His throat works with a rough swallow. “I’m aware.”
“Are you?” Ignoring my trembling knees, I play bold. Confident. A warrior. “You’ve avoided me since that night in your room. Treated me like I’m nothing more than a ghost.”
He says nothing.
But his expression shutters, revealing more in this moment than he probably has in a lifetime. And then, gruffly, “If you think I’ve avoided you, then you simply weren’t looking hard enough.”
“Then why haven’t you—”
“Because us fucking again will lead to nowhere good.”
I know, deep in my soul, that he isn’t talking about orgasms.
So softly that I can barely hear myself speak over the roar of anticipation thundering through me, I tip my head back. “You care too much.”
“You’re wrong,” he grunts, but his eyes remain entranced by my lips, “I don’t care at all.”
Kiss me.
Want me.
Touch me.
I rub my lips together, just to tempt him further, before parting them to utter a challenge that will bring us both to our knees: “Then prove it.”
28
Saxon
Trouble, trouble, trouble.
With each word that tumbles from Isla’s mouth, my resolve to stay away cracks a little more. She’s purposely baiting me, her blue eyes wide with false innocence, my shirt fisted in her grip, keeping me close. So close that there’s no ignoring her dilated pupils and the blush warming her cheeks. Beneath my fingers, her neck quivers.
She likes it.
The cast of fear.
The chase of being caught, then submitting to my every demand.
She admitted as much that night in my car, and I can’t deny the effect that her lust has on me. My hard cock strains the confines of my joggers and my heart—the damned thing that’s done me no good since I first laid eyes on this woman—thumps erratically in my chest.
I want this.
No matter how I promised Guy that I would be done with her for Holyrood’s sake.
For once in my miserable, gray-stained life, I plan to keep something for myself.
I want to be selfish.
I graze my thumb down the length of her throat before sweeping it back up, in a caress that tantalizes more than it soothes. Her breath hitches. Satisfaction curls through me, a black ribbon of pleasure wrought from the darkest depths of hell. I press closer until it’s only my grip on her neck that’s keeping her from collapsing to the sofa.
“Prove it,” I scoff, mocking her. “You’re a total glutton for punishment.”
Her fingers tighten their grip on my shirt. “Or maybe I’m just a glutton for you.”
I hiss out a breath at the coy flirtation.
This woman . . . Christ, she provokes me something fierce. Strains the limits of my patience, never backing down until she steals a reaction from me. I feed off the challenge as much as I want to own it, own her, and do everything in my power to hear her lust-filled moan announcing defeat.
My free hand splays across her back, sinking south to the base of her spine. “Don’t think you’re working me around your little finger.”
“I wouldn’t dare try.”
At her sarcasm, I squeeze her ass, just enough to lull her into complacency—before reminding her of who I am. Cold. Callous. Savage. I turn her around, yank down her joggers, her knickers, and—
Crack!
Her cry shatters the otherwise still room.
And her ass cheek . . . it pinkens as I dig my fingers into the tense muscles, relieving the sting from my hand. Her shoulders tremble when I lean forward, draping my front over her spine. By her ear, I husk, “You were saying?”
“Again.”
My chin jerks back. “What?”
She twists her head, until her mouth is hovering close enough that if I dared, I could brush my lips with hers. She knows it, too. The dare burns in her blue eyes. Kiss me, that look reads. Ruin me.
The temptation to do both is like liquid heat in my veins.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” she repeats, throwing my words back in my face. “Again.”
Bloody fucking hell. “Isla, you—”
She cuts me off by thrusting her ass backward into my crotch. “I’m tired. I’m tired of running, tired of lying. But, most of all, I’m tired of pretending to want things I don’t and crave in secret what no one will give me.”
My brain empties of every comeback.
The skin across my back tightens and my toes curl reflexively into the carpet and my cock, Christ, it lengthens. Thickens. Leaks from the tip. I could come, just with my fist and the visual of my handprint on Isla’s sweet ass.
She glances over her shoulder and tears down the last of my defenses with a softly uttered, “What are you tired of? The truth.”
I give it to her, on a hoarse rasp, unable to restrain the words and keep them under lock and key: “Being cold, down to what’s left of my soul.”
Her blue eyes darken. “Then burn with me, Saxon.”
Fuck.
Head pounding—the both of them—I slip my hand, fingers spread wide, over her throat. Angle her head to the left, so I can work my mouth over the sensitive skin behind her ear. A nip of my teeth, followed by the glide of my tongue to erase the sting. A shudder tears through her, and her head falls forward, giving me access.
I take full advantage.
Grinding my fabric-covered cock against her ass, tugging her earlobe between my teeth, then lower, a bite to the juncture of her throat and shoulder. She releases a tormented sound that’s a cross between a scream and a moan, and her hands fall to the sofa’s armrest, her hips rhythmically rocking backward.
Needy. Wanting.
For me.
“Don’t move,” I order.
Isla will always be Isla, though, and she flicks her hair over one shoulder and meets my gaze with fire and excitement dashing across her features. “Or what?”
I catch those candlelit strands in my fist, tugging her so close that her lips part beneath mine. Deliberately, I linger in the moment, baiting her, tempting her, torturing us both, before growling, “Or I’ll bend you over my thigh and turn your ass red.”
Her lips curve in the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. “All you had to do is ask. No argument over here. Shall I just”—she waves at the sofa, scooting out from under my arm—“sprawl and wait? Maybe a little something like this?”
Mouth dry, I watch as she climbs onto the cushions, hiking up her shirt around her waist so that her round ass is on display. Swaying. Tinted pink. To say nothing of the glistening wet folds between her legs that have me pressing a hand to my cock, just to relieve the mounting pressure.
I open my mouth. “You—”
“Yes?” Isla flops over, settling into the corner of the sofa. One leg falling open to the floor. The other bent, toes pointed into the cushions. Her cunt mine for the taking.
And I will take it.
Instead of answering, I head for the door to close it. I don’t know where her brother and sister are but this moment, it’s for me and Isla. The woman who needles her way under my skin. The woman who ought to take one look at me and run the other way. The woman who’s rapidly destroying what’s left of my tattered heart.