“At his core,” I say, “he is like me. He’s a son, a brother, and a businessman. A person who wants and desires something bigger or better. But our similarities are not bad, Emily. Knowing our enemies as well as they know themselves, or better, is how we defeat them.”
“If you know him, then he knows you.”
“He thinks he does.”
“And I’m sure he’s saying the same thing about you.”
“You underestimate how well I stand toe-to-toe with my opponents.”
“What happens when your opponents begin to feel like the ally your family is not?”
That anger I’m battling spikes hard and fast. “I am not your brother. I am not seduced by Martina’s world the way Rick was your by stepfather’s.” My hand falls from the wall. “And right now I need to go find out how the hell Martina got up here in the first place.” I back up, intending to turn away.
She grabs my tie and holds on to it and me. “Don’t do that. Don’t put words in my mouth and then try to leave to shut me out.”
“I’m not shutting you out,” I say, my hands staying by my sides, while that part of me that wants to fuck really wants to say to hell with my anger and touch her. And taste. And fuck her again.
“You are shutting me out,” she says, snapping me back to the war of words. “We both know you are.”
“I’m protecting you,” I amend. “That’s what I’m doing, and I need you to trust me to do that and to handle this.”
Her grip on my tie tightens. “You have to give trust to get it.”
I tilt my head slightly, studying her. “Meaning what?”
“You didn’t want me to hear that conversation with Martina because you didn’t think I could handle it.”
“I just told you. I’m protecting you. Distancing you from this does that.”
“And then who protects you, Shane?”
“I don’t need protection.”
“I disagree.”
“I protect you. You don’t protect me. Do you understand? You don’t get involved.”
“We protect each other,” she argues. “That’s who we are.”
“Not in this, Emily. In this, I protect you. The end.”
“You can’t—”
“I can,” I say, my hand covering hers over my tie, the touch, and that damn sweet floral scent of her, igniting more fire in my blood and making my voice lower, rougher. “I am. End of topic, and I need—”
“No,” she says. “I need—”
“I need,” I say, closing the small space my near departure created between us, my legs framing hers. “And the ways I can end that sentence right now are many. I need Martina out of my company.” I swallow hard. “I fucking need my father to actually live and not die despite what a bastard he is. I need my mother out of Mike’s bed. I need you here with me, but I need you safe. And I really need you to never look at me the way you looked at me right after Martina left tonight.”
“What look, Shane?”
“Fear,” I say. “Of me.”
“No,” she says, instantly rejecting that idea. “No. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I’m afraid of Martina. I told you that.”
“And me.”
She stares at me, those pale blue eyes of hers sharpening. “Maybe it’s you who’s afraid of you. Maybe on some level you know you got along with Martina just a little too well. Maybe you—”
I tangle my fingers in her hair and tilt her face to mine, my anger now a live charge cracking around us. “You’re wrong.”
“What I am is here, and to be clear, I’m not going anywhere. I’m also not going to hide in a closet and stay silent. I will question you so neither of us loses you. I will ask questions. I will—”
“Stop talking,” I demand, tightening my grip on her hair, adrenaline coursing through me. “You talk too much.” I breathe the last word into her mouth, my lips covering hers, licking into her mouth, tasting her with a hunger that only she can create in me. She is sweet honey on my tongue when everything else sits like a bitter pill I cannot swallow. I can’t get enough of her, and it’s that idea, that realization, that only makes me hungrier, hotter. Gone is any worry that I’m too dark for her. There are just her damning words, over my fear of myself, that I do not like. This isn’t about me. This is about her. She doesn’t trust me. She thinks I’m like everyone else in her life, and that realization is like poison that doesn’t kill, but punishes, the way I want to punish her right now. It torments me. She torments me, and that brings me back to the simple, easy-to-understand feeling of lust. Fierce, intense. Now.
Angry all over again, I reach down, grip the front of her blouse, and yank away the remaining buttons, immediately unknotting the material at her waist. Emily gasps, grabbing my shirt on either side of me, while I shove down the lace of her bra and stroke her nipples, which earns me her panted breaths. I swallow those sweet, sexy sounds, licking into her mouth again, expecting the taste of fear and doubt to overwhelm the arousal, but all I find is sweetness and need, though I know there is more there. More I both want and don’t want to discover.
My fingers tighten where one hand remains threaded in her hair, and I give it an erotic tug, caressing her breast and then teasing her nipple again, and this time not gently. Actually, I’m not sure the first time was either. Nothing about me is gentle tonight, and gentle won’t expose her fear. Gentle won’t force her to admit it, and until she does, we can’t face it and deal with it. And it’s this idea that spurs my freedom to push her, to unleash every dark, brutal emotion biting away at me tonight. I want her to feel it, to taste it. I want her to admit she knows it exists.
But she doesn’t try to resist or hesitate in any way. She arches into me, pressing her hips against the thick ridge of my cock. Giving me her submission, not her anger or her distrust. And on some level I know this should please me, but it does not. It does not. I need more, and I need it now. I release her hair and shove her back against the divider, our gazes colliding. Those sweet full lips of hers are parted, inviting me to kiss them again, my mind conjuring all the places they could be before this night is over. But the swell of my cock doesn’t touch the swell of demand inside me. I want more from her than just her riding my cock. I want more. I want her to show me the emotion that drove that look I saw on her face.
I cup her breasts, thumbing her tight, swollen nipples, my cock so fucking hard it hurts. Her hands go to my arms, her lashes fluttering, lifting. “Shane,” she whispers, her chest rising and falling, and I swear my name on her lips is everything right in my world, when everything else is wrong. I don’t want her to fear me, but if she does, right now, in this moment, I need to know. I need to erase it and make it go the hell away.
Inhaling on a wave of lust, my hands settle at her waist. “Are you afraid of me, Emily?”
“No,” she says firmly. “I am not afraid of you.”
“I want to believe you. I want you to trust me.”
“I do trust you, Shane.”
But there are still shadows in her eyes. I hate those fucking shadows. They tell the story her words do not. They torment me every time I see them, and that knot in my chest tightens and expands, driving me to leave no crack in my armor, or hers, gaping and ready to break. And that thought spurs actions, ideas. I lift her off the divider, sidestepping and settling her weight against the floor-to-ceiling window, my legs shackling hers, protecting her. My hands press hers to the glass on either side of her body, and there is no mistaking her faster breathing or the panic in her eyes. “Now are you afraid?” I challenge.
“Considering I read an article about a couple in Japan who were having sex against a window and then fell to their deaths … Yes. I’m afraid the glass will break. So it’s a good thing I trust you to catch me if it does.”
Her words punch into that knot in my chest. “And if I leave you against the glass and walk away?”
“Then I’m alone and I can fall, but we both k
now you won’t let that happen.”
It’s the right answer. It’s what I want to hear. She trusts me. So why am I so dissatisfied with it? Why do I still want something more? Jaw clenched, I settle my hands at her waist again, and I pull her off the glass, her body all but next to mine, but I don’t cave to the urge to pull her close. Instead, my lashes lower, and for a moment that turns into several more, I just inhale that sweet scent of her, waiting for the satisfaction that should follow but does not come. “Undress,” I order, releasing her and taking a step backward.
“Undress,” she repeats, making no move to do any such thing.
My gaze slides over her exposed nipples, lingering a moment and lifting. “Yes. Undress.”
“And you? Are you going to undress?”
“When I’m ready,” I say, maneuvering the large brown leather footstool in front of the coffee table and her. “For now,” I add, sitting down on top of it, “I’m going to watch you.”
Her eyes meet mine, hers narrowing, a tiny hint of vulnerability in their depths that is there and gone before I can even begin to analyze it. She knows I see it too, and she reacts in that feisty, fierce way I expect from her. Her chin lifts, challenge and defiance in her expression. She slides her blouse off her shoulders and tosses it aside. Turning the tables on me, she doesn’t give me skin. She pulls her boots off next, as if she knows it’s torturing me to wait for more. And it is, but damn if the burn in my body isn’t the sweetest ache of any I’ve had tonight.
Her bra is next though. She unhooks it, but instead of removing it, she laces her fingers in front of her and it, her hands under her chin, and just watches me. But it’s not hesitation to undress I see in her eyes. It’s something else. Something I can’t quite name, but I want to. She doesn’t give me the chance to try. Without further delay, her fingers part, and she drags her bra down her shoulders. My gaze rakes over her beautiful, high breasts, her nipples already puckered, hard like my cock, before my gaze slides down her arm to the finger where her bra now dangles. Sensing there’s a message in the action, my eyes find hers, my brow arching in question. Her lips firm, her eyes darken and she lets her bra drop to the ground. A calculated decision. A choice. The question is, is that choice about her taking control or giving it? It’s a question I’ll answer for her and soon.
She reaches down and unzips her pants, wasting no time in shimmying them down every delicious inch of her body, to expose pale, gorgeous skin, and kicking them aside. Her fingers then twine in the strings at her hips, and she drags the slip of lace that is supposed to be panties down her hips. They too dangle in her fingers, her eyes meeting mine, before she releases them.
I’m pulling my tie from my neck and standing before they ever hit the ground. “I’m going to tie you up, Emily,” I say, closing the small space between us to tower over her.
Her response is quick and unexpected. “On one condition,” she says.
“I’m listening,” I say, and suddenly, while waiting on her answer, I realize she might be without clothes, but I am naked in every other possible way. And I know then that I am fucked up tonight, both looking for her confession of fear and dreading it.
“When this is over, you will not question how or why it happened. This is my choice. You didn’t intimidate me into saying yes. You didn’t scare me. I chose to give you this control because I trust you. Because I am not afraid of you, and when you are like you are tonight, I still won’t be.” She offers me her hands.
Every nerve in my body is jumping. Every dark part of me is now on fire. Every emotion a twisted knot that torments me with a demand that it be named. I won’t allow myself that kind of weakness, and the theme of this night returns. Anger. Emily is the one pushing me to feel these things. She is the one pushing me to prove one thing: that I didn’t see what I saw in her eyes tonight.
I toss the tie and drag her to me, tangling fingers in her hair again and cupping her backside. “Denial is destructive. You know that, right?”
“I do,” she says, her fingers on my chest. “I know, but do you?”
“Damn it, Emily,” I growl, my mouth coming down on hers, tongue sliding past her lips, a band of tension wrapping around us, my need to bend her will, to force her to admit the truth dominating, the way I want to dominate her. But she doesn’t let me dominate her.
Her kiss is as fierce as mine. Her tongue as demanding, while her soft little hand manages to slide under my shirt that is somehow untucked, and scorch my skin. I deepen the kiss and squeeze her backside again, not sure who is pushing who. Not finding the fear I’d sought or expected, and that drives me to want it, to want her, all the more. I raise my hand and give her a smack on the bottom just hard enough to get her attention.
She yelps and then pants into my mouth. “Was that supposed to scare me? Because it didn’t.” She pulls back and looks at me, no hesitation in her words or eyes. “In fact, it turns me on. Everything with you turns me on, Shane. Do it again.”
Possessiveness rises hard and fast, unfamiliar and intense. “Who spanked you before me?”
“Nothing matters before you,” she says, her fingers curling at my jawline. “Do it again. You want to. I feel it. I know it.”
“Holy fuck, woman. I was worried about scaring you.”
“You mean you were convinced I was already scared. I wasn’t and you can’t scare me, but you can piss me off like you did when Martina left. That wasn’t fear you saw in my eyes, Shane. That was anger. I was pissed. I still am.”
I don’t do us the injustice of playing naive. “Because I didn’t want you to hear that meeting.”
“Yes,” she says. “And you know my past and all the secrets and lies. You know the lie I have to live to survive. Don’t give me more of the same.”
“I also know the reasons your family gave you to feel insecure. I don’t want you to feel that.”
“Secrets make me feel that.”
“It’s not about secrets. I was—”
“Don’t say ‘protecting me’ again. Don’t even say it. Even now, you want to be the person you were in that elevator and you won’t. Give me everything or nothing. I can’t do in between. So you want to fuck me, you want to spank me? Stop holding back.” She grabs my shirt. “Stop holding things back from me. I want the good, bad, and ugly. I want—”
I kiss her again, and damn it, if she wants the bad and the ugly, I’ll give it to her. I lift her and carry her to the couch, sitting down, and before she even knows my intention, I have her over my lap, my hand on her backside. “I’m going to spank you now.”
“Do it,” she hisses. “Do it now.”
But I don’t do it now because that would defeat my purpose: seeking control and her giving it. And it wouldn’t be about anticipation, pleasure, or escape. It would be about fast, hard pain. “Soon,” I say softly, shutting my eyes, running my hand over her bottom, warming her cheeks, readying her beautiful backside, that dark part of me unleashed but controlled in a way it wasn’t before. She isn’t demanding that I spank her for me. She wants it for her. She wants the escape it can be, and I know now that she’s needed that in the past, details of which I plan to find out. She was afraid tonight, but I was wrong about why. It wasn’t because of me. It wasn’t even because of Martina. It was about losing control, losing me and us. She wants the same escape I need, and I’m going to give it to her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHANE
My palm flattens on Emily’s gorgeous backside, and she is trembling all over. “I’m not going to hurt you. I would never hurt you.”
“I know that,” she whispers, and then her tone becomes firm. “I trust you. Do it.”
Trust.
There it is.
This isn’t just about escape. This is her sending me a message. She trusts me, and even beyond that, she can handle anything and everything in this life we now share. It matters. And holy fuck, now I think I’m shaking and I don’t shake. Ever.
“Shane!” she hisses, arching her back sli
ghtly. “You have to do it. The anticipation is killing me.”
“That’s part of it, sweetheart,” I say, caressing her cheek. “The anticipation.”
“It’s too much. It’s too—”
“I’m going to count to three.”
“One,” she says. “Two—”
My lips curve and I add, “Three,” before my hand lifts and comes down on her. The first contact is forceful, but nothing that will hurt her. A sting that doubles that arch in her back and draws her gasp. The second stroke is immediately after, and a little lighter. The third is the hardest of all, and I finish it by cupping her cheek and leaning down to kiss her shoulder.
“No more,” I whisper, turning her to face me, cradling her body. Our lips are close, our breath mingling. “Tell me you’re okay?”
Her fingers curl at my cheek. “I am always okay with you, Shane.”
My hand covers hers. “I want to know who did this to you before.”
“No one who mattered. I told you. Nothing before you matters.”
“I still want to know.”
“Not now.”
“No,” I agree. “Not now.” I shift us, lifting her and pulling her across my lap, her legs straddling my hips, and then her hands are on my shoulders, and one word comes to my mind. Naked. She has allowed herself to be totally, completely exposed with me, in ways her past says she should never allow it to happen.
We linger together, our lips still a lean from touching, the air thickening, the need between us swelling like a wave that suddenly breaks, the two of us moving at once, our lips and bodies melding together. And in a collision of everything that’s happened tonight, we are kissing, touching, and all I can think about is being inside her. She tugs at my shirt, but I have no patience to remove it. I shift our bodies, and both of us attack the unzipping of my pants, and when I lift her, intending to set her aside to undress, somehow we are kissing again, and she’s back on top of me.
Bad Deeds Page 7
