Page 76

The last word makes my eyes flit to the chaise in the corner and the couple. They’ve switched now, and the woman is on top. She’s discarded her clothes and is riding him slowly in a confident roll of her hips.

Maybe she enjoys performing,I think. Maybe she enjoys knowing people here are watching her and liking it. The man beneath her has his arms beneath his head and looks at her like she’s hung the moon.

Maybe she enjoys that too. The power of giving someone else pleasure.

“You can’t look away, can you?” West’s voice is tight.

He’s caught me again.

I let my gaze grow hooded and look back at the game. “It’s hard to,” I admit. “How long are we staying?”

“We’ll leave soon. We’ve done what we came here to do.”

I shift a little in his lap and look around for one of the waiters. I wouldn’t mind another spicy shot. But that’s when I feel it, the distinct hardness beneath me.

It takes me a few seconds to realize what it is.

Holy shit. He’s just… sitting here. Breathing low and steady, his hand on my bare back, the other curved over my knee. Holding me against his body.

I shift against the hardness, and he grinds his teeth together.

Oh my god. West Calloway is hard. The knowledge shoots through me like one of those shots, warming every place it touches. What would that hardness look like? What would he feel like?

Is it because of our kiss?

My gaze wanders back to the naked woman riding her partner. She’s gorgeous, with large breasts and curvy hips. She has to be it. He’s watching people have sex. Sure, he’s seemed pretty disinterested in them, but he’s a person. A man. It’s normal for that to affect him.

That has to be it.

CHAPTER22

WEST

I’m in hell.

Nora is draped in my lap, a warm, soft weight. Her hair tickles my neck as she watches the couple in the corner with a kind of focus I’ve never seen in her before.

I’m hard as a fucking rock.

It’s more than inconvenient. It’sindecent. She has asked me to help her practice so she can feel at ease around dating and men, so she can learn to ask for what she wants. She’s told me that men sometimes act like creeps around her.

And here I am, blood painfully rushing south at the first taste of her lips.

I started by kissing her carefully. Slowly. A tempo she could follow along with and not be overwhelmed by. But then she scraped her nails over my scalp, and I couldn’t resist tasting her with my tongue.

She’s sweeter than I ever thought she might be.

And now that I’ve tasted her, I know I’m never going to get enough.

At the poker table, Dave is staring hard enough at his cards that I know he’s wishing they were different. He’s going to lose tonight. Just like he loses all the time.

He’s a Calloway, but only through my father’s cousin. And he can’t stay away from these parties… or the other privileges that his last name provides. Not that he’ll ever take on any responsibility.

I only told Nora half the truth.

Over my dead body will he gain access to Fairhaven. I know he’s already planning what he’ll do if my thirtieth birthday comes and I’m still unmarried. My home will show up in one of these games, gambled away because he thinks he has great cards when he doesn’t. It’ll be turned into a hotel or a college. The grounds desecrated and an elevator installed.

Nora shifts again, and I bite down on my tongue to hide a groan. I need my body to get a fucking grip.