Tales of Darkness & Sin - Pepper Winters Page 0,145

kind of archaeological emergency. My firm specialized in rescue archaeology—that is, excavating sites earmarked for commercial development so we could preserve what we could before the inevitable concrete truck of progress rolled in and began pouring—so she was accustomed to me leaving abruptly for work.

Sorry, Mummy.

I was in the hallway ready to fetch my bag from my bedroom when I heard a voice behind me. Glacial. Elegant. Precise.

“There you are.”

I turned and glared. “Yes. Here I am.”

He strode toward me. He strode tragically well—the kind of striding that was made for powerful, confident men—and it made me want to slump against the wall. The silver at his temples, the stern brackets around his mouth. The large hands, the leanly muscled frame, the stride—

Fuck me, but there’s something about an older man. I was used to men my age—just out of college, still rowdy and fumbling—but when confronted with James, so crisp, so contained, it was obvious what I’d been missing. I decided I needed to jump age brackets next time I was on my dating app.

“We have some things to make clear,” James said, and I shook my head.

“Uh-huh, Your Right Honorable Excellent Dickhead. Everything’s been made clear enough to me. Which is why I’m leaving.”

A muscle worked at the side of his jaw. He looked as though he was thinking of taking me over his knee, which was a thought I liked a lot.

Which was stupid! He hated me! I shouldn’t be turned on by his Suit Daddy vibes!

I turned, determined to go to my room and get my bag, and that was when I felt his hand on my arm. But instead of pulling me close, he pushed me against the wall.

My chest heaved against the plaster...and even more so when he stepped behind me. Trapping me. I could feel the beat of his heart against my back, and against the curve of my arse, I could feel—oh. Oh, fuck. That was his penis—thick and hard as granite, digging right into the muscles of my backside.

He was hard for me, and knowing that made blood rush straight to my cock. So fast it made me dizzy.

“It’s a bad idea to walk away from me, Tobias,” James said. He was taller than me, just a little, so he had to angle his face down to murmur in my ear. “A very bad idea.”

“You wanted me gone two days ago.”

“Things have changed.”

“Like the fact we are now stepbrothers?”

He stiffened against me. “We are no such thing,” he growled.

“Oh, come on,” I said, half-irritated, half-too-horny-to-care. “You don’t want to play stepbrothers with me? While Mummy and Daddy are outside and they can’t see? Maybe you want to break in your new toy. Maybe you want a taste before the holidays when we’ll be staying in the same house, and you can use me every night. Maybe you’re just so fucking hard that you don’t care who gets it, and so it’s going to be me. You’re going to pull down my trousers right here and use me until you feel better, and then send me back outside dripping. Is that it?”

His hand slid to my throat as I spoke. His thick organ throbbed against me.

“You’re goading me,” said James.

“And you were cruel to me. Fair’s fair.”

“You’re just a boy. You don’t know what cruel is.”

I licked my lips and whispered, “Does that mean you want to show me?”

His hand tightened on my throat. His exhale was ragged in my ear.

But he didn’t answer.

I took his hand—the one currently braced by my shoulder—and slid it down my stomach to where my erection strained against the placket of my tight magenta trousers. The inhale he gave as his fingers closed around me would haunt my wanking dreams for years.

“You want this?” I murmured, pressing back against him hard enough to make him gasp again. “Then take it, Prime Minister. Take anything you like.”

“A dangerous invitation, Tobias,” answered James.

“That’s the fun kind.”

He hesitated. I could feel that hesitation everywhere—in the hand wrapped around my shaft, in the hand wrapped around my throat, in his very breath…

And then I viscerally remembered what it felt like to have him push me away. What it felt like to watch him wipe his mouth clean of our kiss.

This was a man who didn’t know what he wanted.

This was a man who wanted to hide.

I pulled his hand from my erection and then from my throat. I could feel the moment he let me. I could feel how much