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It was the strangest thing.
“I will tell you what I want you to do,” Conrad said. It was almost as if his voice became another unbearable fabric against her skin, but inside her, too. It was so...rumbly. The kind of deep that seemed to move through her, fusing to parts of her she hadn’t even known were there.
She felt her clit pulse and nearly doubled over, because the only time she could remember feeling it quite like that was when she’d gotten her piercing down there. On a whim one night in Nashville because maybe she’d thought she needed to prove that just because she was still there didn’t mean she wasn’tdoing things. And what she did best was something sexual in one way or another, because that was easy enough to perform. Especially online, where it was much easier to cut and filter and create a scene. She’d made a little video of the proceedings and gained thousands of followers. All for a little U-shaped barbell through the hood over her clit so that any pressure at all made it sing.
Except there was no pressure. There was only Conrad’s voice.
She fought it.
Because she was much more used to the way things looked. The way things might make her look. What certain images or opinions said about her.
Feelingsomething was new. And searingly, breathtakingly different.
“I thought the point was thatyouwere going to do something,” she said, trying to focus on him instead of the ruckus in her body. The downside of that being that her mouth took over. “I thought that was what all the posturing was about. You were going to do something in thirty seconds and rock my world forever, blah blah blah, like every other guy I’ve ever met. Guess what? Your penis isn’t world peace. It’s not even that interesting. It’s just a penis—lots of people have one just like it.”
The intensity in his gaze didn’t drain away, but it changed. And he let out what she would have categorized as a reluctant laugh.
“Are you going to issue stage directions?” He still hadn’t touched her, and she felt wrecked. But she didn’t break his gaze. Or run. “Or do you think, perhaps, that your personal history might suggest you’re not the expert in these things?”
“You’re the one who seems to think it’s a problem.”
“If you don’t think it’s a problem, Rory, I once again invite you to leave,” he said, in that quietly masterful way that made her want to slink off. And also cry. But mostly, it made her want to do anything he asked, if he would justask it. What wasthat?“I assure you, my altruism only stretches so far. I can certainly find better things to do with my time than perform public services for ungrateful young women who I already know to be astonishingly disobedient.”
He kept telling her that she could leave. She kept not leaving. And Rory honestly couldn’t tell why it was that her feet seemed fused to the floor beneath her.
This wasn’t how she liked to play. She was never normally so...out of control. And, like it or not, convinced that this man might know something she didn’t.
Though she would bite off her own tongue before she told him that.
But there was that look he got, like now, all navy blue and certain, that made her think he already knew.
She felt that pulse in her clit again and really did have to bite her tongue, then, to keep it to herself.
“Move back against the wall,” Conrad said. Very calmly.
Rory took a breath as if to argue, but thought better of it. The wall behind her was brick and she kind of liked how solid it was, there at her back, when she felt so off-balance.
“Breathe,” he told her. Looking amused again.
The men she dated never found her amusing, at least not like this. It should have made her furious that he did. It was patronizing, at the very least. But instead of demanding he stoplaughing at her, she felt her cheeks heat up. And somehow, feeling that flush move all over her skin, and deep inside her, made her more comfortable. Instantly.
Because whatever Conrad Vanderburg was—with his sex room and all those things he’d said that she wanted to dismiss as bragging, but sensed wasn’t him being boastful at all—he wasn’t scary. Or, she thought, revising that a little, he wasn’t scary in any kind of predatory or gross way.
He scared her all right, but because he was so quiet and still. So obviously confident. And so wholly uninterested in attempting to impress her.
She expected him to jump on her, or something. To throw himself against the wall on top of her, and do whatever it was he was going to do.
But instead, he stayed where he was. He crossed his arms, lifted one hand to his mouth to toy with his lips in a quietly sensual way that made herache, and then...studied her.
Intently.
She felt herself actually flinch. Her knees buckled and his gaze darkened.
“No,” he said, still very calmly, but his orders were perfectly clear. “Stay still, please.”
And she did.
Rory kept the bricks at her back, and she pressed her palms against the stones until she could feel the faint, rough abrasion against her skin.
