Page 15 of Protégé King

“What are you doing?” he counters.

“We made a vow to be friends and—”

“We’re friends, Alana. We will always be friends. But that doesn’t change the here and now.” His hand settles on my waist, warm and firm. “I want you to come home with me.”

My hand goes to his hand as if I could control the insane warmth radiating from his touch. As if I could ever control anything I feel with Damion. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t act like I’ve never touched you. I zipped up your prom dress before your date arrived.”

“Because we were friends. Just friends. We agreed—”

His free hand is suddenly cupping my face. “You agreed. I did not.” His mouth presses to my mouth, and his tongue slides deep, and it’s as if a river of sensation and emotion floods my body. I moan with the impact and every soft part of me melts into every hard part of him. Time stands still and if I could stay here, in this moment, forever, I would. But a horn honks and our lips part.

“Come with me,” he says, soft, gentle fingers stroking my hair from my face.

My teeth scrape my bottom lip and a flash of that moment in the fraternity when that woman charged at us stiffens my spine. “I always knew that if we did this, we were over, Damion. You’re a player and I’m—”

“With that other guy while making out with me?”

“I wasn’t with him. He was a friend protecting me from you.”

He curses and scrubs his jaw. “You don’t need to be protected from me.” He snakes his phone from his pocket and punches a button before he says, “West side of the building.” He disconnects and cups my head and kisses me, a rough, demanding slide of tongue before he says, “You know that.”

But he’s wrong. My heart has needed protection from him for as long as I remember. He doesn’t mean my heart, though. He means other things, like the way he protected me from myself when I would have walked out tonight. Maybe. I think I would have.

“I know that,” I whisper.

His hand slides over my shoulder and down my arm in the most intimate of ways, until the fingers of one of his hands link with mine. “Then come with me.”

There was a time when the only person who knew everything to know about me was Damion. There was something safe and special about that bond that carried me through so much of my life. The kind of bond you wish to find once in your life and you think will be with your future spouse. But I’m not going to marry Damion. That was a childhood fantasy. He’s the protégé king of the financial world and it was clear to me tonight, so high above all of us on his throne, we’ll be lost to him in the sea of city lights and all the other people.

This might be the last time we ever see each other on the same ground, in the same place in life. This might even be the last time I see him ever again. It’s impossible for me to say no to one night with him, when that night might be our last.

Damion cups my face and lifts my gaze to his intense probing stare. “Alana,” he says, his voice low, rough, an urgent quality in its depths as if he can’t bear the idea that I might say no.

But I don’t say no. “I’m coming with you. Yes.”

A flicker of what almost reads as relief washes over Damion’s handsome face, but before I reason away such a thing, he kisses me hard and fast—a deep slide of his tongue I feel in every part of my body. And then his arm is around me and he’s guiding me toward the car he’s called to pick us up. A car that will take us to his apartment where we will not only be alone, the no touching and kissing rule, the just friends rule, left behind.

Maybe we left it behind years ago. Maybe it never existed. All I know is there is no turning back now. We’ve left the kids who lived next door behind, for something darker, more intense, and far more addictive. But as my father once told me—and it seems to be proving as truth right now—addiction translates to obsession and obsession is a gentle beast until it’s gentle no more.

I’ve never understood what that meant, but I have a feeling I’m about to find out.

Chapter Ten

Alana

Once we’re in the backseat of the car, and Damion’s directed the driver, he pulls me close, his hand intimately resting on my leg. Little darts of sensation catch flight up my leg and my sex clenches with the impact. We look at each other and yes, there is a punch of awareness between us, but more so, there is something familiar and right, and we both respond. He smiles and I smile, and my lashes lower and then lift.

He sinks back against the cushion and I do the same, but we are no less aware of each other. His thumb strokes along my inner thigh, just inside my dress, and the wicked, wild way my body responds is too much. I catch his hand, but I don’t look at him. He laughs, all rumbly and masculine, amused at my reaction. Aware of what he was doing to me. Not was. Is. He has always been the blue whale of men to me. Maybe that’s because I never let what could have happened happen between us. I created such a build-up for us both that we just need this to happen to have it behind us.

Maybe then we can be friends again.

Oh God, maybe then I won’t be capable of that anymore and neither will he, and just as I thought minutes ago, this is it. This is the end of us.

The car halts in front of a high-rise, and Damion opens his door, offering me his hand to exit. I have this moment when I reject his touch, I reject all of this. But then he kneels and fixes me in his blue-eyed stare, and says, “Come on, sugar plum.”

It’s what my dad calls me and I laugh, “Seriously?”

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