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“You didn’t tell Bea that you didn’t like him?” Clayton poured more from the second bottle into my glass. I was outrageously proud of myself for pushing the glass away.
“Have you met Bea?” I joked. “Tell her you don’t like something and she will effectively make it her favorite thing. I was…waiting, I think, for her to realize what a bum he was.”
“I guess she’s realized,” he said with sympathy. I tilted my head, trying to gauge that sympathy. Real? Not real? Act or truth? “Have you heard from her?” he asked. “Since she went back to Austin?”
“A couple of texts. A friend of mine, a lawyer, is with her.” I rubbed my forehead and it was like this avalanche of worry that I had put aside or ignored so I could handle the disasters of the last few days, suddenly fell on me and it was…crushing.
Endless.
The nonstop worry for Bea. The never-ending work of getting her out of trouble.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“You’ve done it. I mean…the money.”
“What can I do for you?”
Oh, man.
That was the dangerous one–two punch of Clayton.
I was turned on. And I was comforted.
His hand drifted from my shoulder to my neck, cupping the muscles and tendons there with such complete strength, such total control, that I…relaxed.
More than the wine. The cheese. This man offered…relief.
“Who takes care of you?” Clayton breathed. He was close. Closer than I should allow.
No one was the answer, no one since you, but I swallowed the words.
His thumb stroked my cheek as he shifted closer. I knew what he was thinking, planning, and I should have pushed him away.
Instead I closed my eyes and rested my head fully in his hand.
His low, dark chuckle should have outraged me. But it didn’t. Because he deserved his moment of victory.
I submitted.
Whatever he wanted right now. Whatever he asked—I would give him.
But I wasn’t a fool. I would protect myself.
“I want you,” I said. The sound he made in his throat was growly and hot. “But not the way we were.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not here to be seduced. You don’t have to treat me like the virgin daughter of the man you work for.”
“Ronnie,” he said. My name and nothing else.
“I don’t want…careful. And I don’t want sweet. The girl who wanted that is gone.” I wanted hard and wild but I wasn’t brave enough to say it.
“Can you do that?” I asked.
He pushed back his stool with such force it screeched against the floor. My eyes stayed closed. My surrender had its own requirements.
His kiss, when it came, was not sweet. Or restrained. It was not polite.
He claimed me. Devoured me. His mouth over mine. His body over mine.
His will was something I bent myself into, toward. His will was something I longed for.
“You want dirty, Veronica?” he whispered against my lips. “Hard? You don’t want me to make love to you. You want me to fuck you.”
I was flooded with heat and absolutely soaked between my legs.
I didn’t answer and his hand knotted in my hair. “Say it.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“I want you to fuck me.”
He kissed me like I’d unlocked his cage. I opened my mouth and kissed him back the same way. I wanted his tongue and his fingers. Even if it was a lie. Even if it was a means to an end.
It had been so damn long.
He pulled me to my feet and my stool fell over. His fingers bit into my hips, clutched at my ass. My back.
He was desperate, just like me.
And his wildness was better than the wine. Stronger. I wanted more. I wanted to be drunk on it.
I pushed my hips against his, felt his erection. Reveled in the hiss of his breath.
He turned us, lifted me, pushed me up onto the counter, sending our wineglasses to shatter on the floor.
“Leave them,” he whispered against my lips before kissing me again. His hands cupped my breasts and I felt the cloud of bliss coming for me. That mindless, delicious place of pleasure.
“So long,” I gasped, arching harder against him. Looking for the right friction. The right pressure. I was hungry and thirsty and needy against the hard planes of his body.
“What?” he asked against the skin of my neck.
“It’s been so long.”
He leaned back. My hair in his hand. “What you said at the funeral?”
I leaned forward for more of his mouth but he pulled me back by my hair. The pressure delicious. Violent. I loved this fucking. “Ronnie? What you said at the funeral. About a million men.”
Oh, my God. He was bothered by that.
Keeping my lie would have been a comfort. And I longed to wrap myself in the distance it would give me.
“No lying,” he whispered against my mouth and bit at my tongue. “Your rules.”
“There…were no other men,” I said. The truth felt as vulnerable as I’d thought it would. Turning my head away made my hair pull and my scalp sting, but I did it anyway. The pain cut away at the bliss. The fog of pleasure.
