My heart skipped and tumbled. How many times had I had the same thought?
Just every night.
“I’m thinking about,” he said, “the sound you make when I slide my fingers inside you.” The tendons in his hand strained from how hard he clenched his fist. “The way you taste.” He jacked himself faster, pushing skin through rough skin. “I’m thinking about how hot and wet you were when you rode my dick in the wine cellar.”
My chest tightened as his words wrapped me in an immobilizing vise.
As he continued to stroke, we studied each other’s reaction with intensity. His pupils were dilated. His pulse throbbed in his neck. He began to violently jerk his hand along his length, and the force shook the chair.
He wasn’t touching me to give me enjoyment, but it didn’t matter. I felt the same physical pleasure he was experiencing just from his words and the memories he gave me.
“You want to know what always sends me over the edge?” His hand on my throat tightened, although he probably didn’t realize he’d done it. He was right on the cusp of losing control. “I think about how it’d look if you went down on me. I’d wrap your green hair around my fist and fuck your pretty red mouth. My dick going in so deep . . . your eyes water . . . and then you make me . . .”
We shuddered together as he clamped his fist over his tip and came with a heavy groan. He kept his gaze locked on me the whole time, delivering his patented stare while satisfaction crawled along his expression.
And then it slowly drained away.
All his dirty talk had heated me to the core, but it was the tiny detail that had made me threaten to combust. He fantasized about me with green hair, not the way I was now. He pictured the color I would have chosen if I had any say. If I were allowed to express myself, rather than be the brand-approved Stepford wife his family demanded.
Royce crushed his lips to mine, but the kiss was over almost as soon as it had begun, and the ache for more lingered in my mouth. He finally released me and yanked a tissue from the box on his desk, hurrying to clean up the mess in his hands.
I sat back on my heels, surveying him as he shoved himself back in his pants and zipped up.
“I’m going to have to run,” he grumbled.
“You mentioned that.”
“No, I mean literally. I should have left five minutes ago.”
He shot to his feet, largely ignoring the evil look on my face, but he wouldn’t miss my patronizing tone. “Oh, did I fuck up something you had planned? Because if so . . . I’m not sorry. I warned you.”
He finished buckling his belt and straightened his suit jacket. “Am I looking forward to showing up sweaty and late to a meeting and then ask for an obscene amount of money? No, not really.” His expression hardened. “But it’s not going to change anything. I’m still going to get what I want.”
I went still as a statue. “What?”
He gave me a final glance before heading for the door and lobbed the comment over his shoulder. “Feel free to try that again anytime, though.”
It barely registered because the confusion was still too loud in my brain. What the hell did he mean, he was about to ask for an obscene amount of money? He’d just gotten one hundred thousand shares from his father, and the promotion to the board came with its own salary and bonus.
I have more money than God, he’d said.
So why the hell would he ask for more?
The door to his office swung shut with a thud, leaving me alone with more questions and desire than I knew what to do with.
My goal to derail him had failed miserably, and the unsatisfied thirst snaking through my body was the only thing in control right now. I stared out the window at the landscape while I tried to flush away the heat. The vision he’d painted in my mind of his fist tangled in my seaweed colored hair made me long for it to be real. Not just the hair color, but the physical connection.
But it couldn’t be.
Besides the deal I’d made, everything was approved by Macalister, even the outfit I wore today. I’d been instructed to dress feminine—he preferred women in skirts rather than pants whenever they were in the office. It was some sexist bullshit, but I couldn’t complain about it.
I wasn’t allowed to do anything or be who I was. How long could I live like this before I lost myself? Even if I wanted to rebel, any change I effected would be temporary and corrected. Hair would be recolored, wardrobe revised, behavior modified, and then it would be like it never happened.
Like I never existed.
I needed something permanent. Something that couldn’t be undone. Something only for me.
Like a symbol I could look at and remind myself who I was, no matter how much the Hales tried to change me.
Oh, God. I swallowed dryly as the idea formed.
I could do it. But to carry it out, I’d have to make a deal with the devil.
As Macalister and I played our nightly chess match, I was a towering stack of blocks, and every move he made was another brick being pulled from the base of my foundation. The mood in the library was always tense, but this was a new level. Our conversations had lessened and become stilted since he’d unveiled the black box, and tonight I swayed and teetered in the silence.
“Checkmate.” It simmered with irritation from him because he found the victory hollow. “You were distracted tonight.”
My pulse mirrored a frantic trader on the floor during a massive selloff. “Yeah, I . . .”
Was I really going to do this? There’d be no turning back.
I said it quickly before I lost my nerve. “I’m ready to play the other game.”
There was no reaction from him, other than his calculating eyes assessing me for the truth. Whatever visual test he’d given me, I must have passed, because he rose from his chair and went to the spot where he’d tucked the dreaded box away.
But once he had it, he didn’t give it to me. He stood with the black box in his hands, the black bow at its front taunting me. “What makes you think you’re ready now?”
“I’m motivated,” I said.
He lifted a curious eyebrow. “Why?”
The question had an agenda. He wanted to know not only what had happened, but how badly I was motivated to see if he could squeeze even more out of me.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I need a space that’s my own.”
He scowled. “You have a room here. If Royce is not respecting that, tell me, and I will take care of it.”
Of course he’d think Royce was the problem and not himself, even though he’d been the one waiting for me in my room the night Emily had gone into the hospital.
“I’m not really talking about a physical space,” I said. “I need a place free from rules and obligations, where I’m the one in control and making the decisions.”
He appeared to find the answer satisfying. He set the box on the desk but left his hand on it, his turn not yet complete. “Explain to me the rules, so I know you remember how we’re going to play.”
Oh, Jesus. I swallowed hard. “At ten-thirty I use what’s inside the box. When it’s over, I text you the number.”
His face took on a wicked cast. “The number of what?”
My heart was in my mouth and got in the way of my tongue. “Orgasms.”