Page 85 of Dirty Rival

“Like that answer,” I say. “Indecisive.”

Tension flexes a path through his body beneath my touch and he releases me, pressing his fists to the wall on either side of me. “I fucked Elijah’s wife.”

I gasp at the unexpected answer. “What?”

“She wasn’t wearing a ring and I didn’t know who she was, but Elijah and I were rivals on a deal at the time, and I damn sure didn’t apologize.” He pushes off the wall and starts walking away, but when he would disappear into whatever the next room is, he half turns and adds, “I told him that if he knew how to satisfy his wife, she wouldn’t have come to me. I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, Carrie, and I’m not sorry for most of them.” And with that, he turns and leaves me standing in that hallway.

I inhale and try to process what just happened. He didn’t know but he wasn’t sorry. He isn’t sorry. I repeat those words in my head about three times and my emotions land on anger. I charge after him, reaching the edge of a wide living room with cream-colored furnishings, Reid’s jacket and tie lying on the couch that faces a wall of curtains, of which one flaps in the wind, indicating an open door. I kick off my heels and follow him, exiting to a wooden porch overseeing the inky-black ocean waves crashing in the distance. Reid stands with his back to me, his hands on a wide wooden railing, the muscles of his broad shoulders bunched beneath his shirt.

I close the space between us and I dip beneath his arm and step between him and the railing. “You aren’t sorry?” I challenge.

“No,” he says. “I’m not sorry.”

“You say I’m going to hate you.”

“You will,” he says. “Maybe it’s already starting.”

“Maybe you’re trying to push me there. Maybe that avoids the relationship side of this. Maybe you want to make it happen. Is that it? You want me to get on to the hate so you can just fuck me? So you can backtrack all the rest of the talk and—”

His fingers tangle in my hair. “I don’t want you to hate me,” he bites out. “I dread the day you hate me, woman, but I can’t change who I am or what I’ve done. It’s already done.”

“I’m not asking you to change who you are.”

“Because you don’t know who I am, and I keep telling myself to walk away before you do.”

“Then I’m right,” I say. “You just want to push me to hate. You want a reason to walk back—”

“I don’t want to walk back anything,” he says, his fingers tightening in my hair, “and this isn’t just fucking.” His mouth closes down on mine, his tongue licking into my mouth, devouring me, consuming me. “How do I taste now?”

“Angry.”

“I am angry,” he says. “And I’m not hiding from that.”

“Why are you angry?”

“Because the hate will come and I can’t stop it. Because no part of me is not right here with you, Carrie. What about you?”

“I’m here,” I whisper, but I don’t say more. I can’t. He’s already kissing me again, as if he’s testing that claim of “I’m here” on my tongue, on his lips, turning me to press me against the wooden railing, his hand sliding around my hip to cup my backside. “You’re never all here with me,” he says. “You always hold back and that’s not good enough anymore. If this has to end, you’re mine until it does. You’re mine now.”

I don’t push back against that claim of ownership. I welcome it in a way I didn’t believe I was capable of welcoming such words. His mouth closes down on mine, the taste of him demanding and possessive, but there is also regret and the certainty of “the end” that I don’t want to exist. I want to drive that piece of his emotions away. I need to drive it away and I’m not sure I have ever been as aroused in my life. “This time is hard and fast, baby,” Reid says, his lips finding my ear, his hand caressing my breast over my silk blouse. “I need to be inside you.”

“Yes,” I whisper, and already he’s turning me to face the pole, forcing me to catch my weight with my hands, and already he’s unzipping my skirt and dragging it down my hips, right along with my panties, not ripping them away this time. I don’t even care that I’m outside, on a beachfront, naked from the waist down but for my thigh highs. I just want Reid and when his arm wraps my waist and he lifts me, kicking away the material, I turn easily in his arms, eager to feel him next to me. Eager for his mouth on mine again. Hungry for more, so much more, and I’m not sure it will ever be enough.

Nothing is ever enough with this man and yet I fear the day that it’s too much, and that has me tugging at his shirt, trying to drive away anything but the here and now.

Chapter forty-one

Carrie

Iwant Reid inside me and that’s exactly where this is headed, hard and fast fucking, but some part of me pushes back, not on being owned by this man, but at the idea that I don’t own him. That’s the control issue. That’s what I’ve been trying to avoid with Reid, but it’s not about power. It’s about him letting me in, him letting down that stone wall, and while sex isn’t the way either of us owns each other, it feels like a good starting place. It was our starting place.

All is grand in the “I need control” scheme of things, but this is Reid Maxwell, and he wants to go hard and fast, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. His shirt is gone, and I’m pretty sure in between kissing him and touching him, I had something to do with that. His hands are all over me and my blouse and bra are short-lived, gone in a few quick movements. I’m now naked on a porch, on what I hope is a private beach, but considering I’m shoved against a pole, his powerful legs framing mine, his hands on my breasts, it’s hard to care. His fingers tug roughly at my nipples and I moan with the pain and pleasure of it, his cheek finding my cheek as he whispers, “I’m going to fuck you right here and now on this porch.”

Yes, please, I think, and my fingers flex on the hard muscle of his shoulders, and his mouth is on mine while he unzips his pants and my sex clenches with how soon he will be inside me, but that need to go deeper with Reid, to make him let go, stays with me. I reach down and help him with his pants, my hand wrapping his shaft and freeing him, but his hand covers mine, while the fingers of his other hand slide between my thighs and stroke the line of my sex, pressing inside me.

I pant and his mouth lowers to mine once more. “God, I love the sounds you make,” he murmurs before kissing, and it’s all I can do not to melt right here and surrender to whatever he wants. I press my hands under his waistband and tear my mouth from his. “Why are you still dressed?”

He reaches for his pants and that’s when I try to go down on my knees, but Reid catches my arms. “What are you doing?”

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