At Your Service - A.C. Arthur Page 0,33
hadn’t been able to look away from her, not for minutes after she’d taken her seat.
The dress wasn’t formfitting but flowing breezily down past her ankles. The halter top cupped her breasts the same way his hands had before. And the muted colors complemented everything from her skin tone to her eye color, to the soft, barrel curls that fell past her shoulders.
“I’m not going to give the press the innermost details of my life, they’re not entitled to that.” No one was.
“But you’ll agree to a stunt that has the prime purpose of playing to the public? Look, whatever we say to them is a lie. It’s all a lie.” She shrugged as if it were that simple. “We’re not engaged. We’re not a happily-in-love couple and we never will be. This is a means to an end for both of us.”
He wouldn’t kiss her. Major had sworn he wouldn’t kiss her again. But the touching rule? That was out the window. So he closed the slight distance between them on the seat and he reached for her. She came willingly, sitting across his lap.
“This...” he said quietly. “The tug you feel between us? The one that starts deep in your gut and reaches out, wanting to cling to something, someone... We cannot deny this. You can’t deny it.”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t. I’m not. But I’m also not going to play this game with you. I’m okay with taking our façade into the bedroom. I can separate work from personal. But I’m not going to be at your call. Either we stick by your rules implicitly for the duration of this agreement or we don’t. There’s no in between and there’s no up and down.”
Basically, she was telling him to get it together. As she had every right to since he was being a jerk with this hands-off, hands-on situation.
He was impressed. He’d thought watching her masterfully handle Morgana in that press conference was awe-inspiring, but holding her on his lap while she fundamentally just ripped him a new one was damn commendable. He cupped her face in his hands and leaned in. Her lips parted and he almost... Major tilted his head and kissed her neck, suckling slightly, creating a path to the skin between her breasts, which was the softest he’d ever touched.
When her arms came around his shoulders and she arched into him, he sighed with relief and with resolution. He was going to play this game by her rules, but first, he was going to have her again.
He continued running his tongue and lips over her skin, moving his hands so that one was at the nape of her neck, pulling her hair gently to tilt her head back. The line of her neck was bare to him and Major stared down as if he were a vampire, hungry for the taste of her. He licked a straight path from between her breasts up to her chin and back down again. She hissed and arched further in his arms. He loved kissing her. It was a fact he could not deny.
To push that thought out of his mind, he eased a hand beneath the halter top of her dress, cupping her bare breasts and sucking in a breath at how good it felt.
“Why do I want you so much?”
Had he said that aloud? He’d been thinking it so much, he no longer knew whether or not it was in his head or if he finally was ready to hear an answer.
“Take what you want,” she whispered, bringing her hand up to cover his, moving it so they were both squeezing her breast. “Take what we both want.”
Permission. She’d given it before and she was giving it again. Another woman may have walked away from him and this arrangement because of the ridiculous way he’d been acting these past few days. Stacia had walked away from him for less. Any other woman certainly wouldn’t have come to his rescue at the press conference, after he’d asked for answers to his questions in that juvenile email he’d sent her. And she damn sure wouldn’t be in his arms right now, asking him to give her what she needed.
What he desperately needed.
He pulled his hand away, running it down her torso and to her legs where he could pull the material of the dress up. Her legs were bare, and she opened them the moment he touched her skin.
“I’m gonna give you what you need,