“Have you considered why I didn’t get this over with quickly?” His tongue, his fucking tongue, god, he’s driving me wild. He pulls my shirt off, tosses it aside, and my bra follows soon after, so that he can envelop my breast in his mouth, kiss and suck at me until it’s hard to breathe.
“Why?” I whisper, because I can’t control my voice any louder than that.
“At first I wanted to savor you. Corrupt you, slowly.” His hand drops to my panties. Slips beneath the hem, and his fingers dance around my clit in slow, teasing circles. “I wanted to make you scream with pleasure, and know I was the first man ever to do it.”
I shiver, unable to help myself. “No one has ever touched me like you do, Pierce,” I murmur.
“I wanted you to be desperate.” His fingers spread my pussy lips, and my head falls against the sheets as I arch my back. “I wanted you to beg for me to fuck you.”
“You . . . tease,” I manage to gasp, in between jolts of pleasure, as his thumb zeroes in on my sweet spot. I can feel my clit, swollen and heavy with need. He brushes against it, and my whole body jumps, electrified.
“Yes.” He grins. “But not nearly as bad a tease as you.”
I wrap a hand around his neck, try to pull him down to kiss me, but he holds back. His eyes find mine, serious again, and there’s something else. Something more he’s not telling me. I think back to what he just said. At first. “Then what happened?” I murmur, my body tense, waiting for the blow. What happened? Did something change? He still wants me, of that much I’m sure, but . . .
Oh.
Oh.
My lips part in surprise, as he continues to watch me, his smile twisting into something almost bitter. He moves to slide his hand out of my panties, but I catch his wrist, hold him there.
“You’ve figured it out,” he says, his voice low and constricted. Because that’s real emotion in his eyes, in his tone.
I almost missed it, because I was so distracted by fighting my own feelings. But he’s feeling the same thing. “You didn’t want it to end,” I murmur, and I know before I even say it that that’s why. Why he kept stalling and delaying, why he wouldn’t fuck me that night in the penthouse. Why he threw me out to throw himself into work instead. Why he followed me to my grandmother’s, and paid for everything, before we’d finished our deal, before he’d taken what he wanted.
He leans in to kiss me again, roughly this time. Before I can kiss him back, he pulls away again, and this time he withdraws his hand from my pussy, his other hand from my breast, and leans back on the bed. I feel cold in all the spots where he was just touching me. My whole body burns for him.
I sit upright and reach for him, but he cringes away.
“I’m a complete idiot. This was a business deal; I don’t get in over my head in business. I stick to what works. I stay logical, focused. But you . . .” He glances over his shoulder at me, desperation written all over his face. “You make me lose focus. Lose my damn mind.”
I reach for him, touch his shoulders gently. When he doesn’t pull away anymore, I slowly sit up and wrap my body around his. “Pierce . . .”
“I’m falling in love with you, Bonnie. And I know, I know how insane that sounds—we’ve only known each other for a week, and this was only supposed to be about sex, but I can’t stop thinking about you, all the time, even in meetings, and I normally don’t . . .” He shakes his head. “But there it is. I’ve fallen for you so damn hard.”
“Pierce.” I say his name sternly this time, and he meets my eye. I cup his cheek in one hand and kiss him, slow, soft, deep. I don’t break that kiss for a long time, not until I know exactly what to say in return.
The truth. A truth I had barely begun to realize, a truth I didn’t want to look at too deeply, because I knew how dangerous it was to admit.
“I’m falling for you, too,” I whisper against his lips.
At that, his body relaxes. Mine does, too, all this tension I never even realized I was carrying falling out of me at once. I think about what Gram said, about the right partner helping you toward your goals. Pierce and I were both feeling out-of-focus, lost. But not because we were a bad fit. We were unfocused because we weren’t able to see the obvious truth right in front of us.