Page 14 of Baiting His Bride

“Ready?” I choke out through gritted teeth.

Her lower lip is tucked between her teeth, and her eyes are dark with need. She nods and holds my gaze as I position myself at her warm, wet entrance.

“Aah,” she cries out, accepting every inch when I sink deep inside her.

The world—or my world, at least—tilts on its axis, my vision clouding at the edges. It takes every ounce of concentration to pull out then fill her again.

“Oh my God,” she murmurs. “Carson, yes…yes.”

Her enjoyment and the way her body clenches me from base to tip ripples down to my toes, and I can’t hold back any longer. I pound into her, the wall shaking from my strokes. Her head falls back as her thighs spread wide.

The thump of her head against the wall is my undoing. I squeeze my eyes shut and burrow my face into the hollow of her shoulder, my hips continuing to pound up into her because she’s close, and there’s not a single thing on God’s green earth I want more than Mallory’s orgasm.

“Come on, darling,” I urge, rocking hard and fast.

Her back arches, and her heaving breasts thrust against me. “I’m close, Carson.”

I pull back to watch, grinding into her. My joke from last night, with the shocker, and the flush that crept up her lovely cheeks when I flashed it and she knew exactly what it was, surfaces through the haze in my mind. I slide one hand down between the wall and her ass to find that hollow, moist from the juices flowing from her body, and press against it.

Her hips writhe and quake. Barely a second later, a tremble rolls through her as every muscle in her body clenches. And not a minute too soon. The sight of this beauty coming undone shoots straight through me like never before, and I follow, relieved I was able to hold on long enough to please her first.

I press a kiss to her lips as her eyelids flutter open, her pupils adjusting to the dim light. I’m still inside her, still pinning her against the wall, the air filled with the mixed scent of us. Her body sags, and she shoots me a wry smile.

“I fell for it, didn’t I?” She sounds defeated.

My brows knot. “For what?”

“The Carson Bennett trifecta.”

The way she utters the words twists my gut.

“What, pray tell, is that?” I ask through clenched teeth.

“Sweet talking mixed with a panty-melting smile and a dose of sparkling, crystal-blue eyes for good measure,” she says, with a lift of her shoulders. “I’m just like all the others.”

Fury, like I’ve never experienced, jabs my heart like the red-hot tip of a poker.

“You,” I implore, staring deep into her eyes to convince her of the truth, “are nothing like any other.”

Mallory

“Mallory, thoughts?”

I drag my gaze away from the golden glow of the late-afternoon sun dancing on the waves of Lake Michigan, visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows of my boss’s corner office. The shimmering sight still regularly surfaces memories of Kelsie and Sawyer’s wedding four months ago, despite my resolve to move on.

“I’m sorry,” I say, hauling my attention back to the meeting. “What was the question?”

Luke, my boss, and Cooper, the director of business development and the third in our close trio, exchange a look. I bristle and straighten in my chair, recrossing my legs.

“Distracted by your hot date this weekend?” Cooper twirls his pen between his fingers. “Where’d he take you? Anywhere good?”

My lips press together, but there’s no use being anything less than honest with these two. “I canceled.”

Another look. Damn. Ever since Luke, the stone-cold billionaire, and Cooper, the resident playboy, each found love, they seem hellbent on helping me find it, too. Problem is, I think I did.

The conviction in Carson’s tone that night in the boathouse, after we’d finished, and he was still inside me, holding me close, is burned in my memory. After my assertion that I’m like other women he’s slept with, his vehement dismissal floated on the moist lake air and hung suspended between us as we made our way back to the reception.

And since then, the declaration has lingered, living rent-free in my mind, though it changes nothing. Especially because of his parting words at brunch the next morning. When he pressed a kiss to my hair and said, see you on the other side of the microphone.

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