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“You don’t do friendship with women.”
“Not fair, Perry. I’ve told you I see you as a friend. You might be my only female friend—I don’t count my brothers’ significant others because that’s a different beast—but I know a friend. And if our friendship is way more complicated than others, so be it. But I see you as a friend.”
It’s the fucking story of my life. Friend zone. And I know that’s not exactly what he’s saying to me. But what am I meant to think? That he’s gone and lost his mind and fallen in love with me? Because that’s a dangerous and fantasy-riddled path that has nothing to do with reality.
“But we’re not friends. You slept with me, that’s all.”
“I think there were two people involved, Elliot,” he says, tapping his foot on the floor. “And I’m not talking friends with benefits or fuck buddy bullshit. I’m talking you and me and how I feel and what it is I want.”
“Yeah?” I ask. “And what’s that?”
“You.”
His quiet word knifes through me.
“Only because there’s no one else.” I glare at him.
Ryder glares back. “You don’t think I know my own mind, Elliot?”
“I’m here. There’s no one else accessible.”
“Bullshit. If I wanted, I’d find a way. I’m trying to clean up my act to the world but you don’t think, if I wanted to get down and dirty and didn’t want you, that I’d find a way with some other babe?” He stalks up, closing the gap I made and this time I stand my ground.
“Do you hear yourself?”
“I do, actually. I don’t get you. You’re this powerhouse. You’re beyond intelligent and competent and you have class that can’t be bought.” He pokes me with a finger. “You’re confident, and then when it comes to me you think I just want you for no other reason than there’s a fucking vulva available?”
“I didn’t say that!” I poke him right back.
He’s even closer now and I shiver from the heat of him. “You didn’t have to. It’s in your actions and words.”
“What do you expect from me, Ryder? Look at you and look at me.”
“I’m looking,” he says, sliding his hands down my arms. “And usually I like what I see. What’s so hard to believe about that?”
Everything. Nothing. A bolt of fury, of fear, shoots through me. “You want me because you’ve been without, that’s what the you and me thing is.”
“You know fuck all. I want you for you. I’ll show you.”
And he kisses me. Hard. Carnal. It’s an angry kiss and I want that. Because I’m angry, too. At myself for being everything he said. At him for being Ryder. And I need him right now.
I go to break the kiss, and I push him, but somehow my hands slide up his chest and neck, and I grab his hair, tangling my fingers in the thick, soft locks and pull him harder into me.
“I should wring your neck,” he mutters, kissing and sucking a path down my throat as one of his hands delve down into my pajama bottoms. He grabs my ass and hauls me against his hard on.
I grind against him. My hand is still in his, and I rake the nails of my other over his shirt, under his overcoat and suit jacket. “I should punch you.”
“Fuck, you’re violent, Perry. I like it.”
“You’re an asshole.” And he slips a finger down between the cheeks of my ass and up along my slit from behind, and my body explodes into a cascade of pleasure and need.
He claims my mouth again. The kiss is hard. Tongue, teeth, lips. It’s sex.
And he takes me, turns me so I’m against him, my back pressed into him, and now his fingers play my pussy from the front, teasing, down over the outer lips, each side, and this man knows his female anatomy. He knows where the clitoris reaches beneath the skin and even as he plays the nub, he works those sensitive lips, the indent each side that’s full so many pleasure receptors I’d be boneless and on the ground if he wasn’t holding me up.
“You’re so fucking stubborn, Perry,” Ryder says against my ear, over the pants and gasps and moans coming from me as my heart jack rabbits and I’m completely burning for more of him. He bites and licks my earlobe. “You shine, and I want you. Do you want me?”
“Yes.”
