And yet her smile lingers even after she stills her laughter, a sassy, beautiful smile that strikes something deep inside of me, a primal chord of compulsion I didn’t even know was there.
“What if I say pretty please?” she sasses.
It takes far more effort than it should to let her go, but I do it, taking a small step backward.
If I hold her for a moment longer, I’ll lose control and ravage her.
I’ll drag her somewhere nobody else can see us – that body is for my eyes only – and strip down her pants so that I can see how round and full those thighs are when there’s nothing hiding them.
Then I’ll bite my way up to her sex, tearing off her panties with my teeth, tasting the sweet juiciness of her core.
My cock gives another urgent pulse.
I ignore it as best as I can and offer my hand.
“I’m Jett,” I say. “And you are?”
“Juliana, but everybody calls me Julia,” she says.
We shake hands.
Hers is much smaller than my bear’s paw, and as I feel her hand I can’t stop myself from thinking how perfect it’d feel wrapped around my throbbing dick.
It’s only after we’ve shaken hands that I realize I’ve fucked up and given her my real name.
But it doesn’t matter.
Because this woman belongs to me now.
She would’ve learned who I really was eventually.
After I’m done here – when that text finally comes in – I’m going to claim her, to fuck her like she deserves to be fucked.
Because that’s my goddamned right.
Chapter Two
Juliana
Jett stands before me like a hulking beast, so muscular that he seems to bulge against the fabric of his tuxedo, as though any second it’s going to tear to tiny black petals and reveal his gigantic naked body.
My body is too hot as I stand here, my heart thumping loudly in my ears.
He’s so tall, at least six and a half feet, towering over me with stark blue eyes that see right through me. It’s like he’s undressing me with his eyes, but not in a leery way.
This is like he owns me.
I warn myself to be careful. This giant silver-haired man – his hair swept to the side, iron with his experience – wouldn’t be interested in me.
He caught me because he didn’t want me to fall, that’s it.
But already, impossibly, I feel myself falling for him.
His jaw is square and clean shaven, his lips smirking or close to a smirk at all times, his eyes never leaving me.
Even with the madness of the party all around us – a party I should be entirely focused on – he makes me feel as though we’re completely alone.
“So what do you do, Julia?” he asks, in that deep rumbling voice of his.
His accent is hard to place. It’s not East Coast, but it’s not obviously Mid-West or Southern or West Coast, either. It’s a heavy growling voice that’s entirely his own.
“I’m a party planner,” I say in a rush, the words feeling and sounding clumsy as those azure eyes pin me in place. “An apprentice party planner, really. I helped organize this event with my manager, Patricia.”
I don’t know why I give her name, or why my whole body is suddenly alight with the heat of a thousand blazing stars. My insides swirl and dance, my sex growing so warm it’s getting difficult to ignore it.
I get the crazy urge to leap at this giant of a man, wrap my legs around his waist and start grinding against him, feeling his hard manhood against me.
But I’m not that sort of wild girl.
Living in my head, losing myself in books and imaginary worlds, that’s my specialty.
He’s just being polite by asking me this question, making small talk with the silly girl who almost fell flat on her face because she’s not used to walking in heels.
“What about you?” I ask, barely pushing the words out. “What do you do?”
Jett’s lips twitch into a near-smile, his glinting predator’s eyes never leaving me. Something gets tight and needy inside of me, and suddenly a crazy image strikes me. I see me and Jett, stood beneath an arch interwoven with fragrant, colorful flowers, declaring our love for each other, binding ourselves together for eternity.
The image morphs and we’re stood in front of a full-length mirror, my belly swollen with our child, Jett’s hand smoothing down from the bump to my sex, stroking his powerful, large hand over my clit, and then slipping his finger inside of me.
I almost bite down to force the impossible fantasies away.
I don’t know what’s gotten into me.
I never gush like this over men.
“Me?” Jett says. “I’m a hitman. I kill bad men for money.”
I giggle at the joke, his smirk flooded with irony, his eyes telling me that he could stay here for the next hour and not get bored of me. I’ve never had a man look at me like that before. In all my twenty-one years, I’ve always been the ignored girl, the one in the back of the classroom, invisible in the hallways, there but not there.