Page 57 of The Billionaire's Beauty

“That works for me,” I say, my overheated body making me impatient. “Anything else?”

“I’m good at protecting you. No one better fuck with you now that we’re together. I promise you that. I’m good at providing for you. I’ll give you my credit card. You can have whatever you want—”

“I don’t want or need your money.” My God, why won’t he listen? “I just told you that.”

“But you’re getting it! That’s the point!” He seems to realize he’s shouting and takes a deep breath. “That’s one of the few things I can do. I can give you the world. Let me do it. And you’d better believe that all that—everything I just said—adds up to me being your man or your boyfriend or your boo. Whatever label you want to put on it. But I’d better not hear you acting like I’m no big deal to you with your father. Because that’s going to piss me off.”

“Great,” I say, marveling at his ability to bark out the most romantic things and make them sound like an NFL coach roaring strategies to his players on the field during overtime at the Super Bowl. “Anything else you want me to know? While you’re barking out directives?”

“Yeah. Don’t expect me to vomit up all my pain and all my feelings and all my hopes and dreams about the future. I’m not that guy. You’d be wasting your time. There’s nothing else to me other than what I just told you. The sooner you get that through your stubborn skull, the happier we’ll both be.”

“You’re so full of shit,” I say before I can stop myself. Insensitive? Maybe. He clearly believes what he’s saying. That doesn’t mean I have to.

He cocks his head then goes completely still. “What?”

“Bullshit.”A funny thing happens when I meet all that anger head-on and stare straight into those flashing eyes. I catch an unexpected glimpse of the vulnerability underneath. The thing he’s trying so desperately to hide. “I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t believe me? I just told you exactly what kind of guy I am, and you don’t believe me?” His tone suggests he’s caught me washing my hair with bleach. “Based on what?”

It’s a valid question. If a friend of mine were in this exact situation and came to me for advice, I’d drive her to the nearest priest so she could exorcise that man and that demon, Temptation, from her life as soon as possible. But all the normal dating rules don’t feel like they apply to me and Griffin, for reasons that remain elusive now. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not trying to change him into someone else. I’m just trying to break through to the man he really is. Maybe that’s a distinction without a difference. Maybe I’m doomed to failure either way.

But it doesn’t feel like it. It really doesn’t feel like it.

“I don’t know,” I say. “A gut feeling. Women’s intuition. Maybe some undiagnosed head injury. I have no idea. But I think there’s more here. And I’m not giving up on you.”

His expression goes through a constellation of emotions. It might be a symptom of my creeping insanity, but I’d swear I detect as much hope and relief as anger and frustration. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe they all cancel each other out, leaving me exactly where I started from with this maddening man.

But I don’t think so.

“That’s on you, then.” His face is hard now, his features set in marble. “Because I warned you. And we’ve done enough talking.”

Finally. Something we can easily agree on. Especially when he gives my cute little sundress the same treatment he gave his shirt, ripping the two halves apart and exposing my strapless bra in all its lacy glory. Not to mention my bare bottom half.

I laugh. I can’t help it. I know it’s twisted to take such delight in his shaking hands, dark intent and raw urgency, but I do. I revel in the way he impatiently undoes my bra’s front clasp and tosses it aside so he can savor my breasts with a rumble of masculine appreciation. I rejoice at the feeling of his rough caress across my nipples.

There’s no way I can hide any of it. I don’t even want to.

So I don’t try to hold back the way his name pours out of my mouth with exquisite anguish. I give him everything, leaning back on my hands to arch my back and offer up any part of me that he cares to nuzzle, lick, kiss, rub or bite. Thorough as ever, he hits it all, starting with a bang as he scrapes his teeth across the sensitive tendons where neck meets shoulder and working his way down. He cups my breasts, squeezing, massaging and generally manhandling them. Normally, a bit of finesse goes much farther for me, but not this time. The direct connection between his frenzy and the spiraling pleasure pooling between my legs makes me happy with anything and everything he does. Especially when he grips my hips, rubs his face over my belly and drops to his knees in front of me, settling my thighs on his shoulders.

I don’t know what makes him pause at that electric moment—as though I’d squawk with modesty and tell him I’m not that type of girl—but he stares up the length of my body, the flash of his blue eyes startling against my pale skin and pointy pink nipples.

“Go ahead,” I say with a laugh that has more than a tinge of wild euphoria to it. “You won’t be happy until you take it all, anyway. And I won’t be happy until I give it to you.”

“Damn straight,” he says, and there’s no missing his glimmer of grim satisfaction before he lowers his head.

So there I am, squirming and splayed on the counter with my dress ripped half off, knocking over toiletries and moaning my fool head off while he eats me out. He effortlessly finds that single most delicious spot, zeroing in on my clit as though it contains a homing beacon just for him. Which would explain why others have tried and failed to find this spot and resisted my increasingly frustrated efforts to guide them there. He savors my pussy with lush and lapping strokes, finding a rhythm that leads to one inevitable result:

My high-pitched cry of astonished relief as my orgasm escapes from my body on an endless surge of pleasure, like the eruption of some sensual volcano.

Enough heat lingers in my cheeks to mark my sudden embarrassment as he rises to his feet and nuzzles his way back up my torso. I don’t know what I’m going to say after that. But he does all the talking, whispering to me between fevered kisses that now taste like fresh oysters.

“I can’t get enough of you,” he says. “I want you more every time I hear that sound.”

“I don’t know what it is about you.” I can’t hold back a shaky laugh. “You’ve got me making sounds I’ve never made before.”

“I know what it is,” he says, gripping my waist and helping me stand on my wobbly legs before turning me around.

Now we both face the mirror, my back to his front with the two halves of my dress forming curtains for my otherwise naked body, and the sight of all this raw abandon is erotic, of course, but also startling and surprisingly stirring. We both have high color, tousled hair and swollen lips. No surprises there. But there’s something about the way his big body encases my smaller one that really gets to me. Something about the tender yet possessive way his roving hands stroke over my engorged breasts, letting my nipples poke through his splayed fingers. Something about the sweep of those same fingers across the ruddy pink skin between my pale thighs.

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