When I Say Yes (Necklace Trilogy 3)

“I assure you, cupcake, me between your legs is better than any fight.”

“Bullshit. You went there. You sent me away. You need more than this.”

His hands slide around me, between my shoulder blades, his voice roughened as he says, “No. No, I don’t need more than this. Not now. Not ever.”

“Bullshit,” I say again. “Fuck me the way you need to fuck me to never do what you did tonight to me—no, to us—again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Allie.”

I catch his hair and not gently. “Bullshit times three and I don’t know if I’ve ever said that word in my life. I don’t even like it. Don’t make me say it again.” I nip his lip and not gently. “Use me.”

“Allie,” he whispers, his fingers flexing on my back. “Baby, I am.”

“If that were the case, your hand would be on my throat and I’d be shoved against the island with a palm on my ass.”

“You brought me down.” His voice quakes, barely noticeable, but it quakes.

“Liar,” I hiss. “All you do is hide from me, Dash. You can’t do that anymore. We can’t do that. I can’t do that. I won’t do us that way. If you can’t be you with me, if you can’t use me for an escape, we can’t be together. I want everything. Do you understand? All or nothing, Dash. All or nothing.”

I’m breathing hard. My heart is racing. And yet, he doesn’t move. He just holds me there, breathes with me, seconds, heavy seconds, ticking by, until suddenly his hand is in my hair, and he’s dragging my head back with an erotic tug, his mouth over my mouth. “You want everything?”

“Yes,” I rasp out. “If you dare, but I don’t think you do.”

“You want my hand on your ass?”

No man has ever had his hand on my backside but Dash. No man has ever been rough and erotic and full of demand but still so damn careful, so tender. Except for Dash. I’m a mix of emotions that rush through me in a rainbow of colors. I don’t understand why I need what I need with Dash, how he brings that person to the surface, but it’s me, it’s the me I never knew and need to know. And it’s him. It’s all that I can be with him. “Yes,” I dare. “Yes. I do.”

He kisses me, a wild, hungry kiss, and in the midst of the passion, he scoops me up, cupping my backside and carrying me toward the only other room in the apartment. The bedroom.

CHAPTER NINE

Dash carries me to the bedroom and lowers me to my feet at the end of the mattress. I reach for him, and I can feel his need to feel my hands on his body, but instead of caving to that burn, he catches my wrists again. “Not until I say you can touch me.”

Defiance rips through my body and my chin tilts. “And if I touch you anyway?”

“Then you won’t feel my hand on your ass, baby. Or anywhere else.” He drags me closer, aligning our bodies. “You know what I want. Tell me. What do I want, Allie?”

“Control,” I say without hesitation, but there’s a hint of vulnerability in my voice that I cannot tame. Just as I know I will never tame Dash. And the thing is—I don’t want to. In fact, I want the opposite. I want him unleashed. I want him wild and free.

“Are you going to give it to me?” he presses. “Can you trust me that much, Allie?”

Trust.

That’s the monster that torments each of us in our own minds and yet, we want it from each other, we demand it be given blindly, irrationally perhaps, but it doesn’t seem to matter. So much about how Dash and I approach each other is irrational and yet somehow, we make sense. And so I say, “I already do.”

He turns me to face the bed, one hand cupping the side of my neck under my hair, the other on my waist, his hard body at my back. Dash leans in close and says, “I can be demanding, Allie.”

My mind flashes to the night of our fight back in Nashville, when my hands had been pressed to the front door of our apartment, his hand on my throat, him behind me, thrusting into me. “I know,” I whisper, my skin flushing with the memory and because it’s the truth, now I dare add, “I like it.”

“Do you?” he challenges.

“Beyond reason,” I whisper.

His fingers flex on my neck, seconds ticking by before he replies with, “I used to think I wanted to scare you off, Allie.”

“And now?”

“Now, I pray I can’t.” His teeth scrape my shoulder, rasping roughly.

I suck in a breath at the rough, erotic nip that borders on a bite. He cups my jaw and drags my head back to his shoulder, just enough to angle my mouth to his and lower his to mine. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t try,” he adds. “Nice guys are gentle, Allie. You need to know that I’m not a nice guy.”