“It’s a word you established knowledge of quite clearly a little while ago in front of our neighbors. The word means… your request has been denied.”
I bumped along like a sack of potatoes, speechless. Stairs receded behind us as we went up into a higher level of the historic home.
The fuck?
Was this guy seriously taking me straight to his bedroom? When I really thought he wasn’t going to let me go, I struggled a little more out of nerves or fear. Fear of what, I wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t that I was afraid of West himself, because I wasn’t. Maybe I was afraid of what would happen if I got a taste of him. If I let him get a taste of me.
Or maybe I was afraid of getting a taste of something I’d want more of. Afraid of awakening a hunger in me that had always lain dormant just waiting for the right temptation to come along.
Either way, my body was sending me every message that I wanted this man. And my brain was nodding its fool head like an idiot. It was only my heart hiding over in a corner by itself whispering, Please don’t do it—you know I can’t take it again.
In the end, the vote was two to one in favor of allowing Weston Wilde to do whatever the fuck he wanted to me. So when he put me down in what I quickly realized was his kitchen, I was all in.
But just because I was all in, didn’t mean for one minute I intended to make it easy for him.
Chapter 14
West
Now that I had Nico Salerno in my kitchen, what exactly was I expecting to do with him?
I stared at him, feeling a powerful urge to dominate the man. The urge was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Had you asked me a few hours before what I was like in bed, I would have said I was pretty much plain vanilla. Boring as hell—give, take, whatever. Little bit of both, mostly and always done with manners and polite respect.
But with Nico? I didn’t want to give, I wanted to assault. I didn’t want to take, I wanted to command. My muscles thrummed with the need to overtake him. To grab his shoulders and force him to his knees in service of my raging hard-on. My teeth wanted to bite and nip every last inch of him, and my tongue wanted to slide into places on Nico’s body I’d never even laid eyes on before.
I didn’t want to sleep with the man.
I wanted to own him.
While my head had been swirling with thoughts of taking him, my body had been stalking forward slowly until my chest bumped his body back against the kitchen wall. Nico’s eyes were wide and his pupils blown. He wanted me as much as I wanted him. I could feel it as easily as I could feel the warm breath of his exhales against the skin of my neck.
“Take off your coat,” I said gruffly.
His eyes narrowed, but he did as I said. I watched the twin hoops in his bottom lip and knew they were my first target as soon as I had the green light to put my mouth on him.
“What are we—” Nico began, but I cut him off.
“Shoes next.”
“What?”
I stepped back, crossed my arms in front of my chest, and looked down at him. “Take off your shoes.”
Nico’s nostrils flared. “Like hell I will.”
Very slowly, almost in slow motion, I moved my hands to the wall on either side of him and my lips to his ear. Our cheeks brushed lightly against each other, and my nose felt the cold metal of his multiple ear piercings. I breathed hotly into his ear. “Take. Off. Your. Shoes.”
His entire body shuddered against me, and I felt him kick his shoes off to the side with the movement of his body’s tremor. Something about his following my orders made my cock even harder, and I knew I was playing with fire.
I kept our cheeks together and nuzzled my nose under his ear before whispering again. “Now take off my coat.”
He bristled but did as I commanded, muttering the whole time about what a bossy motherfucker I was. It took all my self-control not to snicker.
I could tell he was trying to decide whether or not to fight me. It was like there were two Nicos there—the one who wanted to fight me and the one who wanted to fuck me.
And I was fine with fighting and fucking. In fact, if I was being honest, I wanted him to struggle. I wanted him to want it of course, but I was okay with him being angry about wanting it. I was a little angry about wanting it too. I wasn’t supposed to want Nico Salerno—punk-ass tattoo artist from California who wasn’t all that keen on babies. But we didn’t always get to choose who pushed our buttons. And he sure as hell was pushing all mine.