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“If?” I challenge. “Why if? Are we still yo-yoing? Because if we are—”
“If you let me. That’s all I meant, baby. If you let me.”
Only that’s not the only thing he meant, I realize. “If we live.”
He strokes hair from my face, tilting my head back, tilting my mouth to his. “We will live.” And then he’s kissing me again, and this kiss is all about possession, a claiming, a demand, before he declares, “You need to be naked right now.”
“Only if you’re naked right now,” I counter, and we both step back and finish undressing.
The minute we’re naked, he picks me up and carries me to a chair in the corner, and to my surprise, he presses my hands to the back of the cushion over my head. “Don’t move.” His gaze rakes over my breasts again, then lifts, before he adds, “Don’t even think about touching me until I tell you to touch me.”
Heat radiates low in my belly with this command, but I shouldn’t be surprised at all. This is a side of this man I know well. The side that needs control. The side that needs to dominate but somehow spends that energy with me in bed, not in the rest of our life together. And this works for me. It works so damn well; because for the first time in my life, I have a safe place where I’m not in control. Where letting go is pleasure.
“Understand?” he asks, his hands on my thighs.
“Yes,” I say. “I understand.”
His lips curve, and there’s a devious, sexy look in his eyes. No, not devious. Dangerous. He’s dangerous, and damn it, I love it. I love it a whole hell of a lot. His head lowers, his teeth scraping my knee erotically, my sex clenching all over again, my thighs slick with the seductive heat burning through my core. His touch is fire. I’m on fire. His tongue is also fire. It licks over the offended skin on my knee and then he’s spreading my legs, opening me wide to him. It’s a moment of vulnerability that most women know as arousing yet intimidating. And yet, with Noah, it’s so damn erotic.
His eyes meet mine, and I know what he wants. He wants trust. He wants to know that I’m still as all in as I demand he be. He wants to know that we haven’t changed because I now know what I always knew: that he’s a killer. What I know is that he’s not like any man I’ve ever known or any man I will ever know again.
“I’m going to make you mine again,” he declares. “I’m going to make sure you know you will always be mine.”
My thighs want to shut against the clenching of my sex because I know how this man can own me. I know just how good he’s about to make me feel.
His lips lower to my inner thigh while his fingers press into my opposite thigh. His tongue teases my skin, and his mouth and hand begin to move upward. But he doesn’t give me his mouth where I want it. His presses his mouth to my belly and then looks up at me.
“I can’t lose you,” he says, and then he’s cupping my breast, and his eyes meet mine. “I can’t fucking lose you.” He cuts his stare, and I want to touch him, to tell him I’m here, but I know him. I know that’s not what he needs. He needs me to let him work through whatever he’s feeling, let him come to me in every way. And so, I don’t touch him.
I wait for him.
The way I think I have waited for this man my entire life.
Chapter thirty-seven
Ashley
He kisses me again, a kiss that devours, that claims, that turns me inside out. And then he’s gone, or not gone, he’s not gone. He’s simply lowering himself to press his lips to my belly, his tongue teasing the delicate skin there, his eyes dark, his energy darker, as several heavy beats pass. I struggle again with a need to touch him. I want to touch him. I want to stop the torment I sense in him, that I’ve often sensed in him.
“Noah,” I whisper softly, his eyes darkening, narrowing.
He moves again, rising up and catching my hair in his hands, a rough tug that is both punishing and erotic. “Stop calling me that. One slip and we could end up dead.”
“Noah,” I repeat, because I need him to understand that I’m not denying the danger nor am I denying who and what he is.
“Damn it, Ashley,” he growls, his mouth coming down on mine, his teeth nipping my lip, biting me, pain slicing through me, but I don’t care. I know that he’s punishing me. I know that he wants me to hate him, the way he’s decided to hate himself. “You will not defy me on this. Do you understand?”
“Or what?” I challenge. “You’ll punish me?”
He draws back and looks at me. “Is no part of you afraid of me?”
“Why would I be afraid of you?” I counter, catching his hair in my hand and not gently. “Because you’re an assassin?”
“Yes. Because I’m a fucking assassin.”
“Did you kill bad people?” I ask.
“Yes,” he replies. “I killed bad people.”
