Page 23 of Vicious Arrangement (Alpha Billionaire Daddies #7)

Chapter Nineteen

ARIA

I pace the terrace upstairs, outside the living room. Angus kept pace for a while, but then he got bored and went to our room to no doubt eat and drink some water.

All I’ve been able to do to keep my anxiety and the anger in my veins from building absolute burning pyres is slowly drink the whiskey Asher left.

And yes, I’m angry at Noah, and I’m anxious for him to get home so I can have it out.

I’m furious at the way he acted. Not just by making out I’m his property, but how he seemed to suddenly leap backwards in whatever progress we had, to rampaging as if Asher and I were in the wrong.

How?

By getting along while we waited for him to arrive?

Of all the deplorable, asshole behaviors I can think of, that took the cake.

He—

I stop. There’s a soft ding of the elevator, and I go to the door of the apartment as the elevator doors swish open and Noah comes in.

I wait, wondering what he’s going to do.

The light’s on in my room, the door open, and for a moment I think he’s going to go down the hall to my room, but he doesn’t.

He slides his shoes off, not bothering with the laces.

It’s clear to me he’s planning to slink off to his room like the snake he is and hide there.

I narrow my eyes, toss back my drink, and set down the glass on the table before storming in, going right up to him.

“What the fuck,” I spit, poking his chest, ignoring that tantalizing scent of him that coils around me, tempting me with the freshness of bergamot and the spice of pepper, now accentuated by the scent of whiskey, “is wrong with you?”

“Back off, Aria,” he says.

I ignore him.

“No. You’re not the boss of me. In all the literal and figurative ways, you’re not the boss. You don’t own me. We’re married, it’s called, even in this fake and empty hellish landscape of a marriage, a partnership.”

“Aria,” he warns.

I step closer and poke harder. “Just so you know, I have male friends. Female friends, too. So I will see and be friends with anyone I choose. I’ll hang out with them whenever I like.”

His eyes darken and glitter, but he doesn’t touch me. “Oh, will you?”

“Yes, I will. Besides, it’s not like you’re really into me. We fuck and that’s it. You’ve made that pretty damn clear.” I poke him again. “And guess what? I’m fine with it. I really am.”

He sighs. “Look, you don’t?—”

“What, understand that it’s just fucking and nothing else? Because I get it.”

“No,” he says, grabbing my hand as I poke him again, “you don’t. It’s way more complicated than that.”

I stare at him, and something passes between us that makes my stomach swoop.

“So,” I say, “we’re doing more than fucking? Because this morning?—”

He closes his eyes, breaking something in me so that it hurts to breathe. Then he opens them.

“The problem is,” he says, massaging my fingers he’s holding, “I can’t give you anything serious.”

“We’re married.”

“But… I don’t want anyone else,” he says, like I didn’t speak.

“We’re married,” I say again with a laugh. “How much more serious can it get? We. Are. Married.”

“Exactly.” Noah’s eyes flare with savage passion and he lets go of my hand and takes my arm, hauling me close so our bodies touch and my senses go haywire.

I narrow my eyes and look up, trembling from that bite of a touch. Something about the predatory way he’s holding me makes my blood roar. “So, what are you going to do about keeping me from walking out that door?”

“To what? Be with someone else?”

“It could happen. I’m sure there are others who want me, and maybe with serious intent.” I’m poking the lion, and I don’t care it’s hungry.

“Keep away from them. As you said, you’re my wife. You don’t have to like me, just act the fuck like a wife, my wife, my devoted wife.”

“That’s hard,” I say, pulse beating as my blood seems to surge through my veins, making my cheeks burn and my pussy throb. “Because I had to marry you.”

A muscle ticks in his jaw, and those sensuous lips turn up slightly in a dark smile offering me a tantalizing glimpse of that dimple in his left cheek,and my stomach flutters as my panties grow wetter.

“And here you are. So start fucking acting like my bride and stop throwing yourself at my friend.”

As turned on as I am, and as furious and as turned as I think he might be, not even his anger pushes him down the one path that could shut me down here.

He doesn’t mention destroying Gramps.

Maybe he knows he doesn’t have to, but somehow I suspect by the way his uneven breathing matches mine and how when he pulls me closer against him, I can feel his erection, and I suspect threats like that aren’t even in his head.

But I lift my head, our mouths close, and push out, “I told you I’ve zero interest in Asher.” I’m shaking as I move in up against him of my own accord. “There’s only one person I want to be with, and he clearly doesn’t give a damn.”

“Who—”

He stops, lips this time so close that the heat is against mine, and his breath teases my sensitive flesh.

“You think,” he says softly, “I don’t give a damn?”

“What else am I meant to think when you act like a lunatic who hates me?”

“I don’t fucking hate you. And obviously I give a damn. If I didn’t this wouldn’t be hard.”

“It wouldn’t be hard, Noah,” I say, “if you reached out or let me in.”

His lips whisper against mine. “You want me to reach out?”

“Yes.”

Noah takes my mouth in a slow, deep, savage kiss. He plunders and rules, it’s a commanding performance meant to break me down and apart and it works. I’m just pliable shards in his hands, a thing to mold into what he wants.

And what he wants is sex.

Dark, wild sex.

Sex unleashed and purely Noah.

And I want it too.

Kinky, filthy, all the things he’s done, the hints at restraint and orders of being his to obey his bidding.

I’m not some doormat, even though that’s exactly how I’ve been feeling outside the bedroom. But inside it, I think I might like being manhandled and controlled to a point, I think I might like him setting the scene, taking how much and what he wants.

Like last night in the kitchen, and in the shower, and in bed.

He’s done it before, and it electrifies.

Noah moves to my throat, making his way down it with lips and teeth and tongue, pausing to bite, and kiss, and suck until I’m quivering.

What is that point? How much is the right amount to let him take? Some of me? All?

I want… hell, he comes back up to kiss and lick my ear, and it’s bursts of orgasmic, momentary pleasure so intense I start to buckle. Only his hold keeps me standing.

I want him.

Noah takes my mouth again.

The kiss is one of pure control, and I follow him, the passion spiraling through me. When he breaks the kiss but not his hold, I look up at him. “I’m yours to do with what you want, Noah. You don’t even have to ask. My door’s wide open.”

The smile blooms into pure sexual darkness at scrapes and teases my senses, and nothing’s going to satiate me apart from him.

“Noah…”

“On your knees, princess.”

I know what he wants because I want it too.

But he’s playing, not giving, using the sex as a shield even as he takes that open door and steps into the space. By playing a master to me, a taker not a giver—because isn’t that what it is?—he isn’t letting me in, in return.

I want to say no, that I can’t be with someone who refuses to give back and open up the possibility of giving me everything as I give everything to them. But I can’t.

My knees give out as he locks eyes on me, that gleam of his finding its place is hot. It sears me, and I go down.

He lets me slide through that touch on my arm like I’m liquid.

Noah suddenly sits on the edge of the nearest sofa and pats his lap twice. A come here move that’s both titillating and tantalizing. I shuffle over, not sure what he wants.

“Up.”

Humiliation burns my cheeks as I do as asked, and I have to rest one hand on the floor to balance myself. He flips up my dress, lowers my panties, and then without warning, his hand comes down in a light, stinging bloom.

I squeal, more from shock than anything else. There’s a sting, but it doesn’t hurt.

“These are for flirting with my fucking friend,” he says. And he proceeds to pepper my delicate flesh with slaps.

Something interesting happens. It all grows in unbearable intensity, even though the force used remains light and doesn’t change.

Tears burn my eyes as my clit throbs.

He lists my sins. Angus, flirting, talking to the mailman, touching him…

half of them are made up, and when he says ‘having a fucking job’ I’m aware on a level he’s weaving a scenario and he doesn’t mean it but there’s a part that clings to it and whispers just how bad I’ve been and I deserve the spanking.

I’m moaning, and I’m both so inside myself I’m only aware of what he’s doing and somewhere else, lost in the world he’s created, all the emotions and sensations that swirling and morphing into dark delight.

Then he pushes three fingers in me, and fucks me, and I come hard, screaming out until he cuts it short by pulling out and ordering me back on my knees.

I want to take the erection that poked me and choke myself on it. I want him to come.

“Take off your dress.”

I take a breath.

“Now,” he says.

I’m buzzed, but the alcohol in my system has nothing to do with it. This is sexual, a thrilling vibration that hits all the right spots in me and turns up the heat.

So, I do it. I pull off the dress, and he takes it from me.

“Bra.”

I put on lace. I don’t own lots of lingerie, but tonight I put it on, and the muscle in his jaw ticks. The explanation I did it for him burns on my tongue, but I swallow it because screw him if he doesn’t get that.

“Good girl. Lay down. On your back and stretch out your arms.”

We’re on the edge of the big, thick white rug in the living room, and I do as asked, thrills rolling through me.

He rips my dress.

“Noah—”

“You talk when I tell you.” He rips it again, then gets down and ties one wrist to one leg of the coffee table and the other to the next. “And I’ll buy you another dress. All the dresses, princess, all of them. And lingerie, because fuck me did your tits look good in that cream lace.”

His face looms over mine, and then he ties another strip over my eyes, blinding me. All I can do now is taste and feel and hear and it’s tantalizing because I don’t know what he’s going to do if I can’t see him.

Which, I guess, is the point.

“Your cunt looks sweet and ripe enough to eat.”

I gasp and jump as his hand strokes over me, cupping me, and he rubs, making me moan.

“I’ll unwrap in a moment.”

He moves away, and there’s the clink of ice against glass. Then he puts the glass down and peels off my panties, my ass hot and tender, and it just makes everything else burn hotter.

“Good girl,” Noah says. “Now spread your legs.”

I do, and something cold dibbles over my clit.

It’s followed by the velvet roughness and heat of his tongue as he laps and closes his mouth on me.

I didn’t think I could be enticed right back to the brink again, but he does it fast, his mouth between my legs and fingers working me are too much to resist, but he stops right as a spasm hits.

“No…”

“Quiet. Be a good girl, or I’ll gag you and I have plans for your pretty mouth.” I shut up and two things thump on the floor as he pulls my legs up and shoves two big cushions under my ass and lower back.

My pussy’s spread and on display for him, and I quiver at the thought. He then runs a finger over me, and the soft sound of a hissing zip greets my ears.

His thighs touch the back of mine, and one hand holds my tight leg as he pushes his cock against my opening with his other hand, and then trails his fingers up, to swirl them over my clit as he thrusts in.

I cry out. It’s so deep, and I’m so exposed.

“Fuck yes, what a view.” Noah now grabs both my thighs as he fucks me hard and fast, and I explode around him.”

He pulls out, and my head spins, the orgasm rolling through my entire being. I’m floating, and I think I love being dominated and Noah is… masterful.

I’ve got feelings for him, I know that, but I want to bask right now.

And that’s when he says, “We’re not finished yet.”