Page 31 of How to Bang a Billionaire

He turned abruptly. Nothing between us now, between me and his beauty, his pale gray-blue eyes startling vivid against the dark profusion of his lashes. And oh those lashes, so unexpectedly opulent, the only touch of softness in his face. I thought of him stretched out beneath me, or beside me, lax with satisfaction, my fingertips finding all his secrets. It was, honestly, a little hard to picture. He wasn’t a man for quiescence. It was something I had uncomplicatedly liked about him. But, all the same, maybe lust-tamed he would let me.

“I don’t regret you. I…I…” His voice had gone hoarse, the words ragged, as if they’d had to tear themselves out of his throat. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“Seriously?” I hadn’t meant to come across quite that pathetic or uncertain, but it was the last thing I’d ever have expected him to say.

Caspian Hart couldn’t stop thinking about me? Me?

He must have meant it, though, because as I stood there staring at him blankly, he caught me by the lapels of my jacket and pulled me round so my back hit the window. My heart jumped and I couldn’t have told you whether it was excitement or fear. The glass was cold and solid behind me, but it seemed unreal just then, as though nothing held me but him.

“Oh God.” A low groan, frayed and frantic. He’d sounded like that with his cock in my mouth. “I can’t…I shouldn’t…oh God.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”

You can. You should.

I reached out to draw him closer but he seized my wrists and pinned them over my head, stretching me out, making me helpless. His knee nudged my legs apart, slid up one thigh, brushed the groove of my groin as he leaned into me. He smelled far too good. Clean, expensive, undeniably aroused: skin and sex and that amazing cologne of his. Sweet and dark, just like him. And, oh, the way he touched me, restrained me, made me wait.

It was perfect. Perfect. Everything I wanted.

Whatever he’d claimed about his usual practices, he certainly knew how to please a boy like me.

I wriggled. Moaned. Let the sheer needy excitement of everything he did to me fill me up like fireflies, buzzing and dancing and shining.

His lips were bare inches from mine. The heat of his breath brushing me in prelude.

I’d never been so sure of anything as I was at that moment. Him and me and the possibility of all the things he could do to me—the things we could do together. Romantic and tender and sexy and wicked. I met his wild eyes. Tried to control my shaky breath enough to beg. But all I managed was his name.

And then he covered my mouth with his.

Chapter 9

Truthfully, I’d always been kind of take it or leave it on kissing. I’d enjoyed it, of course, but in the way you enjoy canapés at a posh party. Very nice and everything, artful even, but wouldn’t some real food be better? It was hot on the dance floor—kissing, not canapés—tongues grinding like bodies, somebody’s fingers tangled in my hair, before we stumbled to their place, or mine, to finish things off. But mainly it was prelude to the good stuff.

Not with Caspian Hart, though.

It was a no-mercy kiss. A brutal claiming, full of teeth and desperate hunger, forcing my surrender to his will and his passion.

I strained toward him, opened to him, as if we were at the end of the journey, not the beginning. More than that, he made me forget there was a journey. There was only his mouth on mine, his hands holding me, his body pinning me. And just like that, everything I’d felt—listening to his voice on the phone, seeing those icy predator eyes of his, talking with him on the balcony, the woody-acrid scent of his cigarette, being on my knees for him—yes, everything I’d felt was real again.

And he kissed me like it was real for him too.

Attraction, symmetry, freedom, trust. Something a little bit magical, even if its bewitchments were on the hard-core side.

When he drew back, I felt taken and tender, mouth-fucked afresh.

His eyes held mine, dazed and wild, gleaming with all the light from the horizon at my back. “Arden, I—”

“Oh no.” I just about managed to catch my breath enough to speak. “I’ve had bad experiences with you and sentences that begin with my name.”

“Yes, I—” He had the grace to look faintly uneasy. “I can understand that. I know I’ve treated you badly. It was never my intent.”

I wriggled my hands, enjoying the way his tightened. “Kiss me again and I’ll forgive you.”

“God,” he muttered. “I really need to stop doing this.”

But he kissed me anyway. Slowly this time, conquering me by inches, seduction of a kind.

The kind I liked: thorough and deep and merciless.

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