Page 64 of Diamond In The Rough

“You?” I detest that my voice breaks. That it gives me away and makes me look foolish. “You’re so sure it’s you I want to be with?”

Smug, so fucking smug, his lips curl into a devious smirk. “You definitely want to be with me.”

“Arrogant.”

He tilts closer and feathers his lips over mine. Just a small taste. A tease. “Confident. If you didn’t want me around, you’d have already tossed me on my ass. The fact you haven’t says you want me.”

“I don’t.”

So why the hell does my breath come faster? Why does my heart strum? Why, for the love of god, do my hands hook around his hips?

“You’re not a good man, Micah. The things you do, and the people you know…” I gulp, a lump of nerves and pain and anxiety rolling along my throat. But I shake my head. Subtly. Barely convincing. “You’re not the kind of guy I should spend my time with.”

“And yet,” he captures my bottom lip between his teeth and bites just hard enough to make me whimper. “Here you are. Clinging to me.” He searches my eyes and waits for me to focus.

He’s a patient man. Gentle, despite my previous interactions with his brutish self.

“People lie, Tiia.”

“They lie?”

“Mm.” He replaces his teeth with his tongue. A gentle caress. An intoxicating seduction. “You say you don’t want me, because that’s what your ego wants you to say. It’s what’s expected of you. It’s the right thing to do. But the truth is in your actions. In your hands, holding me close.”

I open my palms and release his hips.

“Your heart pounding against mine.”

I stop breathing. Cut off my air and deprive my lungs of what they need.

Yet, my heart perseveres and speeds.

“Your pussy is on fire.” He brings his hand up, sliding his fingertips over the column of my neck and around to touch the front of my throat.

It’s a threat, and yet, not.

He still fists Roscoe’s bottle in his left hand, but it goes forgotten as his hardened cock crushes my belly and leaves me panting. “You’re wet for me, Tiia Hale. And you think society wants you to reject me.”

“S-society?”

“Mm.” He walks his hand higher, higher, so when I expect him to cup my cheek—or pinch my chin, or stroke my lips, or something—I choke out a gasp when, instead, he slides his thumb past my lips and rests the pad of it on my tongue.

Instantly, shamefully, I close my mouth around his digit and, against my better judgment, I suckle.

“Yeah,” he groans. “There’s what you think you should do, and then there’s what your body wants.”

Stop it, Tiia! Push him off and walk away.

“The two are not the same.” He slides his thumb across the flat of my tongue, grinning when I don’t pull away. Or bite him. Or run away screaming.

I merely salivate for him.

“Your body was made for mine.” He hunches slightly and releases the wine until the bottle falls to the floor. And though my entire body tightens, waiting for the smash, all it does is bounce and land to the side.

No shattered glass.

No mess.

“Pressure points.” He answers a question I’m not sure I would have asked even if my tongue and lips were free. “The bottle’s base is strong, Tiia. The glass is thicker there, so it can take a little more and remain unbroken.” Now that he has two hands to use, he presses me to the door, forcing what little oxygen I had from my lungs, and smirking when my saliva pools around his thumb and spills over my lips.

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