Chapter Twenty-Five
Hazel
While he’d looked defeated when I’d left his shop yesterday and worried this morning when he’d cornered me in the empty bar while I’d been figuratively—and then more literally—banging my head against a wall, tonight he had an entirely different look to him. Stubborn determination.
And I was woefully unprepared for Reid to fight against my wishes quite like this. He knew I’d drawn a boundary line to keep things from getting more complicated between us, but apparently, he’d decided to pole vault right over that line by offering to…show me his pole.
This situation was so fucked up. And I was still having trouble believing this was my life anymore. Between the unexpected connection with Seven, both aurally and then through sharing our typed words—and some suggestive amateur photography—with each other, and now Reid turning his considerable charms on me at the same time, I kept trying to pinch myself to wake up from whatever dreamland I’d been transported to.
“I can wait out here all night,” he taunted through the door, clearly waiting for me to come out of hiding.
“Or you can go home.”
His deep chuckle made the hairs on my neck stand on end. “Not a chance, kitten. We’re doing this. Now come out and set up your camera or I’ll come in there and get it myself.”
Part of me wanted to see how far I could push him until he broke, but I also knew he’d push right up to the edge of my boundaries, but never actually violate them. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t torture me in the meantime.
“Keep your pants on.”
“Pretty sure you need them off for this,” he laughed, his voice close like he was leaning against the door while he waited for me. “But I’ll wait to take them off until you can appreciate the process.”
“You’re so full of yourself,” I muttered, a smile pulling at my lips as his chuckle filled my chest with warmth.
He was quiet on the other side of the door as I gathered my equipment, getting the memory card loaded into my camera, glad he couldn’t run off with it for once while I was distracted this time. Although I wouldn’t put it past him to steal my memory card to use as leverage to keep the line of communication open between us.
When I finally emerged from the bedroom, I found him in the living room with my tablet in his lap, stylus in hand, sketching something on the screen.
“What are you doing? You better not have messed with any of my files.”
“Chill, Haz. I opened a new one. I didn’t jeopardize the integrity of your peen pics.”
“Do you even know what you’re doing?” I asked, grabbing the stylus from him before he could get into anything else.
He willingly offered me the tablet, winking as I looked at the screen. An abstract outline of a kitten was sketched in the middle of the screen, but upon zooming out, I could see one of my female 3-D anatomical models in the background layer, the decoration carefully rendered in the dip of her hip. “You think I do all my sketching the old school way? I know how to use illustration software, Haz.”
“Well, you don’t need to use mine to sketch tattoos for other women.”
His grin almost turned feral as he reached forward, gripping my hip and pressing his thumb into the same place the tattoo had been on the model on the screen. “Who said it’s for another woman, kitten ?”
Shaking my head, I decided not to take the bait, stepping out of his hold and setting up the tripod next to the couch, aiming it toward where he was manspreading across my chair in a way that was way too alluring. I could probably count the number of times I’d seen Reid wearing something other than his typical bad boy uniform, and him in a suit was making things that shouldn’t be fluttering inside me take flight.
“Can I do a quick warm up sketch before we…?” I trailed off, but Reid’s eyebrow lifted in challenge, and I knew he was going to say something suggestive.
“Before I stroke my cock while you watch?”
“Do you have to make everything hard?”
His grin was almost sinister as he reached down, intentionally adjusting himself and drawing attention to the fact he was hiding something firm inside his snug dress pants. “I’m not the one making this hard.”
“You knew what I meant.”
“Hmm, not sure I do. Why don’t you tell me, in detail, how I’m making things hard? Maybe I can give you a demonstration while you talk.”
“Shut up,” I hissed, pulling my phone out of the pocket of my leggings, and shoving one of my earbuds in after I pressed play. Reid watched my every move, his fingertips tapping on the armrests of the chair.
My stylus moved across the page quickly while I roughed in the general outline of the scene. The chair underneath his powerful form. The way his thick neck met the strong slope of his shoulders. To his credit, Reid sat still, letting my eyes flicker across his chest and along the strong jawline my fingers itched to caress.
Meanwhile, the audiobook in my ears detailed Serafina’s reaction to the powerful mafia boss showing up on her doorstep to collect on a promise to watch her. They’d been dancing around each other until this point in the book, her pushing him away at every turn and him unable to resist the pull of her.
They weren’t supposed to even know the other existed, but a chance meeting ignited a clandestine friendship between the two that violated the blood feud their families had been engaged in for decades. He shouldn’t want her, and she shouldn’t want him, but despite it all, they couldn’t stay away from each other.
I hadn’t sent Reid the audiobook on purpose, knowing it’d mirror our situation a little too close for comfort. And I hadn’t wanted him to know about the scene leading up to her watching him pleasure himself in a chair across the room.
But I knew he’d read the scene as he watched me, his eyes focused on my every move while I tried to capture how he looked right now. Strong. Determined. Dangerous.
I didn’t need to warm up, I’d spent the entire day working on another project, my wrist aching with all the abuse I’d put it through in the last few weeks as I flew through commission after commission—inspiration racing through my veins unlike it ever had before. But as my cheeks turned pink when Serafina pulled out a vibrator and settled in across from Gio to use it on herself while he watched, Reid’s fingers dug into the chair in a way that told me everything I needed to know.
He didn’t just want to recreate his part of the scene. He wanted to watch mine.
“Stop,” he growled, his voice a rough command as he reached across the coffee table to pull the tablet from my grasp.
“Hey,” I protested weakly, trying to pull it back, but he’d already switched gears, grabbing my phone from the table and turning it to play the audio from the speakers and not my earbuds.
His gaze was almost feral as he watched me squirm, unable to keep from reacting to the author’s description of the scene. The flush on her skin, the way his eyes tracking her every move turned her on, the moans she couldn’t keep in while her hands moved under his instruction since he couldn’t touch her .
“Go get a toy,” Reid commanded, his voice leaving no room for interpretation.
Shaking my head, I pulled my phone out of his hand, fast forwarding the audio to the part where Gio was stripping down across from her, roughly pulling on his cock as her cries increased in pitch.
“I wasn’t asking you. I was telling you,” Reid growled, grabbing my phone back and stabbing at the screen until the narrator’s rough voice cut off.
“That’s not what I was asked to draw,” I protested, but as his jaw clenched, I knew he didn’t give a fuck. Reid was a man who’d met his limit, and I had two options: beg him to leave to preserve my sanity or listen to him and fall into pretending with him for one more night.
“The fuck it’s not. You want to see how desperate this character is for her; you do what I ask, so you get the picture you need to give this author the commission she paid for. She wanted a man on edge and desperate, and while that drawing on your tablet is close, we both know you can do better.”
“Are you trying to neg my work to get me to touch myself in front of you?”
“No. I’m trying to give you what you need to show anyone who sees that piece that you are the best at what you fucking do.”
“It’s just a drawing,” I whispered, suddenly feeling self-conscious.
“Now, or I will go rummage around in your nightstand until I find what I’m looking for.”
Reid’s imposing form didn’t show any sign of backing down. And I realized maybe he’d been holding this part of himself at bay for the last week, letting me lead. But he wasn’t letting me lead anymore, and when he stepped back, settling into the chair and watching me as he slowly unbuttoned his shirt, he knew I’d follow.
Tossing my phone on the couch, I hurried down the short hallway, my pulse pounding in my ears as I yanked open my closet and grabbed the small box from the top shelf. It only had three things inside it, not a terribly extensive collection, but they’d been used more than I would care to admit to anyone.
“You better not try to hide in there.” Reid’s deep voice carried down the hallway and I grabbed the contents, taking all three items with me as I returned to the living room.
Silently, I laid the trio of toys down in the center of the table between us, watching his reaction to each one. His eyes lingered on the thrusting toy in the center before flickering up to meet mine, a question in his gaze.
Deciding to give him back a little of the attitude he’d had since he strutted into my apartment, I let the thought I would’ve normally filtered before it came out of my mouth fly. “Just because I’m a virgin doesn’t mean I don’t like to get fucked.”
“Fuck,” he cursed before he reached forward to grab the little bullet vibrator from the table, tossing it in my direction.
I caught it, pressing the button to turn it on with my thumb while his eyes continued to watch my every move. “Can’t take a little teasing, Reid?”
“Not right now, Haz. Especially since I now know exactly what you diddle yourself with after work.”
Despite the tension between us building exponentially, a giggle escaped my lips at his choice of words. “Did you just say diddle?”
“What am I supposed to say? I feel like I’m corrupting your innocent little ears every time I say a curse word,” he growled, his eyes still fixated on the bigger toy in the center of the table. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was. That it was only fractionally smaller than what I knew was in his pants right now.
Which meant despite my v-card not having been punched, I could take what he had to offer without question. “Just say I fuck myself with a vibrator when I get excited by my commissions.”
“Is that what you were planning to do when I interrupted you the other night?”
Shrugging, I sat back into the cushions behind me, suddenly feeling powerful as I watched him squirm at my refusal to play this game by his rules. “Close your mouth, Reid. You’re not the only one who gets excited by your job. Does inflicting pain turn you on?”
But he didn’t let me keep control for long, sitting up and bracing his forearms on his knees, narrowing his eyes. “Does the thought of me stroking myself in my office after I touch a beautiful woman’s body for hours turn you on?”
“Only if you’re thinking about me when you do it.”
His jaw clenched, and I watched as his fingers dug into his hair, tugging roughly as he tried to keep control of his emotions. “Haz, don’t.”
But I didn’t want him to be in control. If he was here to push the envelope tonight, I was going to push right back. “Because I think of you when I touch myself.”
“Fuck. Don’t tell me that if you want me to keep my hands to myself.”
Going in for the kill, I taunted him, hoping he wouldn’t do what I thought I wanted before now. “Why? Afraid you won’t live up to the fantasy?”
“No, because if you tell me any more details of what you think about while you’re touching yourself, my resolve to respect your wishes is going to be nonexistent. Kind of like your virginity once I get my hands on you.”
And that was the sentence that had me stripping off my leggings, spreading my legs and pressing a vibrator to my clit while Reid frantically unbuttoned his pants and tugged them down a few feet away.