His hand slides over my head, over my hair, and tilts my face to his. “And what if you can’t?”
“What if I can?” I challenge.
“Yes,” he says softly, his voice raw, vibrating. “What if you can?”
It’s a question. It’s a challenge. It’s a promise of happiness tainted with the possibility of failure. It’s a twisty road with steep drops and a crash that could rip the very life from our light grip. Or perhaps we’re inside a mighty dark forest of trauma and history, of pain and torment, and we’re there without a weapon or any protection. Monsters lurk in this forest—our monsters, and they are evil, fanged beasts. One looks like his father. One looks like mine.
His hand slides from under my hair and cups my neck, and he drags my mouth to his. “Now would be the time for you to run, Allie.”
There’s a shift in his energy, a stark punch of hunger and demand beneath his surface. His free hand slides up to the front of my sweater, and he yanks the front, hard and fast, and all the way down. I gasp as the little buttons that held it together pop and fly everywhere.
“I liked this sweater,” I whisper, even as he drags it down my shoulders, but he can’t be bothered with removing it. His hands are already shoving down my bra, his gaze devouring my breasts, fingers teasing my nipples.
His hot, lusty stare meets mine as he says, “I’ll buy you ten just like it for the view.”
There’s something more than heat in his eyes, something that tells a story. I recognize then what I saw in him when he fought in Nashville. He takes a beating during his fights, but in the end, he conquers, he wins. Tonight, he didn’t fight. He didn’t conquer. Now, he wants that high, craves it, and I’m where he’ll find that relief.
He wants to conquer me.
He wants, needs, and even demands my submission. Because submission is trust and tonight tried to tear away the new and fragile trust between us. A couple of revelations come to me then with surprise. Dash can ask for anything and I’d say yes, which makes him dangerous, so very dangerous. I should run, but even after all that happened in the just passed, roughly managed hours behind us, I have less desire to do so than ever.
I love him. I lust for him. I desire him in every possible meaning of that word. I want Dash Black in a bad way. He tears his shirt over his head, tosses it aside, rippling muscles inviting my hands, but even as I reach for him, he catches my arms, presses them behind me, and captures my wrists with his hand. He pulls me firmly against his hard body and I gasp with the feel of him, so dominant, so strong, so intimately close.
“I came here instead of fighting, but all the feelings that took me to the fight club are still right here in me. What are you doing to do about it?”
“What do you want to do about it?”
“Let me fuck you hard and dirty,” he says, “all night long. And then, I want to get up and do it again.”
“Am I supposed to object?”
“I sure as hell hope not, but maybe you should ask what hard and dirty means.”
I’ve always known there was a darker, edgier part of Dash that he’s never unleashed on me, he’s never really shown me. It’s the part of him that lives in that fighting ring. It’s the part of him that is too tormented to ever be gentle. It’s the part of him that has been hidden that I want exposed, that I want to know. My fingers catch his belt loops. “Or maybe you should just show me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dash leans in and presses his cheek to my cheek, his lips to my ear, his breath a warm seductive tease on my neck, I feel in every part of me. “Be careful what you ask for, baby,” he says softly.
My fingers curl on his chest. “I won’t regret anything with you, Dash.” I ease back to look at him. “One day you’ll know that.”
“Or you’ll know,” he says, a hidden meaning behind those darkly cloaked words, but there’s no time for questions.
His mouth crashes into mine, in a kiss that is all about possession, but there is also torment and pain. He is broken and he doesn’t seem to understand that I’m just as broken. Nor does he seem to understand that somehow, some way, when I’m with him, I’m whole again.
Dash’s hands slide into my skirt that is unzipped at this point, and he presses it over my hips and down my legs. The moment it’s at my ankles and I am in nothing but a tiny piece of lace and thigh highs beneath boots—which truly is kind of a ridiculous combination—but Dash doesn’t seem to notice or care.