Page 69 of The Liar

“What do you want?” he asked quietly.

“For you to take control the way you used to.” I couldn’t imagine anything better. I had a submissive streak in bed. I wasn’t a submissive in terms of enjoying a BDSM lifestyle, but I’d spent so much of my working life fighting for respect that it was nice to be able to stop taking charge and let someone else call the shots for a while.

West’s lips curved wickedly. “Then that’s what you’ll get, sweetheart. How far do you want this to go?”

I huffed in frustration, ready for the conversation to be over. “I want you naked and inside me.”

His eyes shone with pleasure, and for a moment, he was the charming bartender I’d met in that train station in Canada, but then any trace of lighthearted emotion vanished, and he became the commanding lover who’d always driven me out of my mind.

The man, I suppose, he truly was.

Dangerous. Thrilling. Competent in the sexiest possible way.

“Wait here for a full minute, then come to the bedroom. Our bedroom.” His strong hand wrapped aroundone side of my throat. “What do you say if you need to stop?”

“Red.”

“And if you want to pause?”

“Orange.”

“Good, baby.” His voice was a low purr that hummed through my core. “What are you right now?”

“Green.”

“Perfect.” He released me and stalked toward the bedroom. My gaze traveled down his powerful frame, noting the bulge of his erection struggling to break free of his jeans.

Fuck, he was sexy.

And once again, he was mine.

I counted to sixty in my head, then followed him to the bedroom. I gasped, my mouth falling open, and my brain almost short-circuited. The room was dark, except for a glow cast by a lamp on the nightstand. It cast shadows over the gorgeous planes of West’s naked form.

He lay in the center of the bed, propped up against the pillows, his legs stretched out and his hard cock resting on the corrugated muscles of his abdomen. My gaze traced the contours of his body, the bulges of his muscles emphasized by the play of dark and light.

“Strip,” he rasped. “Make it slow. I want to be teased. It’s been too long since I saw you.”

My breath caught. He wanted me to put on a strip show for him?

Heat blossomed at the apex of my thighs. Perhaps I should have been put off by the demand, but I couldn’t think of anything sexier than showing West everything he’d been missing out on. Maybe then he’d know better than to betray me again.

I unbuttoned my shirt, allowing the two sides to fallopen to reveal my breasts and stomach. West’s hands fisted and he slowly opened them and propped them behind his head. I shrugged the shirt off. It landed on the floor with a rustle. West’s strong thighs strained, as if it was a struggle for him to remain where he was.

I turned away from him so he could only see my back as I undid the clasp of my bra and allowed it to fall. It was plain black, nothing fancy, but the silken glide of the cups over my skin as they dropped made it feel sexy. I covered my breasts with my hands and turned back to West.

He groaned. “I said tease, not torture.”

I smirked at the gravelly roughness of his voice. Yeah, he knew he’d messed up. He was lucky I was allowing him to touch me again.

I released my breasts, relishing the hitch in his breathing as I bared them to him. I bent, angling myself so he could see both my ass and my chest as I pulled my socks off one by one. Not an inherently sexy act, but the way his emerald eyes watched my every movement told me he found it enticing anyway.

I undid the button at the top of my pants and wriggled my hips back and forth as I slid them down.

“That’s it,” he murmured. “Good girl. Naked except for your panties. Take them off too. I want to see all of you.”

I plucked the fabric at the edges of my panties, acting like I was about to remove them before pausing.

“Now,” he growled.

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