Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,151

he was being annoyingly smug, that he was playing her, except she’d felt the evidence of his arousal just now. She might not have aimed properly to get what she wanted, but the hard, insistent length of him had dug into the soft flesh of her belly. His pupils were blown out, too, black circles surrounded by the thinnest slice of that Bahaman Sea Blue, and she could see the pulse racing at the base of his throat.

He wanted her as much as she wanted him. The difference was that he had a better rein on his lust. He wasn’t having a tantrum like she was. He was still exercising his famous restraint. Discipline.

It was almost unbearably hot. She suspected he could do more for her with the crook of a finger than other men could with their full arsenals.

“I don’t know,” she said. She hadn’t been trying to make her voice breathless, but what came out was sort of Marilyn Monroe–esque. She had no doubt he would do whatever she asked to “make it better,” but suddenly the idea of narrowing down this vast, unswimmable sea of lust she was floundering in to a single, specific, actionable request seemed an impossible task.

He must have known somehow, because he tugged her toward him again. He leaned over and put his lips on the side of her neck, moving them against her skin as he spoke. “Do what I say, and I’ll make it better, okay?”

“Yes.” The thought and the vocalization came simultaneously, and something flared in his eyes. He liked that. She did, too.

He started walking, but he kept her plastered to his chest, so she was walking backward as he moved forward. She stumbled a bit, and he righted her and kept going, silent and staring. All that famous focus, turned toward her. Would he lose control eventually, or would he keep his iron-fisted restraint? She wasn’t sure which option she preferred.

He made a right-angle turn halfway down the hall, flipping on a light that illuminated a bedroom. He kept going, never slowing his pace, until she hit a bed with the backs of her legs. He pushed her gently so she ended up sitting on the bed.

“Take off your clothes,” he said. Then he stepped back and, in one fluid motion, pulled his T-shirt over his head.

She stared, let herself just look her fill. Leer, really. Shirtless, he was both the same and not the same as other men. He had all the same parts, of course—a very fine-looking, lightly muscled chest with a smattering of dark hair chief among them. But he also looked different. She struggled to articulate why, but there was something about him that was strangely, sharply familiar. Like he was hers.

“Take your clothes off,” he said again, interrupting her silent ogle-fest. He sounded almost peevish. Even though she still had the strong feeling that he somehow belonged to her, which should have suggested that she was the boss here, she jumped to do his bidding. She slid out of her skirt, but then she checked herself halfway through unbuttoning her blouse. His eyes rose from where he’d been watching the progress of her fingers working the buttons to her face. His eyebrows kept going until they stopped, perched high, expectantly, and maybe a little impatiently. When she still didn’t move, he said, “I thought we established you were going to do what I say.”

“I’m going to.” Her voice came out low and raspy. Goose bumps rose on his chest as she spoke. See? She did kind of own him. She bit back a grin. “But this isn’t going to be some Fifty Shades thing. I’m not going to be your silent, submissive doll.”

He didn’t break eye contact. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Good. I like when you get lippy. I hired you because of that little speech about how my lobby looked like a dental office.”

She licked her lips, trying to see if she could make that muscle twitch again. “I believe I said a dental office in Yellowknife.”

Success.

“You bait me on purpose, don’t you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He just pushed her down gently so she was lying on her back as he climbed onto the bed, caging her by hovering over her on his hands and knees. He wasn’t touching her, though, and suddenly she was back to where she’d been in the doorway, drowning in a sea of too much—yet not enough—sensation. He leaned down with his head