Page 167 of Boss of the Year

When it was just us, my heart found its normal rhythm.

He was shirtless now, his skin golden even under the bathroom lights that cast shadows under the honed muscles of his chest and abdomen.

“You wanted a minute. It’s been three.” His lips feathered over my skin. “You ran again.”

Our eyes met in the mirror. I couldn’t move. “I needed some space.”

I watched that mouth move back and forth over the curve between my neck and shoulder. It seemed so gentle, but I could see the way the muscles of his arms shook with tension in the mirror, the way his knuckles had turned white from his forceful grip on the counter.

He was holding back.

“Is it me?” he asked softly. “Did you change your mind?”

I watched, utterly transfixed by the steady progress of his mouth back and forth over my shoulder like the pendulum of a clock. With every oscillation, my shoulders relaxed a bit more.

“Not about you,” I managed to say. “Just…everything else.”

Those lips completed one more journey to my shoulder and back before pressing a longer, lingering kiss just above my clavicle. “What do you need, my sweet Marie?”

“I…” I sucked in another tight breath as his teeth found my earlobe and worried it lightly between them. “I don’t know.Lucas.”

“I need to hearyousay my name like that every fucking day until I die.” His voice rumbled while powerful arms slid around my waist. “But what else can I do for you?”

“I don’t…” I trailed off with a whole-body shudder as his tongue swiped up the shell of my ear, then dipped inside like he was savoring a lick of ice cream. “I…”

“It’s all right, baby,” he murmured as he continued nibbling. “We can stop if you want.”

His mouth floated back down my neck, brushing over my jaw while his hands locked more tightly around my waist, but did nothing more.

He meant what he said, I realized. I was in charge.

And therein lay yet another problem.

“No, I don’t want to stop,” I finally admitted. My hands reached back, finding the belt loops of his pants to pull him harder against me.

Lucas expelled a choked breath as his erection slid between the cleft of my backside through his pants and my skirt. In all honesty, I would have preferred nothing there at all.

“I want…” I tried again. “I want more. I just…”

God,whywas this so hard? The ache between my legs was fully throbbing now, but I was so lost, so clueless, I had no idea how to solve the problem before me.

Lucas’s hands stilled on my waist, keeping me from coiling in on myself.

He knew my moves.

He had already learned them in such a short time.

“Marie, look at me.”

The command was clear. Kind. Soft-spoken. But expecting it would be obeyed.

I obeyed.

There was a calm in the storm I found in his reflection. A softness just for me.

“I want more,” I answered. “I just…Lucas, I don’t know what to ask for. I don’t know what to do next.”

I half-expected a jeer. A steely barb as sharp as one of the Japanese knives. The wicked shinjuku, or maybe the deceptively small bird’s peak paring knife, curved like a talon. Like something Joni, God love her, would have thrown my way when we were kids.