Page 77 of Disguised as Love

Cruz banged around at the stove and then returned with two steaming cups. He set one down on the bedside table next to me and then pulled off his shoes and joined me under the covers. He’d propped himself up against the headboard, and he drew my body close until my head was in his lap. He rubbed my back in slow circles while he sipped from the cup.

“We’ll find them, little one,” he said, and I could hear the promise in his tone, but I doubted it was a promise he could keep.

He set the cup on the side table and slipped down under the covers until we were face-to-face. He twined a hand around my waist, skating it under the thermal so that the warmth of his palm hit my skin. It was like feeling a shock of electricity travel through me, shaking at the nerve endings that had become frozen, trying to wake them.

He put his other hand at the back of my head and pressed our lips together.

A second shock sailed through my body.

When I still didn’t react, he bit down on my bottom lip, and it was more than a playful nip. The pain hammered at the ice in my veins, melting it with an intoxicating heat.

“What…what are you doing?” my voice broke out, shaking as much as my limbs had been when we’d first entered the room.

“Breaking you out of your trance,” he said. There was no guttural growl of lust to his voice. This was all determined purpose. Like when he’d shown up in Stanford and told me I was going with him to Russia. That he was going to pretend to be my boyfriend.

I hated it.

I didn’t want his hands and mouth to touch me as a means to an end. I didn’t want to be a job that he was executing with typical Cruz-like focus. And as my brain clicked out of its petrified state, another harsh reality hit me. I didn’t want to die without knowing the pleasure this man could bring to my limbs. I wanted the heat that all but drowned us every time we touched to seep through every vein. I wanted him to take me over the mountain and into the heavens so I would have one more beautiful memory before I died. So I would know what it felt like to be lost in the man you could have loved.

I wanted to have power and control for a few hours before it was taken completely and irrevocably away from me by the men my father had once called friends.

So, I returned his kiss, sliding my tongue along the seam of his mouth, and when he didn’t open up for me, I bit his lip as he’d bitten mine, refusing to give up just as he’d refused to back away. I was suddenly ravenous. Hungry for nothing related to food at all, seeking relief from the tension that had built between us for days. Seeking escape and forgetfulness. I moved my hands and yanked at the salmon shirt layered with golden threads, and the buttons went flying.

A single giant hand grabbed both my wrists before I could place my palms on his silky skin.

“Little one.” It was a warning, but it was tortured, as if he didn’t want to stop me.

“You started this,” I growled.

“You know that wasn’t what I was doing,” he grunted out as I struggled against his grip on my wrists.

His eyes flashed with a heat and intensity I met with my own. I slammed my lips into his again, and his surprise allowed me to plunge my tongue inside. Tasting him. Licking and savoring and teasing. Taunting him. Daring him not to respond.

Before I could react, he flipped me on my back, locked my wrists he’d captured singlehandedly above my head, and trapped my legs beneath his heavy thighs. His groin pressed against my stomach as he lifted himself off of me with a muscled hand shoved into the mattress.

He was breathing heavily as if fighting for control. The desire he felt for me was evident, pressing into the sweats he’d dressed me in, heating my core, making me ache to feel everything. Not just the physical but every emotion he’d wrung from me in the last few days. To feel seen…wanted…loved.

“Knock it off,” he ordered.

“You’re too used to everyone doing exactly as you demand, Cruz Malone. You don’t get to command me like you do the people who work for you. I need this. I want this. Make me forget, for an hour, everything that happened today and everything that is waiting for me tomorrow.”

His eyes narrowed. “An hour? It’s funny you think it would only be an hour. It would take me days to finish with you. Days we don’t have.”

I bucked my hips, arching into him farther, pressing every inch of me that he wasn’t controlling against his body.

“We’ll have to make do,” I said, my voice breathy and sexy without even trying.

He groaned, sinking his forehead into my shoulder, face pressed into the curve of my neck. But he kept the rest of him as far away from me as much as he could.

“This is the exact opposite of kicking me in the shins.” His voice was muffled, and then I felt the flick of his tongue along my neck, and his teeth found my earlobe, sinking into it. The warmth of his breath caused goosebumps to burst out along my skin.

A moan escaped me. My body was lit from head to toe, need coursing through me?desire I’d never felt at the hands of another man. It grew until it felt as if I’d combust if I didn’t find the release I sought.

“Goddamn,” he hissed as I pressed into him more.

And then the full weight of him landed on me just as his mouth and hands found their way to my skin. He yanked up the shirt he’d just barely covered me with, fingers sliding upward to the strapless bra I’d worn under the black dress. He released the hooks and found my breast, one enormous palm surrounding me easily, tugging at a nipple and causing me to moan again.

Finally free of his grasp, my hands found the smooth skin I’d revealed, pushing the shirt farther off his shoulders, mouth finding the tight muscles, licking and discovering that he tasted exactly like he smelled?like cloves dancing along a seashore.

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