He’d never needed her so much than at this moment, when she hated him. But patience won the race in this case. He couldn’t force himself on her, not with the way she’d been abused before. It took every ounce of effort to keep his hands still as he held her simmering green gaze. “Do it again. But make it hurt this time,” he gritted out.
She slammed her fists into his chest three times, then pulled back, panting. “My heart is mine. You don’t own me anymore! You don’t own me anymore!”
He tangled his fingers in her hair and exhaled a frustrated breath, needing to pounce on her, have her. His woman. Mine mine mine. “Fight it all you want, but I can feel the way you need me, Whitney! I can feel it in my gut . . . it’s always like this between us. You know it. I know it. In less than ten seconds, we’ll be tearing our clothes off and nothing will even matter anymore . . .”
She made the mistake of letting her eyes linger far too long on his lips. He noticed. His entire body noticed. Hell, his entire body responded to that inviting stare.
Something happened when their eyes locked. They both lost it. He swept down as Whitney grabbed the collar of his shirt and boosted herself up onto her toes, and their lips collided with the force of two enemies in a war zone.
Her warmth, her gasp, her moan, overwhelmed him with a flood of sensations. He tasted peaches, ripe and sweet, calling his tongue to reach in farther, to take in everything he craved. Longing thrummed inside of him, longing to possess her, like he used to, love her, like he used to.
He was thirsty, too thirsty to get enough. He added his teeth, the play of tongues. Anger crackled between them, feeding their lust, their need, until it blazed like an inferno. His tongue flashed into her mouth, coaxing her tongue to follow back into his mouth. Her taste—he felt instantly drugged. High with it. With her scent. The sound of her panting breaths.
Three years of hell . . . and now, at last, he was in heaven.
He slipped his hands around her and crushed her tighter to him, his fingers spreading over the silken smooth flesh revealed by the plunging back of her dress. He ground his body into hers, demanding that she feel how much, how fiercely, he needed her. Wanted her.
“As long as it takes, you said, you’d wait, Whitney, because I gave you my word I’d come back to you,” he rasped against her mouth. “Forever turned out to be much too soon for you.”
“Except I’m still here, Andrew!” She frantically pulled him back to her mouth and crushed it with hers.
He took her lower lip between both of his and angrily tugged the soft flesh. She moaned out his name, and his balls ached with need. He was sick of cold showers, sick of jacking himself off to the thought of her. He needed her desperately.
Hungered out of his mind, he nipped her mouth, then licked her lips with long, damp strokes until she moaned his name again.
He wanted to be gentle with Whitney, wanted to make love to her like she deserved, but by God, he was dying from the way he needed her.
She was his woman, his love, the one thing that would make three years of misery worth it. He covered one breast with his hand and thrust his tongue into the warm depths of her mouth, faster and harder, finding there was no fight left in her, only surrender.
She went weightless. Her hands fisted in his hair, never once pushing him back, instead her fingers bit into his scalp as she jerked him closer. A groan tore out of him, and he deepened the kiss until both of them were clutching frantically at each other’s bodies . . .
*****
Whitney had to stop him, had to . . .
But she felt powerless and intoxicated, aching for Andrew to take away all the hurt that he’d put there.
She shuddered when he drew his head back, his arms still like steel around her.
She ached for his strength. The ways he made her feel protected and safe. Ached to forget he’d ever hurt her and pretend he’d never left.
But this man wasn’t her loving Andrew anymore. Even in those sharp designer clothes, he didn’t look even half as polished as he used to. There was a rawness in his stare, a new ferocity in the depths of his gaze, that both terrified her and sent her senses reeling with arousal.
He spoke tenderly to her, but there was an iron resolve behind his words that made her tummy clench in both need and dread, for she knew exactly what he wanted.
And this terrifyingly sexy new version of him didn’t look like he was going to take no for an answer tonight.
“Tell me everything. I need to know,” she pleaded. She would put the past behind her once she knew, knew why, why, why.
He pressed his lips to her neck and rocked her against his body, soothing her like he used to. She could melt against him, dissolve into the air he breathed.
“Tell me you want me,” he quietly growled, kissing her earlobe. “Tell me you need me, adore me.”
She didn’t know what kind of mad devil possessed her. But it was the same one that gripped her when it came to this man. She just didn’t know this ripping, screaming need could so easily overpower every instinct of self-preservation inside her, every ounce of self-control, self-respect, and brainpower.
With a tiny moan she couldn’t quite finish, she pushed up onto her tiptoes and took his lips with hers, desperately loosening his shirt from the waistband of his slacks as she stuck her tongue into his warm mouth. His stomach contracted under her fingertips when she felt warm, muscled bare skin under her touch, and her pulse jumped from the mere thrill of touching him.
Responding to her more aggressively, he backed her into the wall and pulled up the skirt of her dress, never taking his mouth from hers.
He slipped his hand between her thighs and a shot of excitement knifed through her as he cupped her pussy. “Wet.” He kissed her heatedly, passionately. “So damned wet for me. Hot for me.”
She gripped his hair in her fists as he stroked her, moaning softly when he thrust two fingers in at the same time. “Andrew.”
“I’m so swollen my piercing is biting into my flesh, and it’s killing me,” he said, his voice seductive as velvet as he rolled her clit under his thumb and continued sliding and withdrawing two fingers inside her. “I need to bury myself inside you and fill you up with me.”
He drew back to look at her, and her breath stalled. The need in his eyes, the lust enlarging his pupils, that was hers, only hers. The knowledge made her desire soar to levels beyond her comprehension, and she pulled clumsily at his shirt.