“I’m well aware you aren’t like everyone else,” I murmured. My lips barely brushed her ear as I spoke. “Everyone else would be bent over that sofa by now, but if you think your defiance will put me off, you’re wrong. I think it’ll just make it so much sweeter when you give in.”
“And even more satisfying for me when you leave me the fuck alone,” she whispered, then cleared her throat.
“Not gonna happen, sweetheart.”
“You need to leave now, Mr. Fox.”
I pulled back and looked into her eyes, once more gripping her chin. “My name is Damien. Remember it. You’ll need it when you beg me.”
She slapped my hand away from her face, but she said nothing. Just the darkening of her glare and the tightening of her jaw was the answer.
I pushed off the door. Dahlia moved a second before I opened the door, and I gave her one last look before I turned and walked out of the room.
I felt her best friend’s glare as I walked past the bar, but I ignored her. I was too wrapped up in the vixen I’d just left in the back room. The woman whose eyes sliced into me and whose lips haunted me.
The woman who would be mine—sooner or later.
Five
Dahlia
I slammed the door so hard the sharp bang echoed around the staff room.
My heart was racing. It pounded against my ribs doing double-time, and my chest was so tight I couldn’t breathe steadily. Even my skin was on fire where he’d touched me.
Where he’d held my face, where he’d teased my hair, where he’d deliberately brushed his lips.
Damien Fox had taken hold of my personal space and ripped a hole for himself. And now, I couldn’t kill the feeling of his body so close to mine.
Of his hard cock brushing against my hip.
Another deliberate move. Another seduction tactic. Another thing to attempt to make me break.
And goddamn my body, because it’d reacted to him. It’d given him what he wanted, and I knew it. I’d seen the hunger in his eyes at my gasp. The pleasure when I swallowed. The lust when I hadn’t backed down.
I disliked him—severely. Maybe I almost even hated him just a little bit.
Or maybe I hated the way my body reacted despite the way I felt about him.
He was arrogant, rude, and cocky to the point of unbelievable. It was clear that he cared about one person in his life, and that was himself. His lack of respect for anyone infuriated me every single time he opened his mouth.
Nobody else mattered in the world of Damien Fox. He was its center and everything revolved around him.
I hated the way my clit still throbbed between my legs.
Hated it.
I stormed over to the cabinets at the back. I knew there was a bottle of cherry vodka stashed in the back of one of the ground-level ones because I was the one who’d put it there.
While alcohol wasn’t the answer, I needed something, anything, to distract me from the way I was feeling. The burn of the liquor against my throat was a damn good start.
I rifled through the cupboard until I found it. It clinked against some other things as I yanked it out, and when it was free, I instantly turned my attention to the cupboard where the shot glasses were.
Those were Abby.
The cherry vodka was stashed for situations like this where it was polite to use a shot glass but completely unnecessary.
The door clicked open.
I turned, yanking the cap off the bottle as I pointed it toward the person coming in.
Mia and Abby froze in the doorway.
“Oh dear,” said Abby. “She’s broken out the secret vodka.”
“This vodka has never been secret. Everybody knows it’s there, they’re just not allowed to touch it.” I sniffed and poured my shot. Keeping one hand on the bottle, I lifted the small glass and threw it back.
It burned as I swallowed it.
It felt good.
“I take it that didn’t go well.” Mia’s heels clicked against the floor.
I shook my head and turned around, finally releasing the bottle. “How someone hasn’t murdered him yet, I have no idea.”
“He’s hot,” Abby said. “I assume he seduces people into what he wants.”
I pursed my lips. “You assume correctly.”
“He seduced you?”
“He attempted to.” Almost successfully. “He has this stupid-ass entitlement that makes him think he can do anything he wants. Like he can have any woman—”
“Because he can and does,” Mia interrupted.
“—and get everything he wants just because he’s handsome and smooth with words. Well, he can kiss my ass, because I’m not any woman, and if he thinks he’s going to get my bar by me jumping into bed with him, he needs to check himself.”
Abby sidled up to me at the corner and poured a shot.
“Thank you.” I swallowed it in one and slammed the glass against the countertop.