“I’m caressing your belly now, my hands sliding down your abdomen, my lips and tongue tasting you as your skin quivers with each touch.”
I shuddered, tightening my hands on the metal circle out of fear that I would take them off and touch myself in desperation. I felt everything he described, as if his words were a caress sending trails of fire down my body.
“I’m moving lower now, using my hands and lips to brush ever so softly over your hip, your thigh. I can see how wet you are. How open. I press my mouth to your sex and blow, just slightly, so that my breath teases your sex, cools your heat. Do you feel it?”
I nodded.
“I know you do—I can see it. The way your lips are parted. The way your pulse is beating more quickly. There’s a flush on your skin—you’re aroused, your body tight, your cunt aching with desire, your skin begging for my touch.”
“Yes, god, yes.”
“I’m touching you now,” he said. “My fingers sliding over you, feeling how slick you are. I’m teasing your clit—stroking and teasing you, then sliding my fingers deep inside you. Can you feel me, baby? Can you feel me inside you, your body tight around me as if you don’t want to let me go?”
I made a sound. That was the best that I could do.
“You’re so close now. It’s building, growing in you. Pleasure, need, like steam under pressure you’re so close to exploding, and I’m right there, touching you, relentless, taking you closer and closer.”
“Yes,” I said, my body on fire, like a mirror of his words, I was there, I was closer, I could feel every word, every syllable, every whisper of sound as sweetly as if his hands were on me.
“I can see it, Sloane. I can see how close you are. I’m hard, baby, so damn hard, and it’s all because of you. They’re here, too. Watching you. Watching us. Wanting you, but you’re mine, Sloane. You’re all mine.”
“Yours,” I whispered. I tried not to think about the eyes in the dark, afraid that if I did the embarrassment would push aside this feeling, this rising, spiraling pleasure. But I couldn’t keep them out—couldn’t block the thought that I was his, and that they knew it and watched and wanted.
And thinking that, another tremor ran through me. An undulating wave, like a new layer of pleasure.
“That’s right, baby,” he said, knowing me as intimately as I knew myself. “They’re out there, Sloane, in the shadows. They see the way your body flushes, the way your nipples go dark and tight. They can see how wet you are, how much you want this, how close you are. They look at you and see beauty, Sloane. And you like that they are looking. Like that they want you, but can’t have you. Like that you’re safe here with me, teasing them even while you know that I’m the only one who can have you.”
“Yes. Yes,” I said, because it was true. I’d never known it before, but it was so damn true.
“You’re already wet, you’re already trembling. You’re so close now, baby. Imagine me kneeling in front of you. Can you feel my tongue on your clit? My finger teasing your ass. Your body is clenching, desperate for me, wanting me, and I’m sucking and licking, lapping up the sweet taste of you as it builds inside you. As you go up and up, tighter and tighter.”
I moaned in time with his words, because I did imagine it, and he was bringing me closer. I was lost, battered, and as I opened my eyes—as I saw him looking at me, his face bathed in light and longing—I lost my hold on reality, and went spiraling out, over the shadows in the distance, out of the warehouse, and out into the night until finally, sweetly, drifting back to earth and into the arms of this man who’d touched me so deeply without even touching me.
“You’re amazing,” he said as he held me on the dais, stroking my skin, pressing light kisses to my temple, my hair.
The others were gone; there were no more shadows past the light, and I curled into him, feeling almost as if the whole thing was a dream. But it wasn’t. It was real. Tyler was real. And what I felt was very, very real.
“How did you know? How did you know I would like it that much?”
“I look at you,” he said. “Somehow, I can’t seem to look away. And I see you.”
He helped me to my feet. “Time to go,” he said, and led me back toward the entrance and then out the door to the world.
“Look at you,” he said, once we were back in the car. “Fire and beauty, and mine to control.”
“I feel wonderful,” I admitted. I turned to him and flashed a wicked grin. “I’m glad you cheated, you know.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes. “Cheated? What are you talking about?”
“This arrangement. It was a con.” I licked my lips and tilted my head as I examined him, this incredible, sensual, enigmatic man. “That’s twice now. Our first night when you pretended not to know I was a cop, and now this. I’m right, aren’t I?”
He’d started to back the car out, but now he tapped the brake. “What makes you say that?”
“Because you’d already planned to let me dance at Destiny. I didn’t have to agree to your deal to get in.”
“Is that so? How do you figure?”
“You didn’t ask Evan or Cole. That tells me you’d already talked to them.”
He met my eyes, held them as if considering something. Then he nodded. “Well done, Detective. If you hadn’t shown up at Destiny tonight, I would have gone to you tomorrow.”
“But you were so adamant back in the penthouse. Why the change of heart?”
“First of all, we don’t have a thing to hide at Destiny, so it’s not really an inconvenience having you inside.”
“At Destiny,” I repeated.
“Second,” Tyler said, as if I hadn’t even spoken, “it occurred to me that I have a few social obligations coming up where it will be handy to have a woman on my arm. And even handier if that woman is a cop.”
“Oh, really? Like what?”
“Like you’ll find out tomorrow night. Did you bring an evening gown to Chicago?”
“Sure,” I said. “I packed it with the diamonds and furs.”
“We’ll shop tomorrow.” His mouth curved up in a slow, lazy smile. “That may be the highlight of my day. At any rate, those were my practical reasons.”