Breaking wide open. For me.
I take her through her orgasm, stretching it out, making it last as long as possible. Only when she’s drained, her body sinking still and silent against the window, do I relinquish my hold on her.
She whimpers once, at the loss of contact, shifts restlessly as she searches for warmth. For reassurance. “Sebastian. Please.”
I freeze, not at the words so much as the tone she delivers them in. Already her voice drips with a soft honey that calls to me and there’s a part of me that’s shocked at how easily she’s gone under.
Subspace.
The word dances around the edge of my mind. Fuck. I hadn’t planned on taking her there yet. Not now, when we’re on the clock. But it’s too late. I can tell by the soft, mewling sounds she makes. By the way she can’t settle without my touch.
Biting back a curse at my own carelessness, I stroke a reassuring hand over the gentle curve of her ass before pushing to my feet. Leaving her exactly where she is, I stride over to the desk, punch two numbers into my phone. When Linda answers, I bark, “Call David downstairs. Tell him HR has got Aria filling out some paperwork regarding the incident two nights ago. She’ll be down when she’s through.”
When I turn back, she’s watching me, those black magic eyes of hers a little hazy and out of focus. I can tell she’s trying to surface, trying to think. To hell with that.
Forcing a coldness into my voice I’m far from feeling, I ask, “Did I tell you you could turn around?”
Chapter Two
Aria
I freeze at Sebastian’s words.
At his tone.
At the look in his eyes.
His eyes.
When I was fifteen, I bought a malachite rock for luck at a new age store and have kept it in my nightstand ever since. I’ve held that stone in my hand a million times, have worried it between my thumb and fingers so much that I’ve actually worn it smooth on one side. And yet never—in all those years, in all the times I held it and studied it and wished over it—have I seen eyes the same deep, mysterious color.
Until now. Sebastian’s eyes are exactly the same shade as that stone—an odd, grayish green with rings of dark forest around the pupil and the outside rim of the iris. They’re breathtaking, spellbinding. Exciting as all hell. And the look in them, right now, is twice as hard as any malachite ever could be.
It’s a startling revelation, one that yanks me abruptly out of the strange fuzziness I’m feeling. My body shudders at the abrupt wrenching and it takes every ounce of strength I have not to reach for him. Not to give in to the craving building inside of me, a craving that’s for something I can’t quite name but that I know is about more than sex. More than getting off.
I don’t know how I feel about that and the knowledge brings me all the way back from whatever the hell head trip I was starting to take. Because, honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about any of this.
I mean, after living pretty much my entire life in Vegas, I’m no stranger to kink. BDSM, breathplay, voyeurism, pay-to-play. I’ve heard of them all. But knowing what they are is a far cry from experiencing one of them for myself. And while I just enjoyed the hell out of what Sebastian did to me—I don’t think I’ve ever come that fast in my life—that doesn’t mean I’m ready to take this any further.
Except the way he’s looking at me is turning me on. Making me wet all over again, even as my knees continue to tremble from the orgasm he just gav
e me.
I’m not sure how I feel about that, either. I’m not usually so easy—to get in bed, to fuck senseless or to make soft and trembly afterward.
Even worse, Sebastian knows exactly how shaky I still am. I can tell by the way he’s holding himself, body taut, jaw clenched, hands curled into loose fists by his sides. And by the way he’s still halfway across the room, watching me, instead of coming back over here and fucking me. Or whatever it is he plans on doing to me.
It’s not that he doesn’t want me. I’m not vain, but I’m not naïve, either, and I know when a guy wants to do a whole range of unmentionable things to me. No, Sebastian Caine definitely wants me. But he also thinks I’m weak. Fragile. The knowledge grates, has my knees locking and my spine stiffening when two minutes ago I would have sworn I’d never be tense again. But there’s something about being pitied that sets me off like nothing else can.
Turning around and facing the window might be the smart thing to do, but it’s also the cowardly thing. And I’m nobody’s coward. Nobody’s yes-girl. Not anymore.
Which is why I very deliberately tilt my chin up, narrow my eyes at him. And very, very deliberately turn around so that my back is now pressed to the window and I’m facing him head-on.
I’m not sure what I expect from him, how I think he’s going to react to my blatant bit of defiance. I do know, though, that I’m not expecting the raised brow. The darkly wicked grin. The sensual tension that somehow becomes even more dense between us, until the very air I breathe is laden with it.
And then he’s prowling toward me. I feel ridiculous even thinking the word—he’s a man, not a jaguar—and yet there’s no other descriptor I can use to explain what he looks like as he crosses the room. Sleek, powerful, his muscles moving with a stealthy coordination that manages somehow to be both beautiful and predatory.
I can feel my heart rate picking up again, my breathing becoming even more disjointed, and for a second—just a second—I want to say to hell with it and flee. To say to hell with being brave, to hell with my underwear which is even now crumpled into a ball on the floor, to hell with making a point to him and myself and instead just make a run for the office door.