“You should knock.”
“I am not accustomed to knocking.”
His nonchalant voice was warm even when irritating. And he marched on—to me.
“I am flying to Washington tonight. I just wanted to let you know.”
I took two steps back when he rounded the desk and continued decisively to me. The only sign that he had acknowledged my words was a curt nod of his head, then he was on me.
He pushed me against the metal frame of the window and fisted his hands in my hair at the same time his mouth sealed over mine.
He kissed me wildly, taming my tongue and bruising my lips without apology. He kissed me ruthlessly, lavishing me with his taste and scent and making up for all the hours we hadn’t touched. In the end, when my lips felt so swollen that I thought all my blood had gathered there, I wanted him to start all over again. And he did.
“Good. Should I pack light?” he asked eventually.
“Are you coming? You might be needed by somebody else.”
“Charlotte.”
His voice was low and rough and tingling my senses in ways that almost made me moan. Resisting him was not an easy job. He tightened his hold on the nape of my neck and rested his forehead against mine.
“You can keep being mad at me, but I will not allow you to push me away any longer. A damn weekend is all I can give you. I am not needed by anybody else. I am coming with you, and that’s not up for discussion.”
“Pack for an unlimited period then.”
Trying to move out of his arms, I only managed to be trapped in a tighter and more irresistible snare.
“What did I just tell you?” he murmured in my ear, catching my earlobe and tugging punishingly. “Stop pushing me away.”
“I cannot think when you hold me like this.”
“I don’t want you to think.”
“But I do.”
Thinking was my last grasp of control but also my greatest flaw. Keeping the perfect balance between thinking and overthinking was a trying endeavor when Marcus kept urging me with everything he had, from his actions to his words, to quit doing it altogether.
“Tell me what you feel, Charlotte. What does your instinct tell you? Have I betrayed you like you think I have?” His abrupt straightforwardness had my head spinning.
I watched his darkening blue eyes and absorbed the warmth of his touch. All weekend, I had been thinking, suspecting, and creating scenarios that might not exist, but I had refused to feel.
Despite my suspicions and insecurities, he didn’t strike me as the sort of man who cheated. He was too blunt to bother with the complications of leading a double life.
“No.”
A soul-deep, cleansing sigh left my body and the weight that had pressed over my chest ever since I stepped out of Marcus’s apartment slowly dissipated.
I hadn’t decided yet whether he was worth surrendering to or not, but I owed it to myself to give our relationship a chance.
Chapter 25
Marcus
We landed in Washington roughly an hour after we took off from New York. I had hoped to use the duration of the flight to close the still hostile gap between Charlotte and me, but as soon as we boarded, she took refuge in her work, erecting a chilly barrier I didn’t dare disturb. For the moment.
At the airport, she was greeted by a small crew consisting of a driver and two lawyers, whose names I didn’t bother to remember, although Charlotte dutifully made introductions. They watched me dubiously, but by the time we climbed in the black sedan waiting for us, they had already monopolized Charlotte’s attention and were absorbed in a tense discussion revolving around their client’s case.
The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was when the receptionist of the Willard Intercontinental offered us two separate keys for two separate rooms. I glared at Charlotte throughout our ride to the eighth floor but otherwise remained silent. My silence unsettled her. Good.
Liv’s presence in my apartment had been unacceptable and something that would not happen again, but while I deserved her reserve and respected her hurt feelings, I also couldn’t tolerate the emotional distance she was stubbornly exhibiting.
Back in her New York office, where it had been only us, where I’d had her cornered between the window and my body, she had relented. She had let herself feel and she had felt right. I was not unfaithful. I could not conceive disloyalty. Her heart knew the truth although her mind still doubted it.
Liv and I had a long, tumultuous history that had gone on even when everything between us ended. The moment Charlotte and I had turned from acquaintances to lovers, whatever I had had with Liv ceased. Yet, I was not prepared to let Charlotte in on the gruesome past I shared with her, or on my many faults and bad decisions. I wasn’t ready to watch her turn from me because of that history.
We stepped outside the elevator, still accompanied by the two lawyers. Gritting my teeth, I delivered a hurried good night then strode off to my room without another glance for Miss Burton. If she demonstrated her displeasure through silent coldness, I could adopt the same tactic since at the moment, I was very displeased with her. Those chocolate eyes of hers burned through me as I retired.
I wasn’t quite sure if the displeasure pumping viciously in my veins was directed at Charlotte or at myself. After the emptiness her absence had caused and the fear that I might have lost her, I knew I couldn’t settle for scraps.
I didn’t only want Charlotte’s body. I wanted her soul. I wanted all of her. Although finally feeling was riveting, what Charlotte Burton forced me to feel was terrifying.
It was almost midnight when I knocked on her door. She opened with the immediacy that betrayed her impatience. She had been waiting for me. The idea put a smile on my face as I leaned against the doorframe and watched her reddened cheeks and parted lips.
Covered by a silk robe and wearing matching white slippers, her skin looked contrastingly rosy. Her long hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but a few wavy threads still hung damply around her face. I almost groaned with the desire to taste the water droplets on her throat.
“Hi.”
Unable to resist, I raised my free hand and touched the pinkness in her cheek, absorbing the delicious warmth.
“Hi,” she responded quietly, licking her lips. Greedy eyes raked me from head to toe as she pressed her legs together. My smile grew bigger.
“I brought a peace offering.” I lifted the bottle of Moët & Chandon that I had ordered earlier and imagined how the champagne would taste off her voluptuous lips.
“Come in.”
Charlotte opened the door wide and stepped to the side so I could walk inside. I sensed her fidgeting as I paced to the breakfast bar dominating the kitchenette. I chose two flutes from a glass case and filled them with the sparkling liquid, painfully aware of the electricity drawing Charlotte and me together.
She watched me, her fingers playing with her hair and her teeth playing with her lips, as I pulled ice from the freezer and placed the bottle in a bucket. When I approached her, flutes in hand and a wicked smile on my face, her tension-etched features caught shades of impetuosity. Then she burst.
“I wasn’t trying to be petty when I asked for two rooms. I wasn’t trying to get back at you or put distance between us, but you are certainly aware that your father has eyes everywhere. He will find out if we sleep in the same room. I created the reason for you coming to D.C. with me. I had to create the proper setting too.”
“I wasn’t asking you for an explanation,” I muttered quietly, handing her the flute and urging her with my eyes to drink. She took it hesitantly and led the way back to the sitting area, now and then glancing back to assess my mood.
I was on the prowl.
“I wanted you to know I wasn’t trying to take revenge—”
“I knew.”
“But you were upset.”
“I was. But I still knew.”
A muscle in her jaw jumped. She got my allusion, and remorse momentarily
misted her gaze. Immediately, my own guilt mirrored hers. It brought me no satisfaction to upset her. I followed her until she bumped against a writing desk littered with papers, and her hands curled around the edges.
“This was your only get-out,” I told her bluntly, my voice intentionally turning low and rough.
I bowed closer. Our lips nearly touched but not really. Teasing a woman until every pore of her being desired me was part of the thrill. Seducing Charlotte gave me as much pleasure as that final moment of exquisite release.
“I told you I mess up a lot, but the next time I do, don’t expect me to let you go again.”
“I’d rather you didn’t mess up.”
“I’ll try not to.”
It was a promise, but my eyes showed the lack of confidence I had in my own words. Whether I wanted or not, I always ended up failing. My father’s smirk flashed triumphantly before my eyes. Clenching my jaw and cracking my neck, I looked away with a frustrated groan.
Charlotte took my head in her hands and slowly stroked the sides of my face with her thumbs. Her stare was all-pervading, her scrutiny invasive, her tenacity to read my very soul devastating.
As she dragged me lower, her slender fingers searched my face as if she were touching me for the first time. When her fingers settled on my mouth, I took the half-empty flute from her hand and placed it together with mine on a stand nearby.
“You have tempted me several times now, sweet Charlotte. I plan on collecting.”
“I have done no such thing.” The playful smile coloring her eyes incited me.
“In my office,” I explained, remembering how deeply she had roused my desire with her jealous curiosity when she wondered whether I had been with another woman in my workplace. “In your office,” I continued and nudged her backward until she was forced to climb on the desk. We had shared a similar position in her office, but on that occasion, things had not concluded like I wanted. “In the hallways, when you pass me by. At the cafeteria. You tempt me every minute you are around me.”
“You get tempted too easily then.”
“You enjoy my torment too much, sugar.”
I gripped her hips and pulled her against me with one ruthless movement. Charlotte gave a delightfully loud yelp. Come dawn, the entire hotel would know that we hadn’t slept in separate rooms.
“That is not advisable.”
“No?” she teased as her hands twisted in my shirt and drew me closer.
“I guess you’ll have to find out.”
And she was going to find out when she would toss and turn underneath me, begging for release. I leaned forward until she was sprawled on the desk and my hips were comfortably cradled by her thighs.
Kissing her, I untied the knot securing her robe and freed it brusquely, seeking the warmth of her bare skin. When the white fabric fell beside the desk, and Charlotte remained naked and ready for my touch, she coiled around my body, licking the notch at the base of my throat.
“I’m completely in, Charlotte.”
Her rhythm faltered, and her eyes found mine with blazing intensity. She started working on the buttons of my shirt, never releasing me from the spell her brown eyes cast. I bent again to take her mouth, crazy to be touching her, but she stopped me with a firm hand placed over my heart.
“Undress,” she ordered, unfastening the button of my jeans.
“Undress me,” I challenged.
She hopped off the desk and circled me. With a smile, I understood what she was doing—what I had done the very first time we made love. She was taking her time, teasing me until both of us would be on the point of combusting.
Grabbing the open sides of my shirt, she tugged it back and dropped it to the ground on top of her robe. Her hot mouth closed over my left scapula where an irregular scar marred my skin. My body was a living testimony of the turmoil rattling within me. I had scars to remind me of disasters that couldn’t be erased. Unknowingly, Charlotte worshiped them all.
She dipped her thumbs beneath my waistband and crouched to release me from the confinement of my jeans. When she stood, her fingers trailed patterns up and down my spine making me shiver. I spun around so fast that she staggered back a step. But she was in my arms and pressed against the paper-littered desk before she could draw another breath.
“Witch.”
A delicious smile took over her delicate face. Her legs locked around my hips, pulling me closer, urging me to take what I so desperately craved. I moved slowly, savoring every inch of her heated depths, our chests smacking together with each slide back in. We had gone slow our first time and the times that followed, but now, both of us needed the purge only wildness could provide.
I bit on her lip and sucked on her tongue until breath left her lungs, and her nails dug deep crescent marks in my shoulders. The slow pace maddened her as much as it maddened me. Settling her hands on my waist, she attempted to move faster, but I intentionally denied her.
“Wasn’t slow your pace, sweet Charlotte?” I crooned against her ear, licking the delicate shell with my tongue.
“No, not tonight,” she pleaded.
I studied her, ceasing all movement. Through my insistent stare, I transmitted what my tongue didn’t verbally express. Once I started, once I drowned in my passion and let myself be caught by hers, I wouldn’t stop, not even if the ceiling fell on my head.
Stripped of slowness and caution, I spread her thighs and thrust without delicacy, without restraint. Charlotte wailed her pleasure while her back arched and her arms went around my shoulders, clinging tight. Anchored to one another, we met halfway in perfect synchronization.
The need mounted and pulsed in every cell of my body. My blood grew hotter with the abandoned desire to possess her, to have her only to myself. I caught her wrists and forced her back on the desk. Naked and on display for my pleasure, Charlotte was a true living temptation. And I did not hold back.
When the first climax quaked her body, her eyes lost focus and her arms stilled by her sides. Words were not enough to describe the ravishing beauty Charlotte radiated in those moments of unrestrained pleasure. In the slackness of her sated body and the glint in her unfocused eyes, there was peace.
“Do you know what you’re doing to me?” Her voice was rough from moaning so loudly and still supremely sensual.
Charlotte reached to touch my sweat-coated chest, and I hunched lower, hungry for her stroking hands. At first, she caressed my left side, her eyes meeting mine before she returned her attention to the line of scars trailing from my midsection to my right hip. Those were the marks that went deeper than flesh.
It was the crescent sign resting between my collarbones that she preferred above all others. Pushing her weight on her elbows, she pressed her burning lips against the unpleasant disfigurement and sucked gently, replacing the remembered pain with much too vivid pleasure.
Charlotte could do that to me. She could heal me. But she could also mess me up more than anybody else.
“I know. It’s exactly what you’re doing to me.”
I caught her face and willed her to understand, to see beyond my rough edges and countless mistakes. Her eyes glowed with understanding. Her whole body did. We were still linked, still unfinished, still eager for more. I flexed my hips and succumbed to an unyielding rhythm, enjoying every helpless moan she gave and every shudder of her body.
“Stop tormenting me,” she complained eventually, thrashing under the exquisite pressure I exerted over her body. My spine tingled with the need to surrender, but for another moment I found the strength to deny us both.
“It’s not advisable to torment me,” I murmured in her ear.
It was a warning as much as it was a plea. She laughed frustrated and pounded her small fists against my heaving chest. I relished her whimpers and the way she threw her head back. I lavished her throat with wet kisses and seized her mouth in an embrace of lips and tangle of tongues that equally scorched and soothed. Then I carried us both to our intimate personal nirvana.
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“We are not going to sleep in separate rooms, Charlotte,” I told her after I laid her on the bed, hovering over her delightfully sleepy frame.
“No, we are not,” she agreed with a drowsy giggle then dragged me to bed, by her side.
My arms wrapped automatically around her body, nestling her into my side, where nothing and nobody could take her from me. I had learned that this state of peace and soul-deep satisfaction didn’t last for long, so I intended to enjoy it while it did.
Charlotte falling asleep in my arms, trusting me when she was most vulnerable, brought me the kind of gratification that put my demons to rest.
THE NEXT DAY I IDLED on my own. After Charlotte joined Jack Stewart’s team, I slipped into my room to give it a satisfactory lived-in nuance. At lunch, she called to postpone our date but promised we would have dinner instead. At six o’clock, I contacted her to let her know that I would pick her up whether or not she still had things to deal with.
I valued her work, but I valued her sanity more. She didn’t even protest. The sigh she gave before I hung up showed she was grateful although her sense of responsibility prevented her from admitting it out loud.
Dressed casually and wearing a pair of aviators, I leaned against the black Mercedes I had rented and waited with barely controlled impatience. Charlotte went through the glass revolving doors of Drake Kendrix Zane, then she exited into the warm summer day with a stiff, somber expression that didn’t suit her. She spotted me, and her delighted expression warmed my heart.
“I need you,” she whispered as soon as she came within earshot.
She gripped my biceps, rose on tiptoes, and quickly brushed her lips against mine, then she carefully stepped aside, acting detached. If we kept our relationship private, my father wouldn’t have any more leverage on me, yet I wasn’t wholly convinced I wanted to hide it any longer. What Charlotte and I had shouldn’t remain in the dark. She was radiant, and she deserved the limelight.
“You have me. Any way you want.”
We rode in silence, my hand resting on Charlotte’s knee and her hands playing absently with my fingers. Her thoughts were still directed to the case she was working on, but I didn’t intend to let her dwell on it for much longer.
Darkside Love Affair Page 31
