The corner of her lips hitches up in a private smile.
It seals her fate.
I back her up against the wall, crowding her, stealing her air.
Her eyes go wide like a doe caught in the headlights. That’s me—a fucking truck. I’m going to break her to pieces. I’ll break myself, too. I lean down to breathe her in. I’m not even touching her yet. I don’t have my hands on that pale skin or my cock in that sweet cunt. No, I’m scenting her now. It’s a fully primal move. Every veneer of civility has been stripped away. This suit is a goddamn lie. I’m an animal, getting ready to mount her, getting ready to mate.
A kiss, she said, not knowing what she tempted.
My lips brush her forehead. It should be ridiculous with my cock like iron in my slacks, but it doesn’t feel ridiculous. Tenderness moves inside me, sharp enough to make me grunt. I drop my lips to the bridge of her nose. Even this much is wrong. Wrong when the woman doesn’t really desire me. Wrong when she wouldn’t be wet if I shoved two fingers in her pussy. I’ve never had a woman who was anything less than enthusiastic, but I want her too much to walk away. She stands very still as I reach her mouth. That full, pretty mouth with the garish red lipstick. I nibble away the waxy layer, searching for the dry, chapped, realness of her.
When I pull back her eyes are wide. Her nostrils flare where she breathes hard. I haven’t even gotten started yet, and she already looks ready to bolt. “What was that?” she asks, her voice shaky. I want to pull her hair and spank her pretty little ass. I want to spread her legs and ride her until she sobs her climax into the sheets. And she looks shocked by a single kiss.
Anger swells inside me, inky black. “You ever have a boyfriend, Ashleigh?”
“Yes,” she says, but it’s so clearly a lie it makes me want to laugh. Or cry. “I know how to kiss. I know how to—how to fuck. But that wasn’t a kiss.”
The word fuck sounds completely foreign on her lips. It sounds like a made-up word. A Dr. Seussian exaggeration. “That was the way you kiss someone you care about.”
Defiance in those brown sugar eyes. “You don’t care about me.”
“No,” I say, even though I’m the one lying now. I’m the one exaggerating to prove a goddamn point. “I don’t give a shit about you, but I never learned to kiss any other way.”
That small point of a chin rises. She may not have a lick of self-preservation, but she has pride. And God, that makes me want her more. “Then maybe I can teach you something.”
Grim amusement curls my lips. “You just might.”
I came outside because I needed some air that hasn’t been breathed in and exhaled by Harper and Christopher. I wanted to smell dirt and grass and the weather foretold on the wind. Nothing in the city can come close. Except for her. I breathe her in, and the same sense of rightness, of coming home fills me. She’s like the goddamn earth—sweet and elemental.
It’s almost like I conjured her up. Or maybe I’m hallucinating. Alcohol can do that to you, even if it’s been eight hours since I touched a drop. If she isn’t real, there’s no reason not to touch her, not to fuck her. No pesky morality to keep me from paying for the privilege.
Besides, he does not seem like the type.
The type of man who likes tits and ass, you mean?
The type of man who likes to pay for them.
I’ve never paid for a fuck, either. It would be a new low for me. I’m full of those lately.
I bend down to nuzzle her cheek, the underside of her jaw. Her neck. I kiss her there, and she shivers. We’re standing in a cold drizzle, but she actually shivers at the feel of my lips. Ashleigh is an orchid in a snowstorm. She’ll never survive.
“Come home with me,” I murmur, finding the hollow at the base of her neck. Slipping my tongue out for a taste. Rainwater. The weather has slicked away her flavor.
“There’s a motel,” she says, breathing hard even though I have her trapped, because I have her trapped. “Two blocks away. The Rose and Crown. We can get a room there.”
A motel that rents by the hour. “I want the whole night.”
Her gaze doesn’t leave mine as she shakes her head. It’s a refusal that has nothing to do with money. Everything to do with her fear over a soft kiss.
I bend my head to take her mouth, searching the depths through the rain and the air until I find the elusive flavor of her, the fire of her. I drink it down and relish the burn. My palm cups her cheek, and she jumps. Only by slow degrees does she melt into my hold.
“Sutton,” I say, my voice thick. “That’s my name. Sutton Mayfair. Say it.”
“Sutton,” she whispers, and the sound makes me tighten.
Her body becomes pliant against the brick and my body. I lap at her, slow and hungry, showing her the way I’d fuck her. Not so different from the way I kiss. She may teach me how to do it rough and meaningless. That’s a lesson I need to learn, but I’m going to show her how good it can be. My tongue moves against hers in a sensual glide—patient, patient, patient until she flicks her tongue in timid answer. The feel of her, the warmth, makes me ache. My cock throbs in my dress pants, and I press forward, seeking more pressure. She’s boneless against me, willing—and if I could bet my entire construction business—between her legs, she would be wet.
Finally I lift my head and look into her lust-drowsed eyes. Triumph beats in my chest, as if I’ve proved some kind of point. Her lips are swollen and stung from my incipient beard. She waits, lax, for whatever happens next. I could kiss her sweet little cunt up against this wall, gravel digging into my knees, the wind whipping at her hair, and she’d let me.
Because you’re fucking paying her.
“Two hundred dollars,” I say, and she flinches, coming awake.
“That’s what you gave me.”
“We’re not done yet.”
“A kiss. That’s what I offered you. That’s what you took.”
“And dinner,” I remind her. My stomach growls as if remembering that I’m starving. Alcohol is rich in calories. It keeps me from getting hungry. “That was part of the deal. I’m going to get you dinner. What do you like? Chinese? Steak?”
She licks her lips, and I know that I have her. It feels a little dirty, that I’d tempt her this way, this little slip of a woman, so slender I know she’s gone hungry. Well, I have some experience with the feeling. The gnawing inside your stomach, as if it’s going to eat you from the inside. The yawning pain that keeps you from sleeping no matter how tired you are.
I glance up the street, where you can see the bright lights of a Thai restaurant. “Curry? That’s the good thing about Tanglewood. You can find every kind of food here.”
“Not curry,” she says, her voice trembling.
How long has it been since she ate anything? “No curry, then. You let me decide. There’s a great place only a five-minute walk. You usually need reservations, but I know the owner.”
Chapter Six
Ashleigh
If I had thought about dinner, I would have thought about burgers or burritos from a fast food joint. Maybe, if we were dreaming big, I would have thought about a Styrofoam container of cheese fries from the diner. I could not have imagined this place.