am sore and covered in sweat, my shirt soaked like a second skin, outlining every burning muscle.
Hazel is sitting on the edge of my bed, her legs folded, her calf muscle pressing flat against her other leg, looking strong, tight. I think about biting it softly, the sound she would make as I increased the pressure. I imagine her legs bent and her toes pointed as I climb on top of her, beckoning me. Just one look at her in those denim shorts all tucked up against her pussy and that tank top, pink bra visible beneath, and I feel lost.
But I can’t let her see that. I have fallen too far already. It’s time I got a grip on this.
“What are you doing here?” I snap.
“Waiting for you,” she says, without any hint of embarrassment. Her bright green eyes plead in that silent way: can we please just stop this asshole act for one minute?
“Why?” I grunt.
“Because I want to talk to you,”
I shake my head. “I’m busy, Hazel.”
She leaps to her feet. Her bun falls loose and her hair cascades around her shoulders. Her cheeks are flushed and redness climbs down her neck, making me think about where it leads, making me wonder if I could make her nipples the same shade by sucking them.
She notes the bulge in my crotch with a smirk, but then looks me right in the eyes.
“I’m done playing games,” she says. “This hot and cold stuff, maybe it works in one of Emily’s books. But this is real life, Carlo. I can’t live like this. I’ve made the best of this situation, I think. I think I’ve done a pretty good job there. But I need to know: Do you hate me, or is there something here?”
Shaking my head, I walk over to her, smelling flour and chocolate and perfume, feeling the heat radiating from her perfect body. “Do you really think you’re in any position to make demands?”
She grabs my shoulders, digging her fingernails in. Her touch is too real. It awakens me too quickly.
I want her. Suddenly, I want her bad.
“Give me an answer,” she says. “Hate me, or …”
Or love me. Is that what she’s going to say? Has she gone completely fucking crazy?
“You’re forgetting what this is,” I tell her, backing away to the door. I close it and turn the lock.
“What are you doing?” she whispers, but I can sense the lust in her. She knows full well what I’m doing. “Is that your solution to everything?”
“Violence and sex,” I murmur, stalking close to her. “The two great equalizers.”
I wonder if she’d ever been in a room like this before she came here: the four-poster bed, the bar in the corner, the en-suite bigger than some apartments, the mosaic on the ceiling, the two large couches in the conjoined office area to the left.
I console myself with that. I’m the don. She’s just a woman I have sex with. I need to own her. I need to remind her of where we stand.
But when I grab her shoulders, she gives me a swift shove in the chest, spins so that I’m backed against the bed, and clambers on top of me. I stumble, fall. Then I’m on my back, my shaft rubbing against the denim of her shorts through my thin gym shorts fabric. Her eyes blaze as she stares down at me.
“You think you’re in charge?” she asks, sweet and sharp at the same time. “Are you really, Carlo?”
She slides off me and wriggles out of her shorts. When I make to lean up, she snaps, “Stay there. I want to ride you. But if you try and take control here, I’ll leave. I want it how I want it.”
I beg myself to growl that she’s not in charge, yet I need her too badly. I find myself pinned with desire to the bed, utterly captivated as she peels down her panties, bending and smiling at me over her shoulder, somehow elegant even as she’s acting dirty. She somehow still looks like a princess even as her pink, glistening pussy is winking at me, even as she dances across the room and climbs on top of me.
“You think you can own me?” she whispers, grinding so that I can feel her lips through my gym shorts. I grab her bare ass cheeks, kneading them. She sighs and leans up so that she can reach into my shorts and pull me free. “I own this part of