“I’ve been trying to apologize to you for what happened since the moment I knew I’d gone too far. I want to talk to you about it—have waited four days to talk to you about it. So throwing it in my face like that is pretty damn shitty, don’t you think?”
For the first time since I came down to talk with her, she looks uncomfortable. More, embarrassed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your damn apology, Aria! When are you going to get that through your head?”
“Well, what do you want then?” she demands, hands on hips and looking for all the world as exasperated as I feel. For the first time, I feel a stirring of hope. Because beneath my exasperation is an unshakable love for her. I can only hope that beneath hers, there is something similar.
Or any kind of love at all, really. Or maybe just not hate. I might be proud, but I’m not stupid. I’ll take anything she wants to give me right now, as long as it’s something. I can build on something. It’s the apathy that comes with her feeling nothing that scares the hell out of me.
“I want you,” I tell her, as clearly as I possibly can so there will be no mistakes. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you rack that whale and the only thing that’s changed is I want you a hell of a lot more now that I know you than I did then.”
For a second, she doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me, and while I can see a million different emotions going on inside of her, I’m not sure any of them is the one I want from her. Not sure any of them is what is currently tearing me up inside.
The feeling only intensifies when she answers, “I need to work.”
“You need to…work?” I’m ready to pour my heart out, and she’s talking about work? The answer doesn’t compute.
“I’ll come up to your office on my break.” Her eyes are wide and uncertain, her lower lip trembling a little as she glances around the casino. “I just took a drink order. I have to—”
“Bullshit. This isn’t waiting four hours until you go on break. I want to know what’s going on in your head now.” I wrap my hand around her wrist and start to pull her toward the elevator.
But she digs in her heels. “Wait! You can’t keep doing this. I need this job.”
“It’s yours until you decide you don’t want it anymore. No one’s going to fire you.”
“Maybe not, but they should fire me. I keep walking off the job!”
I look pointedly at my hand, which is still wrapped around her wrist. “Actually, you keep getting dragged off the job. I’ll make sure David knows the difference.” We’re at my private elevator now and the door opens the second I run my card over the sensor.
“Later,” I tell her as the doors close behind us and I push her up against the wall. “I’ll make sure he knows later.”
And then I’m kissing her. Kissing her and kissing her and kissing her, like I’ve done in my dreams—in my nightmares—every night since she walked out of my office. And she’s letting me. More, she’s kissing me back like she’s missed me as much as I’ve missed her.
“Sebastian.” She moans my name and I take advantage of her open mouth to lick inside. I slide my tongue against hers, relishing the sweet, honey taste of her. Lick across her full lower lip. Suck her tongue deep into my own mouth. She tastes so good, feels so good, that I want to go on doing this forever. I want to spend the next hundred years kissing her, claiming her, making her mine if she’ll let me.
I want to make her feel as good as she makes me feel just by existing. Just by breathing.
I stroke a finger over her breast, around her nipple, then slide my hand underneath her skirt, relishing the satiny feel of her skin, the soft, lush curve of her ass.
“Wait,” she says, pushing me away just as my fingers slip into her panties.
“I’ve been waiting for four days. I’m done waiting, Aria.”
“I thought you were sorry for pushing me. You just said—”
“For pushing you too far, yes. I am sorry. But this isn’t about pushing you.” I find her clit with my thumb, begin to stroke. “This is about making you feel good.”
She moans, her head falling back against the elevator wall even as the doors glide open. “We need to get off the elevator.”
“Why? No one else has access to it.” I press kisses to her jaw, her throat, her sexy, sexy collarbone even as I slip a finger through her hot, slick folds. She’s already wet and I can’t begin to say what that fact does to me.
“But I need to tell you—” She breaks off on a moan and I lower my head to her breast. Bite her nipple softly through her shirt before sucking it into my mouth. At the same time, I rub her clit hard, while twisting my fingers deep inside of her. It only takes a second to find her G-spot, stroke it. Once, twice, and then she’s going over the edge, crying out my name as she comes and comes and comes.
It’s not enough. Not nearly enough. But it’s a start, and for now, I’ll take what I can get.
Chapter Four
Aria