Chapter 10
Time and mistakes have taught me that success and winning don’t equal control, as my father and my two of my three brothers would have me believe. Making your own choices is what gives you control. Owning those decisions, and your own happiness, your own pleasure: That is control.
As Reese and I walk down the long hallway to his apartment, and he pulls me close with his big, powerful arm, I’m aware of where we’re headed. I know that the warmth pooling in my belly and the heaviness in my breasts is a prelude not just to sex, but to me willingly allowing him the kind of control that enables him to make me say please. That’s my decision. That’s me owning my pleasure. And despite Reese being everything I don’t want in a man: Arrogant, rich, and powerful, and too good looking to live amongst us real humans, somehow he is exactly what I need. I don’t analyze why. I don’t have to understand.
It’s one night.
And that is what I want. It’s freedom from inhibitions and complications, and yet as we draw to a halt at his apartment door, and I watch him unlock it, nerves flutter in my belly. I never get nervous with men. Not since law school, when winning mock-courtroom battles had meant finding a comfort level in my own skin and on my own. The problem is perhaps that I’ve let Reese get too far under my skin as well. I know him. I’ve talked to him. I’ve enjoyed engaging conversations. I’ve looked forward to our little encounters and exchanges. And since I’m still talking to myself in my head, I tell myself that all of that was just foreplay, the lead-in to a good show. Nothing more.
Reese opens his door, but I don’t turn to face him. I stare into his dark apartment.
“Cat,” he compels softly. “Look at me.”
“No,” I say, and it’s not defiance. That’s not what I feel. It’s simply a negative that is perhaps an inherent need to challenge anyone who might have the ability to control me without me realizing I’ve allowed it to happen. Reese is one of those men who sneaks up on you and does such a thing, so yes, I decide. I need him to know that every bit of control I give him tonight is my decision, not his.
Which is why I move forward, entering his apartment on my own, my feet traveling a dark hallway. I make it all of three steps before a light illuminates a path paved with mahogany hardwood floors, which curves left and forms what is nearly a half-circle. On either side of me there are arched alcoves filled with books, and my mind craves a peek at each title, but that would mean discovering more about this man outside pleasure. I know this isn’t what we’re about, but I still find myself glancing at a shelf filled with books on art, a few of my favorite artists featured.
I shake off the idea of mutual interest that could be more show for him than it is enjoyment for me. I exit into a living area that is a wide tunnel of floor-to-ceiling windows framing gray couches, a round coffee table in the center. A flat screen television hangs from a built-in drop in the center of the front window. The room is stunningly elegant and decidedly masculine. A room decorated simply, with no place to hang a painting. Nor are there photographs of family anywhere in the room. Despite this, it feels like Reese.
I ponder why this is, but without a definitive answer, as I walk to one of the two white pillars dividing the glass left and right, and rest my hand on it. Stars speckle the sky with white lights, while below them the colorful painting that is New York City’s lights in the night sky. Music begins to play, a song I do not know, soft, sexy, edgy. Reese could be described as hard, sexy, and edgy.
Those nerves I’d hoped to leave in the hallway are alive and well, in residence in my belly with a few flutters rising to my chest. It’s adrenaline. It’s anticipation, which we’ve worked as one might believe an artist would work to master the colors on a canvas. And we’ve done so with apparent attention to dramatics, considering the turbulence of our week-long connection. Goosebumps rise on my nape, beneath my hairline, a prelude to Reese stepping behind me. I face him to find that his suit jacket and tie are gone, and there is a drink in his hand. “Johnnie Walker?” he asks, offering his glass to me.
I stare down at his hand where it holds the glass, a strong hand that is free of any jewelry, anticipation fluttering through me with the certainty that it will soon be on my body. With that thought, my gaze pulls up and collides with his, the impact of that connection not only stealing my breath. I can’t just look at him and not feel him everywhere. I can’t just speak to him and not want to know more.
He arches a brow, indicating the glass he’s still offering me. “No thank you,” I say, shocked at how breathless I both sound and feel. “I don’t drink well.” And I want to remember this night, I add silently. Every moment.
“Meaning what?” he surprises me by asking, when I’d expect him to just get on to the naked part of this encounter.
“Meaning I’m a cheap date. Half a glass of anything and I’m on my ass.”
“A few sips will calm your nerves.”
“I’m not nervous.”
He leans in, and suddenly his breath is warm on my cheek, his hand right there with it. His lips are a lean from mine. “Liar,” he whispers, before his mouth caresses mine, a barely-there touch before he pulls back, one hand on the pillar above me. “A few sips,” he urges.
My hands press to the concrete at my sides, rather than to his chest, where they’d rather settle. “I don’t like whiskey.”
“You don’t like feeling out of control,” he accuses.
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
“You know what that tells me?” His hand is suddenly scorching my waist, his cheek against mine as he says, “I’m not the only one who’s been burned.”
“That’s not what you said earlier.”
“I was wrong, Cat, and I’m sorry. See?” His lips quirk. “I have manners. All for you. But if you’re honest with yourself, and me, you’ve been just as guilty of judging me like someone in your past.”
Guilt stabs at me, and I think of my many assumptions about him the first time I met him, and actually since. And because he’s being honest, I don’t deny him the same from me. “Yes,” I admit. “You’re right. And I was wrong. And I’m sorry. Since I said that, does this mean I get to make you say please, too?”
His lips curve. “Sweetheart, when it comes to you, you got it. Please. And I repeat—please to everything.” His voice lowers, turns gravelly. “I want you. Really fucking bad.”
There is something so raw, and yes, again I think, honest, about this man, and I want to believe that’s real, not a fa?ade. I really want it to be real. “I want you, too,” I say. “Please. And now that you have your please, what next?”
“The hard part. Trust.” He shakes the ice in the glass. “Just a few sips.”
The drink is a request for that trust he’s just mentioned. I know it. I see it in his eyes. Or I’m overthinking one night. I suddenly decide that taking the edge off might be just fine right about now. I reach for the glass, and the touch of our fingers is a charge up my arm. And for the first time since I met him, I cut my gaze and tilt back the glass, letting the rich, spiced liquid touch my tongue. I manage all of two deep drinks and his hand is on mine, pulling the glass from my lips. “Enough,” he says roughly. “I want you to relax. I don’t want you numb. I don’t want you to forget.” He downs the drink and sets the glass somewhere. I don’t know where. Maybe on a ledge wrapping the window, before his hands are above me on the pillar.
His eyes are fixed on my face rather than my body, and while there is no place where we are touching, I can feel the warmth of his body radiating against mine, which promises heat where there is a mere simmer.
“One and done, right?” he asks.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“How many one night stands have you had?”
“One and done means you don’t get to ask those questions,” I counter.
“We aren’t strangers who just hooked up without knowing each other.”
“We are strangers,” I insist. “Most people always are, in fact, strangers, and you’re too good an attorney not to know that.”
“Explain.”
“Why are we talking?”
But he doesn’t allow me to dodge my meaning. “Explain,” he insists.
“People live in our worlds, but never really see beneath the surface. They never even try. It’s how passion hides lies and love hides hate. How sex is an escape and not a confession of the soul.”
He studies me, his expression unreadable while the music changes, and I know this song. A Jason Aldean duet with Kelly Clarkson, “Don’t You Wanna Stay,” which is somehow an unexpected choice for Reese, but it reminds me that I’ve started to know the man beneath the lawyer and asshole. A country boy with a family ranch, who is more than the suit he wears as armor in a courtroom. Perhaps in life. But as the words fill the air, it’s not his past that speaks to me or us. It’s the now, the here, the possibilities.
Don”t you wanna stay here a little while
Don”t you wanna hold each other tight
Don”t you wanna fall asleep with me tonight
That last line quakes inside me, and suddenly Reese’s fingers are tangling in my hair, his mouth lingering just above mine. “Sleep is overrated,” he says, obviously referencing the song, a moment before his mouth crashes over mine, his tongue doing a wicked, smooth slide against mine, and then it is gone.
He lingers close a moment, breathing with me, and then, without warning, he turns me around, pulling my backside to his front, our bodies melded intimately together. And for just a moment, or two or ten, I think…I think he just breathes me in, and it’s quite possibly the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced. My body responds as if he’s touching me, goosebumps lifting on my skin. My nipples are tight, aching buds. My panties clingy and damp. Suddenly, and yet not sudden at all, he is dragging my jacket away, his hands caressing my bare arms along the away, his touch light, but every part of my body is now laden with a warm, needy sensation.
He tosses my jacket aside. I don’t know where and I don’t care. I try to turn to face him, but he catches my hip. “Not yet,” he says, his voice a low, sexy rasp I feel straight to my toes.
His fingers caress my hair to the side, over one of my shoulders, his lips touching the delicate skin of my nape. A tiny kiss that leaves me tingling all over as he reaches for the zipper of my dress and, with deliberate laziness, slowly tugs it downward. Inch by inch, it travels from my shoulder blades down to my lower back, the cool air of the room contrasting the combustible heat of anticipation: What comes next? What will he do? What will I do?
Questions that Reese answers when his deft fingers unhook my bra. He kisses my neck again, a whisper of a touch that shivers through me. His hands find my shoulders, and in a blink I’m naked to the waist. In another blink, he’s caressing the material over my hips and my clothing pools at my ankles. Instinct has me ready to untangle my feet, but, showing he does have manners, he doesn’t leave me a tangled mess. His powerful arm wraps around my waist, and he lifts me, his foot scooting aside my clothing.
The moment my feet are back on the ground, I am aware of my naked body being the only naked body in this room. Seeking to remedy that fact, and maintain some semblance of control, I twist around to face him. In the process, his arm has managed to remain around my waist, my hands have settled on his chest, and our eyes have collided. I forget control. I forget everything but these few seconds in which this warm blanket of intimacy wraps around us and steals my breath.
And then in the next moments, in which his eyes lower to my naked breasts, where they linger for countless seconds, my aching nipples pucker beneath his inspection before his gaze returns to mine. “You’re as perfect as I knew you would be,” he says, his voice managing to be both sandpaper and silk on my nerve endings, as he adds, “and almost as naked as I want you to be.”
The idea that he has wanted me as much as I have wanted him does funny things to my stomach, but more so, delivers an unexpected wave of illogical vulnerability. This is sex. The end. I don’t want or need to feel anything more. I want and need him naked and fucking me now, fast, hard. That’s safe. Desperate to find that safe place, to shift the control from him to me, I push to my toes, my breasts molding to his chest, and press my lips to his lips. They are warm, and he is hard everywhere I am soft.
And his response to my kiss, the answering moan I am rewarded with, is white-hot fire in my blood that he ignites further with a deep, sizzling stroke of his tongue. He slants his mouth over mine, deepening the connection, kissing me with a fierceness no other man ever has, but then some part of me has known from moment one that he is like no man I have ever known. Which explains why he is everything I want. And nothing about this night is what I expected, any more than this man is anything I can control.
But there is something intensely arousing about the idea of trying.
As if claiming I am reaching for the impossible, he molds me closer, his hand between my shoulder blades, his tongue playing wickedly with mine, but I meet him stroke for stroke, arching into him. He cups my ass and pulls me solidly against his erection. He wins this one. Now I am the one moaning, arching into him, and I welcome the intimate connection. I burn for the moment he will be inside me.
But I also want him to burn for this just as much as I do, and I need to touch this man. Really, really, need to touch him. My hand presses between us, and I stroke the hard line of his shaft. Reese tears his mouth from mine, pressing me hard against the pillar supporting the window again, and when his hands leave my body, when his palms press to the concrete above me again, I sense his withdrawal is about control. I was winning. I confirm that as reality when our eyes lock, and the dash of fire in his eyes is lit by one part passion and one part challenge.
“If I slide my fingers between your legs right now,” he says, “would you be wet for me? Are you ready for me?”
“Why don’t you find out for yourself?” I dare him, testing him, pushing him, and I don’t even know why.
“If I lick your clit, will you moan for me?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Answer, Cat,” he orders, his voice low, gruff. Aroused. And God, I love the way he manages to be power and control, and yet, intentionally or unintentionally, he doesn’t deny me the understanding that I do this to him. It empowers and emboldens me. So when he pushes, when he says, “If I lick your clit—”
“Please,” I say. “Is that where this is going? Can we get it over with and just have you get to it?”
His lips curve, with just a hint of wickedness to them that tells me he plans to make me say that word about ten more times before this night is over. And I’m okay with that, I realize. Because that is the glory of one night. I can enjoy every moment of challenge with this man, but I don’t have to be in control until tomorrow. And he doesn’t get to be in control tomorrow.