Page 11 of After Hours
The gleam from the lights in the marina, she thought then. Her marina. He could stand right there at that big window and see her boat.
She wasn’t imagining this.
“You’ve been watching me too,” Romily whispered.
“Since the day you moved in.”
“I can’t imagine why that would hold your interest,” she said nervously. “Why I would.”
She wasn’t putting herself down. Her therapist was always on her about that, but she’d seen his blonde. Hisstunningblonde. That certainly wasn’t Romily.
But Zachary moved then. He came closer, standing above her so she had to tilt her head back to look up at him.
Way, way up.
Up close, he seemed like even more of a Viking to her. He was so tall. His shoulders were so broad. And that beard only emphasized the harsh beauty of his face. Romily knew exactly what sort of things he did to keep those muscles looking the way they did—she’d seen him do them—and she had never wanted to put her hands on another person as much she did just then.
Her palms actuallyitchedwith the need to touch him.
Though she knew better.
Somehow, she knew better.
“You know exactly what holds my interest.” That stern note was back in his voice and it wound its way down deep into her body, making her pussy clench tight around the blaze he’d put there. “It’s this, little bird. The way you flutter. The way you melt inside when I look at you. The way I want to tell you exactly what to do and something in you wants to do it, no matter what it is.”
Romily felt as if she’d been kicked in the gut. All the breath seemed to leave her body, but it was replaced by heat so white-hot and so intense there was a part of her that thought she might actually explode. Or die—but she was certain that she didn’t actually want todie.
Not when she finally feltalivefor the first time in years.
Maybe ever.
“You can’t… You can’t know that. People don’t want… What?”
Something changed on his hard, beautiful face. A kind of patience dawned, maybe. An awareness that was in no way less hot. “Have you done this before?”
“I’m not a virgin if that’s what you mean,” she said, though it stuttered out of her and it made her feel silly. Stupid. “Do you know what year it is?”
“I’m not talking about sex,” Zachary said, not exactlygently. “Not the kind of sex just anyone can have when they stumble out of a bar in the middle of the night.”
Romily couldn’t imagine this man stumbling at all. Ever. Much less out of bars.
He reached out and took her chin between his thumb and a knuckle, then tipped her head up.
And there was nothing sweet about it. She felt chained there, unable to look away from him, caught as securely in that grip as if he’d tied her down.
The very idea of that, beingtied downby him, made her whole body flush all over again.
And there, between her legs, her pussy went soft and hot.
“I’m talking about this,” Zachary told her, like he knew. Like he knew exactly what reaction her body was having. “This thing between us. This electricity. It’s different.”
“I married the last person who told me that,” she said, feeling dizzy and something like sick, and yet she still didn’t pull away from him. “And it was different, all right. He started being an asshole on our wedding night and only got worse from there.”
“Sounds like a douchebag,” Zachary growled. “I’m not a douchebag, Romily. What I’m talking about is fucking. With a power dynamic.”
“I don’t like power games,” she whispered, even though her body was telling her something else, trembling and shaking, making her wonder if she even knew what she was talking about.
“I’m going to guess that what you don’t like is a power-hungry asshole who likes to make women feel like shit.” Zachary moved his thumb, rubbing it over her lip in a way that was blatantly sexual, and yet not a caress. Or not only a caress. “I can’t blame you. Who would?”
