“I’m trying. I just wish he didn’t want to hack my head off every time we’re together.” My jaw tightens, and I wonder, can I blame him one bit?
I should’ve introduced myself sooner. Should’ve tried harder to convince Marissa to let me into his life, but after what that sadistic fuck-bag did to her—
“He doesn’t want you dead.” She looks up from her laptop. “He just doesn’t know you yet, and you’re hard to get to know, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I flash her a tight smile and then relax my face. “You’re a bonafide angel. Somehow, you make everything better—including my doubts over ever seeing eye to eye with this boy.”
“Wow. A girl could get used to you acting nice for once, you know.” Her smile hits my heart like a shot, especially when her long lashes flutter. “Oh, and I forgot to tell you. The creative team is ahead of schedule with the airline stuff. Their concepts are ready, thanks to Hugo shutting himself up in his room. His wife dragged him to Florida for the holidays and he can’t take the heat. I gave it my approval, but I emailed it to you in case you wanted to make any last minute notes before Mon—”
Enough.
Taking a step forward, I close her computer, pull it from her hands, and set it aside.
“Brina, I don’t want to talk about work. It’s almost New Year’s Eve. I don’t even want to think about it. If you like the mock-ups, then I know they’re stellar.” I pull her into my lap and shift our weight so we’re looking at the skyline. “Tonight, I’m enjoying that view with you. Then we’re going to spend the day together and ring in the new year with everything a little less shitty, you read me?”
She trembles in my grasp.
The effect I have on her only makes me want her more.
“Okay. Sounds nice,” she whispers shyly.
I turn her in my lap so her lips will be easier to reach. Then I cup her face with my hand, tilt her head back, and bring my lips to hers.
She wraps her arms around my neck and presses her body closer, teasing every bit of my skin where I can feel her.
Fuck.
The want firing in my brain makes me delirious.
Growling, I kiss her so hard her mouth opens, and I deepen the kiss, claiming her like I’ve always wanted with no doubts, no distractions, and no nerves. Her hands saunter from the nape of my neck upward, into my hair. Fingernails dig at my scalp, and I don’t mind.
My grip on her tightens, my pulse hammers, and I press her even closer to my chest, folding her around me, needing her right now like my lungs need air.
She wriggles in my hold, comes up on her knees, and straddles me. Through her panties and my sweats, raw heat tickles my shaft, teasing me with how wet she is.
She arches her back and presses down with force over the ridge in my pants.
I let out a sigh and pull myself together, remembering what she liked the night the phone call ripped us apart, the night she should’ve been mine.
A nuclear bomb isn’t tearing me off her tonight.
I ease my mouth away from hers to speak, even though it’s torture.
“I have to kiss you again,” I snarl.
Her eyes are wide. She nods.
Just like that, her lips are on mine again, sticky and sweet as a ripe strawberry. Her tongue digs at my mouth, matching my hunger, begging to be taken.
I’m so fucking happy to oblige.
In a rough jerk, I bolt away from her lips, trailing hot breath and frenzied kisses down her jawline. I taste every bit of her, exploring every nook and twist of her with my tongue.
“Mag,” she breathes.
“I love that sound.” I kiss the top of her neck where it meets her jawbone, and she shudders, grinding her hot pussy against my raging steel through the fabric.
“Sound?” she moans.
Yeah. That one. Right the hell there.
“Your voice when you say my name with need.” I kiss slightly lower then, making her arch, running my hands down her spine.
My lips attack her neck again, this time with raw hunger, with teeth, with a promise of everything I’ll do to her tonight.
I open my mouth and draw a small circle in the middle of her neck with my tongue.
“Oh. Ohhh.”
Every breathless murmur she makes is my reward.
I kiss down, down, down to where her neck meets her collarbone, massaging the delicate skin with my tongue, painting my lust on her flesh.
She grips my hair with her fingers and whimpers again.
“Magnus!”
Fuck.
I trace a hot, messy line from her collarbone to the top of her cleavage with kisses.
She presses her soft warmth into me again.
The clothes need to go, but I can’t fucking rush this.
Not when I already know I’m about to have the best sex of my life.