before I have any clue what he intends, he yanks, and the buttons fly here and there. I gasp, my hands flattening on his shoulders. “What are you doing?”
“Making you forget.” He reaches around me and unhooks my bra, dragging it from my shoulders, and tossing it aside. I am left all but naked, when he is not. This realization shakes me. He shakes me and exposes pieces of me I don’t want exposed. I try to hug myself but he gently catches my wrists.
“Emily,” he says softly, and again he’s made it sin and seduction.
“Shane,” I whisper, and somehow the rest of the world fades, and he’s grounded me in the moment. All of my old demons fade into the darkness of my past.
He seems to know when it happens. Maybe it shows in my face. Maybe he feels it in my energy, but then, and only then, does his gaze lower, raking over my breasts, a touch that isn’t a touch. My body reacts, nipples tightening, breasts heavy, and the dampness that was on my panties is now slick on my thighs.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs, more gravel to his tone, and when he looks at me, I see the gray steel of demand and dominance, but there is also enough blue fire to burn me inside out. “And so damn sweet,” he adds. “It’s sexy as hell.”
“Sweet is not what I want to be,” I say, translating it as being called the pushover that got me into this mess I’m in. “It’s not what I am.”
He leans in close and inhales deeply. “You smell sweet.” He cups my face, and he caresses his lips over mine, once. Twice. His tongue flickers past my teeth, a quick tease that has me wanting more before he adds, “You taste sweet.” He presses my hands to the railing behind me, holding them there, his cheek settling against mine. “I want you, Emily. And I’m going to have you. On my lips. On my tongue.” He nips my earlobe, sending a shiver down my spine as he adds, “On my cock, riding me and thinking of nothing else but me.”
His words, his promises, ripple through me like a whisper, my fingers curling under his touch, around the bar. I am wet. I am aching in every place he is not and I want him to be, and I reach for him, only to have him catch my hands and hold them over the railing.
“Don’t move your hands from that railing unless I tell you to or I will stop whatever I’m doing no matter how good it feels. Understand?”
“Yes,” I whisper, and just like that, I’ve given him what I swore I’d never give a man again: control. But it’s unexplainable when I have been conditioned to believe my control is what protects me, and my lack of control is responsible for every one of the many mistakes in my life. It’s not just what he wants. It’s what I want too.
There are three sides to every story. Mine, yours, and the truth.
—Joe Massino
CHAPTER SIX
SHANE
Emily’s agreement is all about one thing. Trust. Something I don’t give or take lightly. Nor am I a stranger to the need to escape, and I’m not sure Emily is either. I just don’t think she’s as good at it as I am. And normally for me, that escape is fucking hard and fast, and getting it out of my system. But nothing about this night, or Emily, has hit the spots I know as familiar. They are simply the spots I need.
Still holding her hands on the railing, I spread my arms until they align with the railing, forcing her grip farther, my body draped over her, intentionally allowing the heavy starch of my shirt to tease her nipples. I linger there, building the anticipation intended to force her to think of this, and me, and nothing else. Seconds tick by, my blood pumping, my body cradling hers, the thick pulse of my erection aligned with her hips, the sweet scent of her drowning my senses in all the right ways. When I am certain she has waited long enough, I nip her shoulder. She yelps, and I lick the offended area, my lips curving against her skin at the moan that follows. She leans her head forward, the only part of her I don’t have pinned, resting it on my shoulder. A breeze lifts around us, slightly chilled.