One Night: Sizzling Attraction. Annie West

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ she couldn’t have explained if she wanted to.

      She leaned in, her lips a breath away from his. “Not if I make you beg for me first.”

      His lip curled and he leaned in, tracing the line of her jaw with his forefinger. “Do you think you could make me beg?”

      “Can you walk away?” she asked, taking the roughness in his formerly smooth and cultured voice as evidence of the effect she was having on him. “Right now, could you leave this room?”

      “I am not finished with you yet,” he ground out.

      She forced a smile to curve the corner of her mouth. “I guess that says it all. You’re the one who can’t walk away. And I don’t even have prison to threaten you with.”

      He gripped her chin tight, and she stared him down. His dark eyes were blazing and she was certain hers matched. Then he slid his thumb across the edge of her lower lip.

      And closed the distance between them.

      The fire in her stomach ignited, sending flames roaring through her. It was no longer contained, no longer content to merely burn in the hearth. And she realized her fatal mistake too late. She might have taken his control, but hers was gone, too. Whatever this heat was had taken over everything, threatening to reduce all that she was to ash.

      She’d never been kissed like this. Had never been held close to a man like this, his arms so tight around her, his body hard and muscular against hers.

      This was the last thing she had expected. For him to kiss her as if he was a man dying of thirst and she was an oasis. She had expected him to be cool. She had expected him to hurt her, humiliate her. She hadn’t expected him to make her want.

      Make her feel.

      Wanting him was almost scarier than the alternative. Because she was only here for one reason, for him to extract the debt she owed from her body. She meant nothing to him beyond that. In fact, he hated her. Saw her as an enemy.

      She had a feeling that right at that moment, neither of them had the control. She wasn’t even sure if they were fighting for it. If each brush of his lips against hers was a press for more dominance, or if they’d both given up altogether.

      She was forgetting. Forgetting everything but his lips against hers.

      He shifted, cupped her face, tilting his head and deepening the kiss, his tongue sliding against hers. The delicious friction sent a shiver through her. It shocked her, sent a wave of pleasure through her and, for a moment, she could only process how good it felt.

      How could he touch an enemy like this? How could he hate her and taste her so deeply? With such care?

      No one else ever had. Only this man. This man who despised her.

      That should make her want to run, but she didn’t. She stayed. Rooted to the spot. Anchored to him.

      When they parted, he was breathing hard, his fingers going to the knot of his tie, loosening it with startling efficiency, before casting into the ground. “Yes, you are a very good girl indeed,” he said, his voice ragged.

      He pulled her back to him, kissing her again. She wanted to fight him. Wanted to fight this. The way it felt as if he was stripping her bare without ever touching the silken undergarments that covered her skin.

      But she couldn’t. She felt so small, but she didn’t feel weak. She felt protected. And as things started to crumble and fall inside her; as the walls, the anger, the fear, started to crack, in the deep, empty well that lived inside of her, an insatiable and hungry thing that had craved this simply opened up and allowed itself to be filled.

      Oh, it hadn’t been sex she desired specifically. But touch, attention. To have someone look at her as though she mattered. As though it had to be her standing there in front of them and no one else.

      To have someone pay attention to what she wanted, what she liked. To have someone lavish pleasure on her. Because that was the only way she could think of it. She was entirely bathed in sensation, the singular focus of this large, powerful man.

      He wasn’t handling her roughly, not with anger. He was in supreme, complete control and he was exercising that control to make her feel...good.

      It wasn’t what she had expected and it made her feel vulnerable. Strange.

      No one had ever wanted her. No one had ever needed her.

      And even if it was naive, she felt in this moment that Rocco needed her. And it made her want to give in to him. It made her want to give him everything.

       He hates you. And you are trading your body to keep yourself out of jail.

       You can’t do this.

      She could still leave. She could walk out the door and damn the consequences. He wouldn’t physically stop her. She was confident in that.

       But you don’t want to.

      No. Because she’d never had the courage to touch a man like this. To kiss a man like this. And now there was nothing holding her back. Nothing stopping her. Why not have this? Why not have him? She pressed her palms to the hard muscle of his chest, and leaned in deeper for the kiss.

      Rocco growled, tightening his hold on her waist, and backing them both across the room, and to the bed.

      Yes.

      This wasn’t about money, or jail, or freedom or fear. This wasn’t about control. Not now. This was about him. About everything she’d spent her life too afraid to grab. She was so tired of it. So tired of herself. Of being a ghost that no one could touch or connect with because she was hiding her past.

      He was touching her. And he knew her past. He knew it and hated it and he still wanted her. That meant it didn’t matter what she did now. Didn’t matter that she was a virgin who had no clue what she was doing.

      She slid her hands to his shoulders, and down his back, exploring the feel of him, the sheer breadth of him. So different to her. To her body.

      He moved one hand to her thigh, lifting her leg and bringing it around his own, opening her center to him. He pressed himself against her, the hard length of his arousal making contact with the source of her desire, sending a shot of pleasure through her body.

      It was happening so fast, and yet she found not fast enough. She couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t reason. Couldn’t work out why she had been so afraid of this being the outcome. Because this wasn’t scary. And it didn’t hurt.

      It felt wonderful.

      And everything melted away. Who she was. Who he was.

      He wasn’t a mark. And she wasn’t a con artist.

      He was a man. And she was a woman.

      And they wanted.

      He tore his mouth from hers, kissing the line along her collarbone, to the edge of the lace bra that she knew had cost more than a month of her wages. He traced the scalloped edge of the delicate garment with the tip of his tongue, and she shook, СКАЧАТЬ