and bone, and she was solid and strong. She was a woman wanted by a man.
She wanted that man too. With everything inside her. The desire burrowed into her blood. It called out insistently, like a beating drum, like a fire in her veins. She might regret this later. She might regret it in a few minutes. That moment she didn’t feel regret. She felt hungry. She felt greedy.
She felt justified.
“Perfection?” she asked, tilting her head to the side, reeling him in with his own description of her. “I’m perfection?”
He inched closer, nearly inhabiting the same space. “Yes,” he said in a low rumble that sent goosebumps over her skin, a promise of other things he’d say in that wickedly sexy voice. “You are perfection, and everything I said was and is true.”
Her tank strap slid down the slope of her shoulder. “You pine for me?”
“You’re the one who got away. And I can’t stand the thought of that happening again. I will do whatever it takes to keep you,” he said, and the words torched her heart. They started a goddamn bonfire in her belly.
And they scared the living hell out of her.
So she pushed back. “But you don’t even have me.”
“I am well aware of that. And I intend to change it.”
She didn’t know if she was ready to hear these things from him, not when she still had so much to say. She grabbed the collar of his shirt, tugged him between her legs, and practically snarled at him. “I don’t know how to believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me,” he said, his voice matching hers, sounding furious, too. “Because I’m going to show you.”
The heat in her core shot up. God, he turned her on when he was like this, even as she fumed. She gripped his shirt tighter. “I hated how you left,” she said, airing her grievances like dirty laundry as she spread her hands across his shirt, his firm chest one layer away. “I hated that you picked your career over me. And I hated not seeing you every day.”
His eyes narrowed. He wedged himself between her legs. His dick was hard against her thigh. Rock hard, and it excited her. “I hated not seeing you, too,” he said, his voice rough and hungry. His entire body seemed to vibrate with restraint. She wanted to watch that restraint snap. She wanted to live in that moment when control spiraled away.
He grabbed her hips, his big hands wrapping around her bones, his thumbs digging into her sides. This was their dance. Their foreplay. They knew their steps. “Every day I wanted you,” he said.
“I wish I didn’t want you so much,” she hissed, the words cutting her throat. He raised an eyebrow, his eyes blazing, his lips rising in the barest of a cocky grin—the one that had always melted her. The effect was as potent as ever. It seared her body.
“How much do you want me?” he asked.
“More than I should.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “Want me,” he said, speaking the words like a command. But he didn’t have to tell her that—she was already there. She wrapped her arms around his neck. She curled her legs around his hips. She crossed her ankles against his hard, firm ass.
“I do.” She barely wanted to speak the words. But she didn’t want to deny this desire. She pulled back and looked him in the eyes. “And I want you to say you’re sorry the way you used to. The way you did when we fought before.”
He froze. Then, his eyes floated shut briefly. When he opened them, he picked her up and lifted her onto the bar. “Stay right here,” he growled.
She watched as he quickly stalked across the quiet, cavernous nightclub to the front door, making sure it was locked. He returned to her, placed his hands on her face, and said, “There’s no one else here. Unzip your jeans.”
She bit her lip, lust thrumming through her body. She opened the top button, slid down the zipper, and pushed her tight dark jeans to her thighs.
“Fuck,” he groaned, as he stared between her legs. Her panties were pale pink and completely soaked through with her desire.
“Do you like what you see?” she asked, seductively.
He swallowed thickly, and breathed out hard. “You know I fucking love it.”
“How much?”
He peeled her jeans down to her heels. She kicked off her shoes, then he pulled them off the rest of the way, tossing them