GLASS_ A Standalone Novel - Arianne Richmonde Page 0,26

for me, which I may never get again. Anyway, I still haven’t told them yes.”

He exhaled a breath of relief. “How much are they offering?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t called Pearl Chevalier back.”

“Strategizing, are we?”

“Star told me to let them stew a while, that they’d offer more.”

“And that they will, my girl, and that they will.”

“Daniel, if this was such a crap project, why were you involved in the first place?”

“Because they gave me the impression that I’d have artistic control. That’s how I got you through the door in the first place. I had plans to make a beautiful, artistic, and extremely sexy love story. Sometimes less is more. Suggestion is the key, not exploitation. But the next thing I knew, Sam Myers was bulldozing my ideas and vision. I’d forgotten how the Hollywood machine works. If things are controversial now, it’ll only get worse. I bowed out before things got ugly. The only problem is I didn’t expect them to snap you up like a bunch of greedy magpies. It was that damn kiss that did it!”

This was my moment. I had nothing to lose. I had to ask him directly. “Daniel, did you enjoy that kiss?”

He bit his lower lip. Picking up on my bad habits?

“What do you think?” he said.

“I saw the kind of physical reaction you got, so yes, I think you did secretly enjoy it.”

“I fucking loved it, Janie,” he said, staring me hard in the eye. “But I’m not going to act on it.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . look . . . for several reasons.”

“Your wife?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I’m feeling very angry right now. I’m in no state to have a relationship, least of all with you.”

I felt the dagger going in. It was bad enough in my dreams, but this? This was real. I knew about feeling angry; when my mom died that was my prime emotion. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. But Daniel talking to me as if I were the last person alive whom he’d consider having a relationship with, hurt like hell.

I got up. “I think I’d better leave,” I said, looking at the ground. “I’ve humiliated myself enough already.”

“Humiliated yourself? Janie, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick!”

“I know your wife was a fucking Amazonian goddess with beautiful big breasts and luscious blond hair and legs that went on forever and—”

Daniel sprang from his sun lounger and grabbed me close to him, squeezing me against his hard frame, his arm encircling my waist. With his other hand he held me firmly by the back of my head, his fingers laced through my hair. I was trapped. His lips centimeters from mine.

“Janie, you’ve got it all wrong; you have no idea what you mean to me, do you? No fucking idea at all.”

And that’s when it happened. That kiss.

I leaned into him, the echo of his words sending me into a sort of swoon. Our lips touched. It started as a soft tease, his tongue caressing my bottom lip, but then I opened my mouth, my tongue tentatively reaching out to his. He groaned, pressing his hardness against me as he licked into my mouth. He gripped my waist tighter as if afraid I’d slip away. His licks got faster, so sensual, so sexual that I could feel a gush of wetness gather hot between my legs. Then he took my lip between his teeth, nipping it, then sucking it into a deep kiss ‘til our tongues were tangled together in a frenzy. We became wild, fucking each other with our mouths. Tongues, lips, teeth, his hand still gripping the back of my head—his prisoner. Yet I, so, so willing.

My body lost all strength of its own as I succumbed to Daniel completely. I could feel his erection, relentless, as his hand slid down from my waist and cupped my ass.

“Oh God,” I moaned.

Our lips feasted on one another, hot and wet. His groans were like an elixir, urging me to give into him more by the second, which I did. Daniel Glass was irresistible. His blue eyes seared into me. Sexually fierce. Commanding. Demanding.

Fire.

Ice.

Death.

Life.

He terrified me with his intensity. I knew this could be the end of me, but I couldn’t let go. His kisses were a force of nature, his groans guttural, hungry, ferocious. As if he owned me.

Well, he did. He did own me.

I melted into him as if we were one being, saturated by his aura, the scent of him seeping into my every