For God’s sake! An emerald suit and a diamond encrusted ring on his pinkie! He should have looked ridiculous, but he does not. He starts walking toward me—sure, confident, leonine. Dazzling.
There is an arrogance and authority to the set of his jaw that is not at all to my liking. His gaze is aggressively bold and virile. His eyes travel down my body.
‘Lost?’
‘No, I was trying to be alone.’
His eyes dip down and linger suggestively and I am certain deliberately on my breasts. The mental disrobing is meant to unruffle me.
‘Positively breathtaking,’ he murmurs softly, but with a hint of sardonic amusement.
‘Insufferably arrogant, aren’t you?’
‘It has been said,’ he concedes with a wry grin.
‘What do you want?’ I ask. My voice rings out like a bell in the vast room. I hear the panic in it, the revelation that I do not trust myself.
He stands in front of me, his cheekbones flushed with sexual heat. ‘Isn’t it perfectly obvious what I want?’
‘Not to me.’
‘I want you to stay away from my brother.’
I blush. Then I laugh mockingly. ‘You’re a gangster. Don’t act high and mighty with me.’
He smiles slowly, his eyes crinkling with amusement. ‘Say that word again.’
I blink. ‘What word?’
‘Gangster.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you make it sound so sexy I want to go out and become one.’
‘Am I supposed to believe that you’re not one?’
He shrugged disinterestedly, but his eyes take on a new glitter. ‘I can be if you want me to be.’
Suddenly I feel so flustered I can’t even look at him. I drop my eyes.
‘Is that what you really want…Lily? A gangster?’
‘It’s the last thing…’
He moves, and fast. ‘So what the fuck are you doing playing nice with his brother,’ he snarls and gripping my forearms pushes me roughly against the wall by the window.
I do what I did when I was nine years old and I opened the front door of my nan’s house and there were two unsmiling skinheads outside. One of them was holding a hammer. I didn’t pause or consider. I simply reacted.
‘Let loose the two Alsatians, Nan,’ I screamed.
For a second the heavily tattooed heads looked at each other, and then they bolted away so fast there was not enough time to say skin. My nan didn’t have a dog.
Again I let my instinct guide me.
I grab Jake’s surprised face and, pulling it down, kiss him hard on the mouth, except, unlike the skinheads situation, the problem does not run away.
His mouth opens to mine. The kiss sears my lips, shocking. I stagger and grab a handful of dark hair. Supporting hands come around my waist like bands of warm steel forcing me into his unyielding body, and I melt into it, fuse with it. My insides turn to fucking mush and my toes curl in my shoes. Thick juices leak into the gusset of my panties. For those few seconds I even stop breathing!
Then, without warning, he tears his mouth away from mine, and coiling strong hands around my forearms pushes me back against the cold wall. He stares at me with these wild, animal eyes, the pupils so huge it is as if he has been running or has come out of a dark room. Mesmerized, I gaze up at him. I have never seen anything like it. Anything so feral and beautiful. He takes a deep breath.
‘What the fuck?’ he bites out harshly.
‘Sorry,’ I say as coolly as I can manage. ‘When a man shoves a woman up against a wall he usually wants to ravish her.’
He is breathing hard. Through short gasps of air he grates, ‘Stay the fuck away from my brother.’
His voice is cold and menacing and a great white shark is swimming in his eyes, but I know that if I reach out and touch the front of his five thousand pound suit trousers I will find him tight and hard inside them.
‘So I’m good enough for you but not good enough for your brother.’
He laughs bitterly. ‘No, you’re good enough for any man’s bed. The problem is Shane would want to marry you, and we both know you’re not the marrying kind.’
‘What makes you think I wouldn’t marry Shane?’
He reacts swifter than a Tasmanian devil. His hand shoots out and pulls me so hard and fast I gasp with shock as I slam into his body. His cock juts into my belly. ‘Don’t play with me, Jewel.’
I look up at him defiantly. Heat glitters in his pale eyes and fierce sexual heat has tightened his jaw. ‘If Shane wants me he’ll have me.’
His eyes flash with anger, but he drawls, ‘Oh, baby. You have no clue, have you?’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Take it as a warning.’
‘What are you going to do, hmmm?’ I challenge.
‘For a start, this.’ And he bends his head and crushes his mouth against mine. The kiss is possessive and demanding. It is nothing like the other. This one is pure punishment. With this one he is branding me. Putting his seal of ownership on me. I twist my head and try to push away, my knees preparing to connect hard with his crotch, when suddenly the kiss changes and I am helpless to resist. It is a kiss like nothing I have ever experienced. There is no discordant note. Everything about it is hot and wet and wild.
My mouth opens and his tongue thrusts in, boldly, the way his cock would enter my pussy. I suck on it and electric energy snaps through me, scraping the back of my neck, as if I have received a shock from an old electric appliance. His hands lift me off the floor and put me back down with my legs farther apart. I feel him pull my dress up and over my bum. I hear the small scrap of lace and satin tear and then I feel his finger slide into my heat. I moan helplessly into his mouth.
‘What the hell is going on here?’ a voice demands.
His broad shoulders block my view of Shane, but I freeze with horror. My torn panties are lying on the floor, and Jake’s hard fingers are still inside my naked pussy.
Very casually, Jake lifts his head from mine, extracts his fingers out of me, and smoothing my dress over my hips, turns around to face his brother. He keeps his hand firmly around my waist.
‘What do you think is going on, Shane?’ he asks coolly.
Shane stares at me, hurt etched in his beautiful eyes.
I try to twist out of Jake’s grip, but it is iron hard. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.
He smiles. A bitter twist of his lips and I know what he is thinking. He’ll just use you and discard you. No longer able to meet my eyes, he draws himself up with great dignity. And at that moment I see what a fine man he is. And how much he must have liked me before this. And I find myself wishing that the sparks between Jake and me had flown between him and me instead.
He nods distantly and looks out of the window. ‘You will see her home safe.’
‘Of course,’ he replies.
‘Goodnight then,’ he bids and walking out of the door shuts it behind him.
Jake takes his hand away from around my waist, but his eyes never leave mine. Feeling strangely bereft I wrap my hands around my waist. ‘You knew he was going to be here, didn’t you?’
Green swirls in his eyes. ‘I asked him to come.’
I nod slowly. So easily I had fallen into his trap. ‘That was a very cruel thing you did.’
His voice is strangely soft, almost regretful. ‘I did warn you.’
‘To your brother.’
‘He’ll survive. He knows I have his best interest at heart,’ he dismisses callously, but I see the glimmer of a fierce loyalty to his brother, his family. His pack.
‘Why do you think I’d be so bad for your brother?’
‘I think I just proved my point a few minutes ago.’
‘You don’t know me.’