Page 9 of Dirty Rich Cinderella Story

“I am,” he assures me. “But that’s my job. You are not my job. You’re—”

“A one-night stand,” I say, before I can stop myself, before I let him say something more that makes me forget that this is my Cinderella story, and Cinderella has a night. Just a night. My Prince is later, if ever. My glass slipper is my mom living, not dying.

“You’re Lori,” he says, brushing his lips over mine, and with that, he’s torn down that protective wall I’ve just placed between me and him. He’s made sure he knows who I am rather than allow it to be about what I am. It shakes me, and arouses me, and when I might turn and leave, because it shakes me all over again, he kisses me once more. God, how he kisses me, a deep, drugging, curl my toes kiss that leaves me breathless when his lips part mine and he releases me to shrug out of his jacket.

I am all about touching Cole, ready for my fingers, and my tongue, to explore this man, every which way, but I have learned from my past, from another powerful man. A man that was a mistake, but I learn from my mistakes. I know when to push, pull, and hold back in ways I once did not, and so, for now, I wait on Cole. For now, I just enjoy watching him, observing him, admiring the flex of his muscles beneath his fitted white shirt as he neatly folds his jacket and sets it on the arm of the chair. It’s the message I was waiting on, the read on him, that I understand easily: He’s all about control and no matter how much I have declared it to be mine, this man is intense. He’s powerful. He’s demanding. The kind of man who will demand, take, push my limits. The kind I would run from, if he had my name, because somewhere down the road, he could be trouble. But I’m in control no matter what happens tonight, because there is no tomorrow.

Which is exactly why when he reaches for his tie, as much as I want to help him take it off, to press my hand to his chest, I do not. That would tell him how wet I am right now with anticipation, and I am. How hard and tight my nipples are pressed against the bra that I know will soon be gone, replaced by his hands. Because I’m not giving him that knowledge. I’m not giving him control.

He folds the tie, just like he did the jacket and once he’s neatly set it on the arm rest, he straightens and fixes me in a blue-eyed stare that says, “Take off your jacket.”

My sex clenches with that silent command because despite my designed control tonight, some part of me is ridiculously aroused by the idea of his control. Some part of me also knows that the more I challenge him, the more he will demand. I realize then that there is more to this night than me simply wanting an escape. There is me craving the battle of wills with a man like this one, the adrenaline rush of battling an equal, and winning, or at least, not falling. For the first time in what feels like forever, Cole is giving me that rush and I had no idea how much I needed it.

And so, I push back. I don’t take off my jacket. I kick off my shoes instead, my toes curling in the soft pile carpet beneath the table. In an instant, I’ve won. I make him come to me. In one stride, he’s in front of me, but he doesn’t touch me, which is his power play. He stands there, a sway together from touching, and I have no doubt that he knows he’s suffocating me with the anticipation of that touch, the spicy, masculine, perfect scent of him, assaulting my senses.

Our eyes meet, a collision of heat and a battle of wills, a challenge between us that I cannot even fully define, but it’s there, a crackle of electricity with a life of its own. It lives, it breathes, it drives this night, or at the very least, the here and now. Seconds tick by in which my hands want to reach for him, in which my nipples pebble and ache, heat pooling low in my belly. I’m back to moments before. I’m back to the list of wants.

I want his hands on my body.

I want my hands on his body.

I want to lick him—everywhere.

I want him to lick me—everywhere.

I want and I want and I want and I haven’t allowed myself to want in so long. Not anything at all.

The idea that I’m here, with him, because I want him, because I choose to be here, feels powerful. But the idea that despite all my drive to stay focused on my mission to secure my future and that of my mother’s, I’m still here, that he has that much control over me makes him powerful. I love and hate this about him to the point that despite all the high and rush of the challenge I’ve professed, I am most likely a little fucked up, but he doesn’t give me time to let that idea mess with my head.

His hands shackle my waist and he drags me to him. “Are we really doing this? The whole push and pull?”

“I’m enjoying it,” I say, my palms flattening on the hard wall of his chest, the heat of his skin hot beneath my touch, seeping through his expensive white shirt, and radiating up my arm, and across my chest. “Aren’t you?”

“I am,” he says, sliding his hand to my hair, yanking away the clasp there, and the instant my hair is free, he tangles rough fingers in the long strands. “And with good reason. I have a plan for you, Lori whoever-you-are. Since I don’t get a promise of a last name and a phone number,” he says, dragging my mouth to his. “I get everything else.”

“Everything?” I ask, my belly clenching with all the possibilities that word holds.

“All of you,” he says.

“Define all of me.”

“For this one night,” he says, leaning in, his lips near my ear, the rasp of his light stubble scraping erotically along the delicate skin of my cheek. “I own you.”

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