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“I considered it an option.”
“I don’t feel competitive with you,” I say. “Not professionally.”
That firm, sexy mouth of his curves. “But when our clothes come off, all bets are off?”
My cheeks heat and I laugh. “Something like that.” I almost revert to pre-law school and add “I guess” but cut it off. I know better. Indecisive words tear away your control and your power.
His eyes darken, smoldering with heat, so much heat that I can barely breathe. “Why are you over there?” he challenges. “You can’t do ‘something like that’ or anything at all from there.”
He’s wrong. I can admire the fact that he personifies tall, dark, and good-looking, but why would I? Why am I over here, when I could be there? “You haven’t invited me over there,” I say.
“I didn’t know I had to.”
“You do,” I say, trying to turn my hesitation into my control.
“Then I am.” He holds out a hand to me. “Come over here.”
My belly tenses in anticipation of the touch he’s invited and that I plan to accept, but I do not hesitate. I want him. I want this. I reach out and rest my palm against his, warmth darting up my arm and over my chest, tightening my nipples. He closes his hands around mine, and for a moment, we just look at each other. And maybe I just want to live a Cinderella fantasy tonight, but it feels like something passes between us, something that trembles through me in some indescribable way.
“Come over here,” he orders softly again, and while I do not like being ordered around, there is a rough, affected quality to his voice that I like very much.
He guides me around the table and when I’m there with him, between it and the couch, I’m once again aware of just how tall and broad he is. It’s a fleeting thought lost when his hand slides under my hair to my neck. “We don’t have to do this,” he says. “We can drink wine and I’ll take you home or you can stay here with me and when I get back—”
“Not when you get back,” I say. “Now. Tonight. Just tonight.”
“You say that, but I sense--”
“That I’ve never done this before.” I press my hands to his chest. “Do you make a habit of this kind of thing?”
He laughs. “I’m not a manwhore. Stop calling me a manwhore.”
“Do you want me to leave?” I ask. “Because you left me down there and keep giving me opportunities to change my mind.”
“And you took five full minutes to come up.”
“Do you want me to leave?” I demand again.
His hand caresses my neck, his mouth lowering, breath warm on my lips, lingering there a moment before his tongue strokes deep and he kisses me, a deep, drugging, over too soon kiss, before he says, “Do I taste like I want you to leave?”
“You taste like trouble,” I say, the pure need I feel for him, when I’ve disallowed myself that feeling for so long, is dangerous, and yet addictive.
“I am,” he assures me. “But that’s my job. You are not my job. You’re—”
“A one-night stand,” I say, before I can stop myself, before I let him say something more that makes me forget that this is my Cinderella story, and Cinderella has a night. Just a night. My Prince is later, if ever. My glass slipper is my mom living, not dying.
“You’re Lori,” he says, brushing his lips over mine, and with that, he’s torn down that protective wall I’ve just placed between me and him. He’s made sure he knows who I am rather than allow it to be about what I am. It shakes me, and arouses me, and when I might turn and leave, because it shakes me all over again, he kisses me once more. God, how he kisses me, a deep, drugging, curl my toes kiss that leaves me breathless when his lips part mine and he releases me to shrug out of his jacket.
I am all about touching Cole, ready for my fingers, and my tongue, to explore this man, every which way, but I have learned from my past, from another powerful man. A man that was a mistake, but I learn from my mistakes. I know when to push, pull, and hold back in ways I once did not, and so, for now, I wait on Cole. For now, I just enjoy watching him, observing him, admiring the flex of his muscles beneath his fitted white shirt as he neatly folds his jacket and sets it on the arm of the chair. It’s the message I was waiting on, the read on him, that I understand easily: He’s all about control and no matter how much I have declared it to be mine, this man is intense. He’s powerful. He’s demanding. The kind of man who will demand, take, push my limits. The kind I would run from, if he had my name, because somewhere down the road, he could be trouble. But I’m in control no matter what happens tonight, because there is no tomorrow.
Which is exactly why when he reaches for his tie, as much as I want to help him take it off, to press my hand to his chest, I do not. That would tell him how wet I am right now with anticipation, and I am. How hard and tight my nipples are pressed against the bra that I know will soon be gone, replaced by his hands. Because I’m not giving him that knowledge. I’m not giving him control.
He folds the tie, just like he did the jacket and once he’s neatly set it on the arm rest, he straightens and fixes me in a blue-eyed stare that says, “Take off your jacket.”
My sex clenches with that silent command because despite my designed control tonight, some part of me is ridiculously aroused by the idea of his control. Some part of me also knows that the more I challenge him, the more he will demand. I realize then that there is more to this night than me simply wanting an escape. There is me craving the battle of wills with a man like this one, the adrenaline rush of battling an equal, and winning, or at least, not falling. For the first time in what feels like forever, Cole is giving me that rush and I had no idea how much I needed it.
And so, I push back. I don’t take off my jacket. I kick off my shoes instead, my toes curling in the soft pile carpet beneath the table. In an instant, I’ve won. I make him come to me. In one stride, he’s in front of me, but he doesn’t touch me, which is his power play. He stands there, a sway together from touching, and I have no doubt that he knows he’s suffocating me with the anticipation of that touch, the spicy, masculine, perfect scent of him, assaulting my senses.
Our eyes meet, a collision of heat and a battle of wills, a challenge between us that I cannot even fully define, but it’s there, a crackle of electricity with a life of its own. It lives, it breathes, it drives this night, or at the very least, the here and now. Seconds tick by in which my hands want to reach for him, in which my nipples pebble and ache, heat pooling low in my belly. I’m back to moments before. I’m back to the list of wants.
