“Please,” he said again, softer this time.
His eyes locked onto mine, burning with intensity. An intensity that simmered over as I stroked my hands lightly down my naked skin.
“This?” I asked innocently. “This is what you want?”
His teeth sank into his lip again. I was surprised they didn’t bite through.
“Yes...that’s what I want.”
My eyes glowed with triumph, but I kept it off my face. Instead, I held my hand to my ear with a frown, and he finally threw back his head with a burst of sparkling laughter.
“PLEASE—damnit! I said PLEASE!”
I nodded sagely.
“And let that be a lesson to you.”
Before he could reply, or more likely—strangle me with his bare hands—I grabbed him once more. Moving even faster this time. Sucking even harder.
...rewarding the please.
The two of us were already so riled up, it only took another minute for him to be ready.
“Abby,” he gasped, “get up here.”
Instead of doing as he wished, I moved even faster—feeling each one of the muscles in his stomach go simultaneously taut. His eyes snapped shut with a breathless moan.
“I’m serious—please. I want...I want to do this with you.”
It was perhaps the only thing he could have said to get me to stop.
The second I pulled away, he leapt on top of me—pinning me back down to the mat, as he hiked my legs up around his waist. If it wasn’t for the little grin twisting at the corners of my mouth, he would have had me right then and there.
“What is it?” he asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
I just shook my head with that same mischievous smile. “I have this terrible feeling that little lesson is going to come back to bite me.”
He chuckled darkly.
“Oh—I can assure you it will. Quite literally. In fact,” he lowered his lips to the curve of my shoulder, “I see no reason to wait. Let’s see if I can’t make you beg a little...”
I sucked in a breath. My skin flushed with anticipation.
Then a neon blue flash lit up the room.
What the fuck?!
I jerked back with a gasp, as his body automatically shifted to cover mine. The two of us whipped around, eyes wide with shock, but by that time—the door was already swinging shut. A clattering of quick footsteps echoed down the hall, before vanishing entirely into the night.
There was a split second of silence, then Nick bowed his head with a sigh.
“I’m sorry.” He glanced up cautiously, trying to gauge my expression, “that...that happens sometimes.”
It happened sometimes?! That’s all he had to say?!
His heartbeat had already returned to normal. I swear—I thought he might have actually kept going, if I hadn’t curled my knees into my chest in blind horror, wrapping my arms around my chest in a belated attempt to protect something already racing down the hall.
“Nick, we’ve...we’ve got to do something!” My voice rose in panic, shaking more and more with every word. “We can’t just let him publish those!”