Instead, I cut someone off mid-sentence, barely noticing the startled faces around the table as I stormedafter her and chased something I don’t even fully understand yet.
I wanted to test her, I’ll admit that. I needed to see her unravel in real time and find out if her body still remembered mine. If she’d tremble under my voice, just like she did that night.
I wanted to see her eyes when she gave in, because I was denied that at the club.
Now those eyes are ready to damn me to hell.
Stormy gray and cut with gold, framed by dark lashes and a gaze that holds power she hasn’t even begun to understand. When she looks at me, I feel that buried spark of vulnerability I’ve spent years suffocating.
Her lips are full and sharp at the edges, the kind of mouth that would smile in your face before tearing you to shreds.
“Are you going to do something or are you just going to keep staring at me…” she goads, squeezing her fingers around my shaft before adding, “…Sir?”
Well, now I want to punish her.
I tighten my grip on her throat.
“Julian,” she moans, and it’s with the sound of my name dripping off her tongue that something erupts inside me. Something I haven’t named yet. Possession? Maybe. Lust? Definitely.
Fighting the urge to press my mouth to hers just once, I push off the door, let go of her throat, and back away.
I have to.
I run my hand through my hair, desperate to clear the fog of whatever this is from my mind.
She straightens her blouse in front of me and I… look away.
I’ve seen her bare and exposed in ways most men will never be lucky enough to witness. Now I can’t stand to watch her adjust her blouse because it feels too intimate.
I almost laugh.
She walks past me, hips swaying, and the scent of her perfume hits me as she passes, making my eyes almost roll back in my head.
Leaning against her desk, she crosses her arms over her chest.
We stare at each other long enough for the air between us to start humming again.
She’s fucking mesmerizing.
All legs, curves, and that fire in her eyes.
I want to touch her again.
I want to bend her over that desk and make her fall apart, this time with her eyes wide open and locked on mine. I want to wreck her so thoroughly that the next time she walks into a room, she still feels me in her bones.
This was not what I signed up for when I stepped into that fucking club.
I went that night because I was curious and restless. I wanted one night. One woman. One moment where I wasn’t me. Someone I’m scared is turning into a shell of a man.
This woman is going to be a problem because now I’m the one unraveling, and she hasn’t even figured it out yet.
God help me when she does.
Fighting to claw back some control, I eat the distance between us before I grab her chin so she has no other choice but to look at me.
“You should probably know something about me,”I tell her, eyes locked.
She swallows. “What’s that, Mr. Blackwood?”