Page 55 of The Boss
“I’m not running.” She bit his lower lip hard enough to sting. “I’m arguing.”
“Do it later.” He kissed her again, deeper, until the argument went to breath and then to need. He dragged her dress up. She lifted her hips to help and cursed him for knowing how she’d move. His hands mapped skin he’d already memorized and still felt new. The long line of her thigh. The cut glass of her hip. The small tremor when his mouth found the soft place below herear.
“We’re not solving anything,” she said, breath breaking.
“We’re solving this,” he said. “The part where I need you like oxygen.”
He took his time. Not gentle, not cruel. Demanding, tough, all dominance and control. He tasted her neck, her collarbone, lower, where her breath hitched and her hand tightened in his hair. He braced one palm on the desk beside her hip and used the other to tilt her closer to the edge. The room smelled like paper and leather and the smoke of his cologne and something sweeter under it that undid him. He didn’t look down at his hand when he slid it under the hem of her dress. He watched her face instead, the flicker in her eyes when he found heat, the way her mouth parted on a sound she didn’t want to give him and did anyway.
“Look at me,” he said, voice edged like command.
“I am.” Her eyes didn’t flinch.
“Don’t look away.” His grip on her hip tightened to makesure.
“I won’t,” she whispered. “Not unless you do.”
He didn’t. He couldn’t have if he’d tried. When he touched her, slow then firmer, her head tipped back and then came forward again like she remembered his order and wanted to obey it just to defy him. She went tight and then slicker, her breath choppy, her hands sliding from his shoulders to theback of his neck and lower, like she couldn’t decide whether to pull him closer or push him away and discovered there was no difference anymore.
He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to drag this out until the sun moved across the whole sky and came back around. The kind of impossibility he’d built his life on. He unbuckled his belt without taking his mouth off hers. The metal clinked, asmall bright sound. Her hand slid down his chest, fingers shaking, and found his waistband. She looked at him then, really looked, like she was checking that he was still made of the same parts he’d been five seconds ago. He was and he wasn’t.
“Tell me what you want,” he said, voice fierce with possession. “Say the words.”
“I want you to listen,” she said, her nails biting into his shoulders as if to secure herself.
“I am,” he shot back, breath harsh against her mouth. “I hear every sound you make, every word. Say it, Mariah. Say it like you mean to make me bleed.”
Her body trembled and her lips curled into something between defiance and surrender. “I want you,” she said, the admission tearing out of her like it cost her pride to giveit.
Leif’s mouth twisted in a hard, dangerous smile. “Good. Because wanting me is the only way you’ll survive me.”
Chapter 16
MARIAH DIDN’Tsurrender. She decided. The difference hit Leif like a fuse catching, burning hot through his chest, and it broke something in him that had needed breaking for a long time.
But he didn’t give her everything at once. He stripped her down slowly, baring skin inch by inch, biting and kissing, dragging his mouth down the arch of her throat, over the swell of her breasts, across her belly.
He pulled her arms above her head, pinning them with one hand while the other roamed, both demanding and claiming. He sucked her nipples hard until she cried out, then soothed with his tongue, alternating torment and pleasure until she writhed under him.
Leif spread her thighs wide and buried his mouth between them, tasting her deeply, lapping and sucking until she broke apart. When she thought she was finished he eased her legs higher, flicking his tongue in relentless strokes, dragging a second climax out of her, and then a third, her sobs breaking into screams as she clenched helplessly.
He devoured her like a man starved, savoring every cry, every shiver, every gush of heat against his tongue. Only then did he rise and drive into her, the aftershocks of her climax making her clench around him like a fist. She arched hard against him, nails biting into his back, mouth opening on a sound he knew would haunt his nights. He held her there, straining against his own control, waiting until the first fierce shock in her body eased. And then he moved, relentless.
He didn’t pretend to be civilized. The desk creaked a warning and then accepted their weight. He fucked her with ruthless control, pulling almost out, slamming back in, over and over, then slowing just to hear the whimper twist into a moan when the pace changed.
Sweat slicked them, their bodies sliding, the slap of flesh sharp in the stillness of the office. He drove into her with purpose, every thrust visceral possession. He would keep her breathing. He would burn down anyone who tried to put fear where he wanted to put his hands. He would not lock her up. He would not let hergo.
She met him for every inch. There was no retreat in her, only counterstrike. Her legs locked around his hips and held. Her nails dragged bloody tracks down his back. She said his name again and again and every time it landed different, acurse, aprayer, adare. He ground deeper, and she cried out his name like surrender and challenge in the same breath.
“Say it,” he told her against her mouth. “Say you feel this.”
“I feel it,” she gasped, eyes bright with tears she refused to let fall. “I feel everything.”
He kissed the corner of her eye before anything could slide out and make a liar out of her. He pushed harder, faster, then slowed to torment her, then harder again. She came again with ascream, her body shaking around him, dragging his own climax closer with every spasm. He fought not to let go before she did. The Brand in his palm burned so hot it should have seared the air itself.
She broke first, not small, not quiet. Her whole body bowed and clenched around him, and the sound that came out of her took his name apart and put it back together like it belonged to her. He went with her, then, no control left, nothing but force and heat and relief so sharp it bordered on pain. He thrust once, twice more, then spilled into her with a roar, grinding deep, holding her as if he could weld her body to his. Everything went white around the edges.
They stayed that way a long time, mouths close, breaths mixing, the city a smear of light beyond the glass. His heart hammered against her chest. Hers hammered back. The world could’ve ended and he wouldn’t have noticed for several beats. He kissed her once, softer than anything that had come before it, and her answer came like a tremor throughhim.
