Page 68 of Omega

“They don’t fit you.”

I shook my head. “No, not really.”

A moment of silence then, as if that was all he could think to say.

I watched his chest expand with a deep breath, which he held for a moment and then released slowly. His hands curled into fists at his sides, and his eyes fixed on mine, conflicted, heated green.

And then, with a growl of irritated acquiescence, he moved so he was pressed up against me, erection hard against my belly, face tipped down, mouth centimeters from mine.

“Tell me no,” he murmured.

I should have.

I couldn’t.

“Layla.” It was a demand, a repetition of his injunction to say no.

“Nick?”

At my use of his name, he seemed to swell and his fingers gathered the skin-tight cotton of my T-shirt into his fists. “Last chance, Layla. Tell me to stop.”

Fuck that. I wanted this. I wasn’t thinking beyond the moment, because that’s how I worked. I wasn’t thinking about anything except need, except want, except the ache between my thighs, except the way my nipples pulsed and my core was going damp and hot. I couldn’t have told him no even if I’d been able to summon words. Which, incidentally, I wasn’t.

He growled again, and this time it was a groan of need. Harris’s jaw clenched and I felt his fists tense in my shirt at the center of my spine. He pulled, and I heard cotton rip. His arms went rigid, and the frayed crew-neck collar parted.

Holy fucking shit; he was literally ripping the clothes off me?

The maroon fabric hit the floor, and I was bare from the waist up. My nipples tightened, and I lifted my chin, stepped back, hands at my sides.

Harris’s gaze roved over me, and I was rewarded by a groan scraping past his clenched teeth as he took in my body. “Jesus, Layla.”

“What?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew exactly what he meant.

“You,” he said. “You’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucking seen.”

Somehow, coming from him, that meant more than any compliment I’d ever gotten, and that scared the fuck out of me. I shoved that little box of emotion way, way down, closed the lid, locked it off, and buried it. Nope nope nope. Not going there. Not with him, not with anyone.

“Tit for tat,” I said, running my hands over my breasts. “My shirt…for yours.” I crossed the space between us and gripped the edges of his shirt.

I ripped it off him with a rough jerk, and Harris took the garment from me, let it fall to the floor, and now we were both naked from the waist up. I ran my hands over his chest, rubbed my palms on his nipples and through the dark, curly hair on his chest.

“You’ve got a hairy chest, Nick.”

“Sure do.” The question was there in his gaze, unspoken.

I ran my palms in circles on his chest, placed a kiss to the indent on his shoulder where it wasn’t quite shoulder, wasn’t quite chest. Another, over his breastbone. “I like it. Real men have hairy chests.”

He scraped his hands up my belly and cupped my breasts in his big, rough hands. “Glad you think so.” There was a smile in his words, but I was too busy tracing the grooves of his abdomen, the concavity of his sides, the smooth plateau of his broad back to actually see it.

A breath, another kiss to his chest, right above his nipple, and then he was kneeling in front of me, yanking open the button of the shorts and jerking them down past my hips. I stepped out of them, and looked down at Harris, meeting his gaze. He had a double-handful of my ass, and his lips were pressed to my left hipbone. Just beneath my navel. Then over to my right hipbone and to my thigh, high up, just underneath the thin strap of my tiny red thong, then over, a breath away from where the silk cupped my pussy.

He glanced up as he hooked his fingers into the side of the thong, preparing to rip it off.

I grabbed his hand. “Don’t. It’s the only pair I’ve got.”

“I brought you clean clothes from theEliza.They’re in my bag,” he said, and then ripped the thong apart anyway.

Jesus. You read about a sexy brute of a man ripping a girl’s underwear off, but the reality is a little different. It kind of hurts a little, where the strap on the opposite side digs into your hip with the pressure of the pull, until it gives. And then there’s the fact that it kind of creates a bit of camel toe. But then the string parts and you’re bare, naked, completely bare. And that was what he did, just ripped it off, tore my underwear right off. It snatched my breath away.