“Surely”—his voice had gone silk-soft in the quiet room—“you’re familiar enough with my tastes by now to know just how appealing I find the sight of you on the floor.”
Well. That was slightly cheering. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Though I like you best at my feet.”
I managed to meet his eyes again. They were steely gray in the gloom and gleamed like the glass that surrounded us. My magnificent predator. So fierce and so lost. “I can do that.”
My hands were shaky as I reached for my belt.
But, strangely enough, my confidence was back. Maybe he’d been right all along: it wasn’t that fragile. It was true that compared to Caspian I was short and skinny and apparently ridiculously clumsy, and as ordinary as ordinary could be. But all it took was the way he looked at me, the things he said to me and wanted me to do for him, the fractures in his self-control, shining like veins in marble, and I felt like the most powerful, desirable, wondrous person on the whole fucking planet.
And, God, I wanted to please him. Give him everything.
Submission. Desire. Suffering. Longing. Safety. With him it all became the same: the same ache, the same need, the same…oh God…the same helpless love.
Button by button I bared myself.
Halfway down, I realized I should probably have turned around and let the coat slip from my body, while I peeped coquettishly over my shoulder.
So what I was having here was a stripping learning experience.
But it didn’t seem to matter. Because the moment I flashed lace, Caspian made this amazing sound—all rough and deep and lusty—and was away from his desk so fast, his chair hit the window behind him. He prowled across the room, swift as a panther after prey, and then my coat was a pile on the floor and I was in his arms.
Literally in his arms. Legs round his waist. Lips against his. Like some crazy movie kiss in the pouring rain.
Except for the part where it wasn’t raining, and I was naked except for thigh highs and a hat.
But still. I wrapped myself round him, tight as honeysuckle. And kissed and clung and clung and kissed until I was breathless and dizzy and his mouth was a red smear and my eyes were full of stars.
It was only when I felt something solid nudge the backs of my thighs that I realized he’d carried me to his desk. I shoved his laptop out of the way, grabbed him by the tie, and pulled him down on top of me. The glass was gasp-inducingly cold against my unprotected back but he was blissfully warm. I shuddered, caught in a kind of delirious skin-confusion. An ice and fire sandwich.
And then Caspian’s mouth closed over my nipple, drowning me in fresh heat. My brain gave up trying to process anything and I just moaned and clutched at his hair. For once he didn’t shake me off, tugging my pincher back and forth with his tongue until my veins filled up with lightning and I could hardly bear the pleasure of it.
He glanced up, panting and disheveled.
My lipstick had traveled from my mouth to his to everywhere his mouth had touched me.
Which meant I had painted nipples.
It was the most brazen thing I’d ever seen and I wished I’d thought of it.
“I, er, I take it you don’t mind me showing up then?” I asked.
He traced a hot wet stripe up the side of my neck, making my pulse flutter at the realization of its vulnerability. “If I still possessed the capacity for rational thought, I might consider it ill-advised.” I wasn’t sure I liked that answer. But my own ability to have thinking happen was not so great either right then.
“You look…” He seemed to lose track of what he was saying. He dragged a hand along the outside of my thigh until he came to the top of my hold-ups. Slipping a single finger beneath the band, he pulled it outward, and then let it go so that it snapped sharply back into place.
It didn’t really hurt but it made such a loud crack that I gasped anyway. “I look what?”
“Wicked beyond belief.”
I nodded happily. “You should show me my place.”
“And where’s that?”
“Wherever you want me. Begging for whatever you think I deserve.”
“Right now—” His eyes closed for a moment, though not before I caught the flare of passion and cruelty my words had ignited. “I think you deserve to be fucked. I think you deserve to be fucked until all you can do is scream my name.”