Prince.
