The Man She Shouldn't Crave

They could go from there.

Rose bit down hard on the inside of her lip. He must think she was an idiot.

‘Plato, I—’

‘Rose.’ He grunted her name and lowered his head and kissed her. It was a gesture designed to shut her up, and he knew his mouth wasn’t reassuring.

Rose whimpered. His lips were hard, bruising. He was taking from her what he needed. His life was so much more hard-edged than anything she could imagine, and instinctively she understood he needed something softer, something only a woman could give him. Rose wasn’t sure what she wanted, but she had never felt more female—because he needed her, and it was sending hot, undeniable messages to every one of the erogenous zones in her body.

She tried to kiss him back, but he dragged his mouth away and she remembered they were standing in the street, and nothing about this was private. Then she forgot that because he was trembling against her.

‘Are you okay?’

Plato made a derisive sound and clamped his hands on her hips, bringing her in tight against him. Rose felt him hard and thick even through the layer of her wool coat. She knew she should have been outraged. They were in public, and she had a dozen questions, but in an instant all she was aware of was how aroused he was and what it was doing to her.

He was sending her a message. She was his to take, and this was what he wanted from her.

It was outrageous, but right now it didn’t matter because it was what she wanted too.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ROSE thought she’d made her decision in the street, but as Plato unbuttoned her coat in the foyer of his apartment and she slid out one arm and then the other she acknowledged that that was a lie she’d been telling herself for days to hide the truth. She’d made this decision the moment she’d clapped eyes on him at the press conference in the Dorrington.

She applied her smaller hands to his coat, gazing at the broad hard chest she was undressing, and lifted her revelatory eyes to his. For a moment she faltered. His expression was so hard, and the events in the street flickered through her mind. For a second she wondered who this man was. She still had dozens of questions…

But he forestalled her questions by lowering his head even as he dragged her up into his arms, and suddenly he was completely in charge and she was…hopelessly caught up in his embrace. Rose had never felt so excruciatingly excited in her entire life.

The men she had dated in the past had always asked if they could kiss her. Sometimes she’d said yes, occasionally no. It had always been very civilized, and she’d kept the ball in her court. Like the boys who’d pursued her back in Fidelity Falls and made the mistake of going through her brothers first.

Plato’s mouth took hers without a by-your-leave and he didn’t hold back. It was as if, like her, he’d been fantasising about this for days. Heat exploded between them and sent a chain reaction through the rest of Rose’s body. She felt the erotic intensity of the moment almost too acutely. One hand was clamped at her hip, holding her flush against him, whilst the other delved into her hair as he cradled her head and kissed her. No man had ever kissed her as Plato did, ravishing her mouth, forcing her to open to him, taking what he wanted.

Plato knew he was holding her too tightly. He had to be hurting her. He felt her wince but he couldn’t not squeeze, couldn’t not drag her up against him. He heard her soft, broken breaths as she struggled to kiss him back and knew he was being an unreasonable brute—but really what did anyone expect? What did she expect? Chert, she knew what to expect now. She’d had a brief blast of everything that was wrong in his life. Now she could have a taste of what it meant to mess with a guy like him.

He fumbled one-handed with the buttons on her tight little wool jacket, popping one, then another. He only stopped kissing her to appreciate the cleavage and fine black lace. Nothing beige in sight. He realised she’d put this on for him—before the argument in the restaurant, before she’d fled from him down the street, before she’d known the truth. For some reason it made him clumsy all of a sudden.

Rose pushed her hands to his chest and shimmied down to her feet, the look she gave him both inviting and wary. Her small hand did guard duty over her jacket and she backed up.

For a crazy minute he thought he’d blown it. That she’d decided it was over. The luxury of the private, privileged world he had won his place in was no longer able to screen the base realities of where he had come from. She was thinking about what she had seen and heard in the street, and like the smart girl she was she wasn’t going to let some street thug from Udilsk touch her.

Rose reached up and laid her hand on his cheek, her gentle palm drawing the weight of him towards her. She was so intensely lovely, her hair falling out of its pins and framing her face in loose ebony curls. It struck him that the first time he had seen her she had reminded him of a Renaissance Madonna, but the Rose he knew now was much more earthy and real, and that fire burning inside her suffused her delicate features, making her eyes intensely blue as she gazed at him.

She came up on her toes and put her lips to his and kissed him, soft as the inside of a rose petal, her eyes wide open, never leaving his. Slowing him down.

Plato stopped moving, stopped breathing.

Rose knew now he’d only ever told her the truth, had only ever been trying to protect her, and she so desperately wanted to give him something back. From all she had seen today and what she now knew about Plato’s life it seemed the thing he lacked was tenderness. She could give him this—a little softness to take the edges off his hard life.

A sensual smile curled up the corners of her mouth and she kissed him again, this time her eyes drifting closed as her tongue delved between his lips, holding his head in place with both hands. He leaned forward so Rose could reach him, and the gesture wasn’t lost on her.

She could feel the lust thumping inside him. She had never been wanted like this. She opened her eyes, saw the strange wild light in his and asked, her voice pure enticement, ‘Where do we go?’ She wasn’t entirely referring to geography.

Plato hauled her into his arms and carried her up the stairs. She put her arms around his neck and he could feel her warmth through her clothes, the female weight of her so wondrously distributed.

He lived upstairs. It was simpler, more comfortable than the vast spaces below. He saw Rose taking it all in—the pool table, the excessive entertainment consoles, the big screen on the wall, the huge sofas and walls and the ledges full of sporting memorabilia. She seemed to grow heavier in his arms, as if relaxing. He’d never brought a woman up here before. He wondered what she was thinking. Then he kicked open the door to his bedroom.

He kept expecting she would start up at him, stamp her foot, demand to be taken to the airport… He wouldn’t let her go, but he put her down and she didn’t do any of those things.

Instead she began unbuttoning his shirt, her hesitant touch driving him crazy. He replaced her hands with his more competent ones, ripping, sending buttons spitting. He dealt with her little jacket until he had her soft hands on his bare chest, nothing but silk and lace and underwiring between her breasts and his skin. She reached up and tugged his head down to fuse their mouths.