“At this point, I don’t actually give a shit what you want.” She’s impossible, absolutely fucking impossible, and for a second I’m torn between the desire to toss her over my knee and the desire to fuck her up against the closest wall. The only thing that keeps me where I am is the knowledge that doing either right now would ruin what I’m trying so hard to build.
But that doesn’t mean I’m about to roll over for her. Not even close.
I move nearer to her, crowd her up against the wall I’m even now thinking about fucking her against, then bend down enough that I can get in her face. “You need shoes, Tori. You need toiletries and underwear and something to wear on
a job interview besides yoga pants. That’s what I got you.”
“You think I don’t know that? Believe me, I know what I need better than you.”
“Do you? Really? Because it sure as hell seems to me that you’re too irrational to know what you need right now, sweetheart. And until you can figure it out—”
“Until I can figure it out, you’re going to do it for me.”
“Damn straight. You’re in a shitty position and you need someone to take care of you—”
“Because I can’t take care of myself.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. And that’s not fair.” Her hands come up to my chest and she shoves at me. I don’t budge.
“Who said anything about fair? Nothing about this situation is fair, Tori. If it was, that dipshit wouldn’t have leaked a sex tape he made without your knowledge. The press wouldn’t be vilifying you like you’re some kind of man-eater. And your father sure as shit wouldn’t have kicked you out and left you to fend for yourself in the middle of a pack of crazed paparazzi. But that’s exactly what’s going on and it’s not fair. I’m just trying to…”
“To what?” I’m a foot taller than her and somehow she still manages to look down her nose at me. “You think you’re going to save me?”
“I’m going to help you, whether you like it or not.”
“For the record, I don’t like it.”
“For the record, that’s just too goddamn bad.”
She gives a strangled little scream. “You’re a real bastard, you know that?”
“For trying to help you?” I demand, on the verge of tearing my fucking hair out. “I’m a bastard for trying to help you?”
“No! You’re a bastard for thinking I can’t help myself. And for trying to buy what I would have given you for free.”
“Goddamnit!” I roar, finally pushed past my breaking point. “Are we seriously back to that again!”
“We never left it.”
“Well we have now,” I tell her, grabbing her arm and pulling her toward me, hard.
Her body slams into mine and—despite the argument, or maybe because of it—heat blasts through me. She feels good, really good, and for a second all I can think about is fucking her again.
I slide a hand around her waist to her lower back, press her even more firmly against me. She doesn’t fight me, doesn’t try to get away even as I move my hand lower to cup her ass. To lift her up to her toes so that all I have to do is bend my knees a little so that her sweet pussy is lined up with my suddenly hard cock.
Tori still doesn’t object, so I start to lower my mouth to hers. She lets me and I figure this must be the way to deal with her when she gets irrational, to sex her out of her bad mood. It works for me, and judging from the sound she makes low in her throat, it works for her, too.
Thank God.
I ease her backward, closing the distance between her back and the wall as my fantasy from earlier plays out in my head. I want to lift her up, want to wrap her legs around me and fuck her right here with the roar of the ocean coming in the open patio doors.
But first…I move to take her mouth in a real kiss, in one that involves teeth and tongues and the dark recesses of her mouth. I’m so caught up in the feel of her, the heat of her, that I don’t register the fact that she isn’t kissing me back—at least not until she pulls her arm back and punches me in the stomach hard enough to knock the breath straight out of me.
Chapter 17
Tori