Page 120 of Just One Look

Some of that must have come through, because she was shuddering, and he was undoing buttons, one by one, and parting the front of her shirt. Not white tonight. Purple instead, a sort of gauzy thing. The bra was dark purple. He’d been able to see it under the shirt all night, especially when she’d leaned forward, making a point to Nyree and Marko across the coffee table as they ate their Indonesian food, and the gauzy stuff had fallen away from her body and been caught by the light. The cups of the bra didn’t go all the way up her breasts, and the whole thing had done a pretty fair job of tormenting him. Now, her hair was down, her shirt was unfastened, and she had her arse snuggled into his erection in a way that made a man want to try a few more things.

“The problem with letting me unwrap you once and play with you,” he told her, keeping up the work at her neck, “is that now I want to do it all over again. And, yeh, we’re a couple. But you’re also my booty call. And I want it.”

She said, “Uh … neck.Neck.”It was more of a gasp, because he’d begun to run his fingers lightly over the cups of her bra, there where it stopped, halfway up the swells of her breasts. Her nipple would be right there, barely under that, but he wasn’t going to touch it. Not yet.

“Mm,” he said. “If I lie on my back, though, and hold still … and you think about going to dinner with the doctor and his wife, and how perfectly respectable you’ll have to be, in that sexy little dress we go out and buy you, the one that’s cut a bit low in front and shows everybody that gorgeous rack. How you could be wearing some fuck-me shoes with it, the kind that let a man know exactly what you’ve got for him, and some of those undies of yours underneath. That dress is going to unzip right down the back and fall onto the floor, so you can step out of it. I’ll have this bloody brace off by then and can deal to you the way I need to. You could think about how I’ll do it. Or you could tell me how you want me to do it.”

“Wait.” She grabbed his wrist and twisted to look at him. The twist felt fine against him, so he took his hand out of her shirt and pulled her back into him harder.

“Don’t you want to make it easy on my neck?” he asked. “Day after surgery, eh. Delicate. If I’m lying down, though, I’ll be safe. I could just about handle that view. And this arse of yours, too.”

“So your idea is,” she said, “that instead of me going home andsleeping,you lie back and hold your head still, and I have dirty fantasies and use your body mercilessly, because you’re bored? Andalsotalk to you about those fantasies?”

“Well, yeh,” he said. “That was pretty much it. And you sleep here afterwards. That was the other part. Cozy, eh. Loving.”

“Do I get to tie you up in this scenario?”

What?He stared at her, and she smiled cheerily at him and said, “Or not. Just checking. You have to admit, it’d be hotter if I tied you up. We might not even need fantasies. Also safer on the neck, because you could get excited and move, otherwise. Safer’s good, right?” She kissed his cheek, her touch light as a butterfly’s wings, and trailed her fingers down his jaw.

“Uh …” he said. “Right.”

She took his hand, then, put it on her arse and rubbed it over herself, nice and slow, and said, “You couldn’t touch it, though, could you? You could only look. And feel. You could feel everything, and you could control exactly nothing. Sure you can handle that?”

This was not how he rolled. Not even close. Why was it working for him?

She said, “I can wait a while to sleep. Sleep is overrated. Go find me something to do it with.” Another smile, not nearly so cheery this time. Slow, wicked, and dark. “Take off your shirt, too. But leave your jeans on. I want to take them off you.”

* * *

Luka gave her a long,hard look, the kind that set your pulse racing, and said, “You think it’s going to be all your way, do you? Are you sure?”

“Well, if you’re tied down, it is,” she said. “And I hear talking. Why do I hear talking? Why am I not seeing you taking off your shirt?”

He walked away, pulling his shirt over his head as he went, and the sight of his thick arms, his muscular back, made her knees go weak. After that, though, he headed around the corner and into the bedroom, and her neurons began firing again.

What was she doing? He was apatient!Well, not a patient, or not hers, but not nearly healed enough for sex! Also, what was she thinking? She was some sort of sexual athlete now? She was going to let him lie there and look at her naked as she fumbled around? To look at herass?

Her father was right. This was not her.

She went into the bedroom to tell him so, and he came out of the closet, dressed only in a pair of jeans and his neck brace, and gave her another of those looks.

Shoulders. Chest. Arms all day and night. And two neckties in his hands. Surprisingly conservative ones, in navy blue with tiny patterns. Not what she’d have expected. His feet were big, and so were his thighs in the low-slung jeans, in that low light shining up onto the blue-and-green photo. In this cave of a room. With music playing now, dark and low and sexy and sweet.

“You know,” she said, “I really should go home and sleep.” Possibly a test. Possibly.

He said, “I get to remove the brace at night.” And pulled the neckties through his hands. Slowly.

“Not right now, you don’t,” she said. “And you are not rewriting our script. I can tell that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It is what I’m thinking,” he said. “Can’t help it. It’s that body you’ve got, and the way you’ll feel underneath me when I’m fucking you hard.”

Somehow, she was taking the neckties from his hands and telling him, “Lie down on your back. You are not taking off that brace. You’re doing exactly what I say, or you’re not getting any of this.”

He didn’t answer. He just stared at her some more, his face unreadable, while her heart rate escalated, then walked over to the bed and did it. Right in the middle. He said, “You can tie the neckties to the legs of the bed, under the mattress.”

“You say that like you know,” she said.

“That’s because I do.” No smile at all.