Being Me (15 page)

“I’ll follow you to my place,” he informs me.

“I have no doubt you will.” I click the key clicker to unlock the 911. I’m about to open the door when his hand comes down on it, and he leans close, so close his breath is warm on my neck and ear. That woodsy scent of him, which I could luxuriate in for a lifetime, permeates my senses, tearing down my already weak defenses.

His hip nudges mine. “Don’t think for a minute that when we pull up to my apartment, you’re going to ask for your car and leave.”

It is all I can do to fight him when he touches me. Purposely, I do not look at him, certain all my resolve to distance myself from him will crumble. “If I decide to leave, you can’t stop me.”

“Try me, baby. You’re coming up to my apartment.”

I whirl on him. “I don’t want—”

“I do,” he vows, and before I know his intent, his fingers twine into my hair and he pulls me into his arms, against his hard, warm body.

“Let go,” I hiss, my hand flattening on his chest. I intend to push him away, but the heat of his body seeps through my palm, radiating up my arm. My elbow softens, and I am instantly closer but not close enough.

“Not a chance,” he promises, his mouth closing on mine, firm with demand. His tongue licks into my mouth with one brutal, commanding swipe followed by another, and I have no resistance left. I’m weak, so very weak, for this man. As always with Chris, he demands my response and I helplessly respond. I am instantly wet and wanting, my nipples tight points of aching need.

I try to resist the lure that is Chris, but the taste of him, familiar and almost brutally male, mixes with his anger and mine, and the effect is explosively passionate. I want to shout at him, push him away, pull him close, strip away his clothes, and punish him for what he is doing to me, what he takes from me. What he makes me need.

When his lips part from mine, too soon and not soon enough, I barely fight the urge to pull him back. “Was that for the cameras, Chris?” I pant at him, furious at myself for such weakness.

“That was because you scared the shit out of me when you didn’t answer your phone. I don’t give a damn about the cameras.” His mouth comes down on mine again, and his hand slides
under my jacket, over my backside, pulling me flush against his thick erection.

I whimper, impossibly aroused, and my hands slip beneath the thick leather of his jacket, wrapping his waist. His hand caresses up my back, molding me tighter to him, branding me with heat and fire and sizzling passion that threaten to steal all the reason I possess. No man has ever made me forget where I am, forget why I should care.

“That,” he says roughly, when he pulls back again, “was for the past twelve hours that I should have been thinking about business. Instead, I was incessantly thinking about pink paddles, butterfly nipple clamps, and all the places I’m going to lick, kiss, and now, you can bet, punish you when we get home.”

I almost moan again from his words and have no idea how I manage enough coherent thought to issue a warning, but somehow I do. “If you think sex is going to make this argument go away, you’re wrong.”

“You couldn’t be more right, but it’s a good place to start and end the enlightening conversation you can bet your sweet little ass we’re going to have.” He sets me back from him and away from the door enough to open it. “Let’s go home where I can fuck what you’ve made me feel out of my system and you can do the same.”

Staring up at him, a million things I might say or do are wiped out by the word
home
replaying in my head. He keeps using that word, and it affects me when he does; it affects me in a deep, painfully real way that leaves me raw and vulnerable.
He
leaves me raw and vulnerable.

When I don’t move, he pulls me close again, caresses my
hair, and gives me a quick kiss on the lips. “Get in the car, Sara,” he orders softly, and as always—though I’m fairly certain he’d disagree—I do as he tells me.

•   •   •

When I pull up to Chris’s building ten minutes later, I’m still practically panting from his hot assault, but I’ve managed small pieces of reasonable thought. I am calmer and the understanding that Chris was truly, sincerely worried about me is as much an aphrodisiac as the taste of him lingering on my lips and tongue. There is no question that I gave Jacob reason to worry about me. Add the storage unit incident to my failure to answer calls, and Chris had every reason to be concerned. I can accept that. But Chris is a control freak in every possible way, and while I’ve found that in private giving him that control has almost become a physical burn, outside the bedroom I need my freedom. And I’m not sure Chris is capable of giving me that.

The doorman opens the door to the 911, and the last remnant of my anger flees into the chill of the night. I need Chris. I need to be in his arms. I need to feel him close. I need and need and need with this man and it’s impossible to escape.

I step outside the car, and my hungry gaze seeks Chris, finding him dismounting the Harley, and holy hell, he
is
sex on a Harley. If Mark is power, Chris is absolute dominance, and he knows it. I see it in his casual grace, which manages to be alpha roughness at the same time. He doesn’t need people to call him by a certain name, nor intimidate them into drinking cold coffee like Mark once did to me. When he needs power, he has it. When he wants it, he claims it. When he wants me, he claims me, and my stomach clenches with dread at the idea that one day he won’t.

He hands his helmet and keys to a second doorman before his attention shifts fully to me. Pure, white hot lust pours off Chris and over me, and I can’t move from the impact. He saunters toward me, all loose-legged swagger, and when Rich hands me my briefcase, Chris takes it instead and slides the strap over my shoulder. His fingers caress my arm and my jacket is no defense for the electricity his touch ignites inside me.

“Let’s go inside and . . . talk,” he murmurs and I swallow hard.

“Yes. Let’s go talk.”

We’ve made it all of two steps when I hear the doorman call out, “Don’t forget this.” He appears in front of me and hands me the journal.

My breath lodges in my throat as my eyes go to Chris, and his gaze lands on the red leather I now hold. Eternal seconds tick by in which I know I should explain, but some part of me must secretly want to be punished, because I wait for his reaction. Finally, his gaze lifts to mine, and there are accusations and doubt in his eyes that shred my heart. I confessed my slip about the journal entry and instead of my honesty winning me his trust, it’s earned me the opposite. It is all I can do not to explode right here in this moment, with eyes on us, and I draw a deep breath and clamp down on my reaction. Making a scene isn’t my style and it won’t give me more than momentary satisfaction.

I call out to Rich and turn to catch him. “I need my car,” I tell him.

“No,” Chris says, his voice low and lethal, his hand shackling my upper arm. “She doesn’t.”

I blast him with a look meant to flatten him but find myself captured by his sharp, commanding stare. “I promise you, Sara,”
he says, his voice low and intense, “I’ll carry you upstairs over my shoulder if I have to.”

Momentarily, I’m disarmed by the thrill that shoots through me at the threat. I am wet and hot and aching to be over his shoulder and in his apartment, naked and at his mercy. His distrust cuts me deeply, yet I’m thrilled at the barbaric statement that proves I am without defenses where he is concerned.

I hold his stare, and I don’t doubt he means his words. “I’ll go up, but I’m not staying.”

He doesn’t blink or respond immediately; he’s studying me, sizing me up, and I wonder if he can see my reaction to his threat in my face, if I am as transparent as the window he’d once fucked me against.

Without a word, he releases me and I start for the door. He falls into step with me. My fingers curl around the journal and I remind myself of his distrust and my stomach knots at the idea that, even if not about this, I deserve what he feels. I’m getting a tiny taste of what it will feel like if and when he knows the real lie I’ve told, and I don’t like it. I feel an eruption building inside me, emotions boiling in a wild mixture, hot and dangerous, that I can barely contain.

We enter the building and Jacob is at the front desk. I manage a nod and a small greeting. Chris and I step into the elevator side by side, and face forward, only inches separating us. The air is thick with unspoken words, the tension certain to snap any second.

Without making a conscious decision to act, that second comes for me when the doors slide closed. I whirl on Chris and shove the journal at his chest. “Mark gave this to me today.
It’s Rebecca’s business notes. I told you I locked up the damn journals, and I
did
.”

He shackles my wrist and pulls me close. The journal lodges between us. “Do you know how much I don’t want to hear Mark’s name right now? He shouldn’t have let you go to Alvarez’s alone.”

His words are tight, laced with the anger he’d confessed back at Alvarez’s house, and I now realize he’s been carefully controlling his fury. I feel it in the tightness of his body against mine, see it in the hard glint in his eyes. Everything about Chris is wrapped around control and I forget too easily.

“He’s my boss.” My bottom lip trembles with the words. “He’s not my keeper, and for that matter neither are you.”

His green eyes glint with amber blades of pure steel. “I told you, Sara. I will keep you safe.”

There is a possessive absoluteness to his words that both arouses and infuriates me. I am once again struck by how little I seem to know about myself and why I respond to this side of Chris. “The line between protecting me and controlling me, Chris, is my job.”

“Ask me if I care about the lines right now, Sara. Ask me if I have any intention of ever living the hell I lived tonight when you wouldn’t answer the phone.”

I am taken aback by the deep, vehement reply that is laced with a threat I do not understand. “What does that mean?”

His fingers twine into my hair and he pulls my mouth just beyond his, so close I can almost taste the control he holds so easily. “It means,” he rasps, “that tonight, Sara, I’m not pink paddles and fluff, and neither are you.”

The elevator door dings open, and Chris grabs my hand and pulls me into his apartment. Before I can blink, I’m facing the entry room wall, one hand clutching the journal, the other flat on the surface in front of me. Chris steps behind me, framing my body with his bigger one, and I feel the hardness of his body as intensely as I feel the hardness of his mood.

His hand settles on the center of my back, branding me, controlling me, and he pulls my bag and purse from my shoulder and dumps it on the floor. I feel him shrug away his jacket and he reaches for mine. It catches on the journal and his hand closes around it.

The air seems to thicken and for several seconds we hold the journal, both our fingers gripping the red leather. Erotic images created by Rebecca’s words play in my mind and I remember reading one of the entries with Chris. I wonder if he is thinking about that day, too, or something completely different. About
Rebecca perhaps? I want to ask, but there is this sharp pinch in my chest that holds me back.

Chris takes the journal from me and I have no idea where he puts it. It is gone and my jacket follows. He steps behind me, and I forget everything but him. His hands settle possessively on my hips, and his mouth, that delicious, sometimes brutal mouth, brushes my ear. “You want pain and darkness, baby, you got it.”

Shock slides through me at the unexpected promise and I think of us holding the journal, and of the dark entries inside that terrify and intrigue me. “What happened to me not being able to handle this part of you, Chris?” I ask, and my voice trembles with the question.

“Tonight happened,” he replies and there is nothing unsure about his voice, just hard steel and more anger. “And I damn sure want to give you a reason to think twice before it repeats.”

Conflicting emotions overcome me. I crave and resist the possessiveness I sense in him. I’m jerked out of this thought when Chris yanks my dress up my hips, exposing my backside. I hear the silk of my panties tear before I feel the bite of the material ripping from my body. His hands caress my backside, and the edgy tension in him is like a wave crashing into me.

He leans in, his lips brushing my ear, hot breath fanning my skin, promising delicious, forbidden fantasies only Chris can fulfill. “I’m going to spank you before this night is over, Sara.”

His words are a velvety seduction and taut threat and I cannot catch my breath, let alone form a coherent reply. Chris turns me to face him, shoving my hands over my head and shackling them with one of his. “But first, I’m going to take you to the edge of bliss and pull you back so many times, you’ll think you’re
going insane, just like I was when you didn’t answer your phone.” He tugs down the front zipper of my dress to my waist, unhooks my bra, and begins to tease one of my nipples. “Any objections?”

“Would they matter?” I whisper, waves of pleasure washing over my body.