“Just the most expensive ones,” he grunted, a stream of air pushing through his tight teeth.
“Hopefully,” I quipped as the vest joined his jacket on the floor.
I knew what I’d signed up for. In theory, I knew what stripping him involved. We’d been this close last night, minimal clothing between us. But in practicality, stripping him myself felt like a far greater intimacy.
“What happened when you went to see Belmont? What did you say?” I lifted my hands to his collar, his tie the only thing already removed.
His pulse jumped against my fingertip as I went to free the first button, his throat bobbing as soon as it was loosened.
“I told him I wanted to solidify a business arrangement where I would broker the deal between him and Shazad and use my contacts to provide support and transport routes and end-user commercialization,” he began, finally giving me a thread on which to tug.
“And he wasn’t happy with that?” I popped the second button free.
“He doesn’t have a choice. That’s the part he needs.”
Because I was so close, my eyes focused on the inches of his skin peeking through his shirt. I caught the flex of his jaw, the tension cascading down the column of his throat when I pressed to loosen the next button.
“So, what didn’t he like? That we showed up to his party uninvited? That you insulted him in his own home?”
Hot air streamed through his lips. “No one would like those things, but I wouldn’t be who I am—wouldn’t have my reputation—if I waited for an invitation or sugar-coated the reality of his situation. He needs me, and he needed to know it.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Damon? I know there’s something.”
I was over halfway through the buttons on his shirt, and the fabric gaped, taunting me with the bare chest and ridged abdomen I’d admired far too many times and fantasized about even more in the last week and a half.
How could I not, knowing the strength of those toned muscles when they held me? How could I not remember their masterful flex and contraction when he’d hold himself above me? The way they’d quake with every deep grunt of hunger when he’d pleasured me? And lower, the coordination of every brick of his abdomen when he’d thrust inside me?
My mouth turned to a bucket of sand, every drop of moisture pooling and leaking from my throbbing core.
If I continued to stare—even for another second—I could lose my control. I could lose the already precarious hold I had on this situation and my proximity to the answers I wanted.
Answers I wasn’t finding on the unblemished bronze of his skin.
How?How was it that he leaned on Pat for support to enter the room, but there was no evidence of injury anywhere on him? Frustration coiled like a spring in my stomach, pushingboth on the throbbing ache in my pussy and the anger brewing in my chest.
Instead of working the next button free, my hands dropped suddenly to the waist of his pants.
Damon stilled, a whip of heat coming off him like a flame starved for fuel. I didn’t need to look. I knew he was hard from the moment I touched him. I hated how I knew that. I hated knowing the effect I had on him was the same as he had on me…and still it wasn’t enough.
“Careful, Robber,” he warned, the tremble in his body mirrored in the tone of his voice.
My nerves braced, and I snapped my eyes to his. “What else did he want from you?” I gripped his shirt and tugged it free from his waistband, eliciting a deep groan from his throat.
“Restitution.” A sheen of sweat formed on his brow.
The last three buttons caved with a deft flick of my fingers, and his shirt parted fully to reveal the exquisite sculpt of his bare chest.And still no sign of injury.
“He wants me to pay him—donate to his charity at the fundraiser,” he kept talking, but my focus was anchored elsewhere. I pushed the last barrier from his shoulders, my movements bordering on frantic as I searched for what I knew to be true but couldn’t see.
The rumpled shirt joined the rest of his clothes, his entire torso exposed to my scrutiny.
I shivered at the magnificent sight. My pulse spilled with no restraint into my chest as I stepped back and let myself fully take him in. So much was what I remembered, and yet so much was different.
I felt the track of his stare like the laser of a scope pointed at me as I began to circle him, inspecting everything I just revealed. Every swell and valley in the geography of hismuscles. All the scars that marred his flesh, clearly not new injuries for him, but new to me.
My tongue weighed down to the floor of my mouth under the stack of questions I had.What were they from? When did they happen? Who did this to you?
I let his too-long-for-me jacket sleeves hide my hands and the way they balled at my sides. I might hate him. I might want to strangle him and have him arrested. But only I got to harm him. He was my husband. My lying, betraying husband. Only I got to hurt him.
