Her heart thundered as the coward inside her urged her to turn tail and run, but how could she? He trapped her in his gaze, his nostrils flaring angrily at the sight of her.
“Can…can I come in, Damien?”
His face cold and expressionless, he opened the door wider so she came in, muscles bulging in a way that made her midsection feel heavy. He said nothing as he slammed the door shut behind her.
The silence ate at her nerves as she glanced around. A manila lay open above a glass coffee table, and that’s when she saw the pictures of her—kissing Court on the steps of her apartment building. Her stomach sunk, and she felt crazily as though she’d been unfaithful to him. But she didn’t owe anything to Damien Knight. Nothing. He owed her a goddamned heart, and she didn’t owe him shit.
So she didn’t know why she was here.
Except that every kiss they’d shared had stolen a little bit of her oxygen, and now she couldn’t breathe.
“You had me followed?” she asked, confused as her eyes shot up to his.
He sneered, saying nothing, merely lifting his glass in a mock “cheers”.
“Why would you have me followed?” she asked.
He took a full swig, then went to pour some more. She stalked there, grabbed the glass from him, scowling. “Are you getting drunk?”
He took it back and drained it, then set it on the counter. “Am I not older than twenty one? Hell, am I not a decade older than you?”
She shook her face in disapproval, and Damien eyed her suggestively, his lips twitching as he signaled coldly at her. “Well? Aren’t you going to take your clothes off? Go ahead. Strip.”
“Pardon?”
“What do you want me to do to you today? Do you want me to swell you up, make you wet, so he can get to fuck you?”
She blinked at the jealousy in his words. She remembered the need inside him, the way he’d almost begged her to stay, and she knew she’d hurt him. Damien Knight begged nobody. He was a man who’d walked out on his family, friends, his city, everything he knew. He didn’t apologize, and he didn’t need anyone. But she’d felt like he’d needed her. Pulled by a magnetic force she hardly understood, she walked over to him and slipped her arms around his waist, and he stiffened. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, her cheek to his back.
He stiffened. Then he took her hand and unwrapped it from him. “I’d like you…to leave…Sydney…” he said, with an effort.
She touched a finger to his chest, where his heart thundered—thundered—madly under her palm. “I’m very sorry things have gotten intense between us. And complicated. I want a truce. I want to be friends.”
His eyes looked tortured. He caught her jaw within his thumb and forefinger, the open curve of his hand cradling her chin as he gently squeezed. “I don’t want to be your friend,” he said gruffly.
She slipped her hand up his strong throat, her legs dissolving in need and desire. “Then make love to me,” she breathed. “Make love to me, Damien, you’ve made me wait ten years for you. Ten years. I should hate you. I should hate you for being with everyone who’s ever come to you except me.” Her voice broke, and her strength left her. She felt vulnerable and open. This was a man who’d taken every good-looking woman available. He’d told her time and again he didn’t like redheads, he didn’t like her, he liked women with boobs, with more meat.
She began to tremble and took a step back, her throat closing as she waited for the whiplash. His denial. His tormenting words. She had washed off the brown in her hair. And now she felt ready to be executed.
His eyes widened when he noticed the hair held back in a ponytail, and understanding took a bit of the glaze away. Then his eyes narrowed. Her heartbeat spiked as the look in them became feral. His jaw squared as he reached out, and his hand slid to the back of her head, pulling her forward. He crushed her lips to his with a groan of need.
Her body reacted instantly, and live, hot blood rushed through her with the force of a hurricane. She closed her eyes, grabbed his shoulders and went higher up on tiptoe, opening her mouth, pushing her tongue to his, every one of her actions begging, offering, wanting, needing.
His hands clenched around her waist, and before she knew it, he was lifting her, bringing her bre
asts to his face, nipping at one through the fabric, then the other. A shudder overtook her when she felt his teeth, tugging the beaded nipple through her blouse, then the other.
He let her slide down, his erection bulging a path up her sex, her pelvis, her abdomen. She pressed her lips hard to his again, stealing her hands up his chest, seeking his nipple rings. She caressed them with her fingertips, wild for them, wild for him.
He made an odd noise coming from his nostrils, like a harsh breath, and turned his head to her ear. “Do you want me inside you?”
There was only one answer, one truth, one thing on her mind. “Yes,” she said, almost a moan as she anxiously stroked her fingertips across the diamond stud piercings on his nipples.
He grasped her wrists and pinned her hands behind her back, pushing his hips against her hard, his voice rough and demanding. “Why did you kiss him? To hurt me? To torture me? To get back at me for doing the right thing?”
She dropped her gaze, but he held her arms in one hand, and brought the other to grab her chin and force her to look at him. “You were fifteen fucking years old. Fifteen.”
She pulled her arms free and tunneled them into his hair, kissing him, almost biting him, and he pulled free, once again grabbing her hands, this time forcing them down their bodies, between them, crossed. “Did you have to kiss him to realize he doesn’t rock your world like I do? That he doesn’t understand what you need, what you want?”