Follow Me Darkly (Follow Me 1)

Probably he just wants a fuck, and I’m the lucky squeeze du jour.

He’s still staring at my mouth. I grab my napkin and wipe away whatever piece of offending food he may be gawking at, and then I gather all my courage. Two can play this game. Braden Black wants me in his bed? I’ll show him who has control.

“Let’s go,” I say.

He eyes my plate. “You didn’t finish your dinner.”

“I’m suddenly not hungry. You want to fuck me? Let’s go fuck.”

His eyelids lower slightly. “Works for me.” He motions to Cory. “We’re ready for the check.”

…

Braden’s lush downtown penthouse is decorated all in black and forest green. A black lacquer grand piano sits in one corner. A pretty black, brown, and white dog scurries out from under the piano, running to greet him. She’s even more gorgeous than in the photo he showed me.

“Hey, Sasha.” He pets her head.

“She’s beautiful.” I kneel down to scratch her behind the ears. “Hi there, Sasha. You’re so pretty.”

Sasha licks my face for a few seconds but then grows bored with me and heads somewhere else in the penthouse.

I nod toward the piano. “Do you play?”

“No.”

“Then why do you have a piano?”

“I hire a pianist for my parties,” he says. “Guests love it. Do you play?”

I shake my head. “We didn’t have a piano. My dad plays the guitar, though.”

He leads me to the piano, where a guitar also sits. “I do, too. Just dabble really. But I love playing classical guitar and then of course some folk songs. All acoustic stuff.”

I’d ask him to play something if I weren’t shaking from the top of my head all the way down to my toes. Rather, keeping myself from shaking.

I’m standing in Braden Black’s home.

Yeah, I came to a virtual stranger’s home—a home with so much security, no one could find me here. A home where he can do anything he wants to me, and I have no way to stop him.

Anything he wants.

So much for me staying in control.

The thought makes me shudder, and again a jolt arrows between my legs.

Yeah, he has security, but he hasn’t done anything to make me feel unsafe so far tonight. I can always leave. I don’t have to do this.

Except I want to do this more than I want my next breath.

I want to go to Braden Black’s bed.

I want him to fuck me until I can’t walk.

As if reading my mind, he closes the distance between us and gazes down at me, zeroing in on my mouth again. He trails a finger over my upper lip and then my lower. “I’ve wanted to kiss those full pink lips since I saw you at Addie’s office. You have the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen.”

I have a sexy mouth? Before I can contemplate further, he crushes his mouth to mine.

My lips are already parted, and he thrusts his tongue between them.

This isn’t a normal first kiss.

No. This is a kiss of untamed desire, a kiss of two people who want each other desperately.

A kiss that drugs me, takes away my will.

A tiny groan, more a vibration than a sound, echoes from his throat and into me, fueling my desire. My hands, seemingly of their own accord, drift up his arms to his neck and I entwine my fingers in his dark-brown hair. He wears it long for a businessman, and it feels like silk against my fingers.

He growls into my mouth and roughly tugs on my ponytail, his tongue still tangling with mine. We kiss and we kiss and we kiss, until—

“Bedroom,” he gasps, breaking the kiss. “God, I want to fuck you so bad. I need to get inside that tight little body of yours.”

Tight little body? That’s Addison, not me, but I don’t care at the moment. He wants me, and I want him. I’ve lost capacity for rational thought. I don’t care that I know next to nothing about him except what everyone else knows. At the moment, I don’t care if he’s a serial killer.

All I know is I want him. I yearn for him more than I’ve ever yearned for anything.

I’m out of control. Completely.

And that’s why I know I can’t do this, no matter how much my body is aching for his touch.

Not now. Not until I’m myself again.

Skye Manning doesn’t lose control. Not ever.

What will I say to him? What will he say to me? He’ll probably call me a cocktease, and he’ll be right.

I’m playing Push Me Pull You with myself, my body going one way, my mind going another.

He takes my hand and yanks me down a hallway toward a closed door at the end.

His bedroom.

Braden Black’s bedroom.

If I go in, it’ll be all over. I’ll go to bed with him. I’ll give up the discipline I so desperately covet in my life.