“Why?” I ask, and his grip tightens just enough to make my pulse skip.
“Can’t answer that, but I do know I’m not ready for you to leave.” He releases my wrist, only to find my cheek, his fingers ghosting over the bruised skin there.
“If you want me to stay, I’ll stay. But I won’t keep lying about what I want.” I swallow hard, my chest rising and falling with the truth of it. “So if you can’t handle that, you need to let me go.”
“And what is it you want, darlin’?”
“I want you to stop looking at me like I’m your son’s girl.”
Something primal sweeps across his face, swallowing the last shred of restraint he’s been clinging to.His hand shoots up, thumb hooking beneath my chin, forcing my head back until I’m right there with him. The breath I was about to take gets trapped somewhere between my chest and my throat because I see the exact moment I stop being Travis’s girlfriend and transform into something else entirely.
His breathing turns ragged, his chest rising and falling like he’s waging a war inside himself and losing. Everything about him screams power and dominance, an undeniable reminder that I’m standing in front of a man, not a boy. And fuck, it does dark, needy things to me.
“I’ve been fighting this since the day my brother hired you—since the day my whole fucking world turned into a living hell because my son took you first and claimed what I should’ve never had to share.”
This is what’s been simmering beneath every stolen glance and every moment we pretended not to feel the weight of our attraction. This is what’s been owning him just as much as it’s owned me.
“Then stop fighting.”
Please. Fucking please.
Those midnight eyes catch mine before falling to my lips.
“Open,” he growls.
When I part my lips for him, he slides two fingers inside, dragging them slowly across my tongue. He watches me like he’s already inside me, like this is just foreplay for how thoroughly he plans to wreck me.
I’m a goddamn mess, sucking on his fingers like my life depends on it, cheeks hollowing out as I swallow them down. His eyes go black,jaw ticking as he watches me like a predator drinking in the sight of his prey.
“Fuck,” he exhales, his voice wrecked. “I can just imagine you on your knees looking up at me while I fuck that pretty mouth. You’d take my cock so good, wouldn’t you, darlin’?”
He slides his fingers deeper, pressing down on my tongue until I gag, and then he fucking smiles. When he pulls his fingers out, he drags them down my chin before sucking them into his mouth, and in my delusional, romance-poisoned brain, it feels almost like a kiss.
He leans in close, his breath hot against my ear. “Can’t touch you while that mark is on your face. But when it fades…”
He doesn’t say another word. He just brushes past me like he didn’t burn those words into my skin, grabs my bags, and disappears up the stairs without a backward glance.
Ruined without a single fucking kiss.
The sound of the shower starting just a moment after the door slams shut does nothing to calm the fire in my blood. If anything, it makes it worse, knowing he’s in there, naked and wet, probably trying to get himself under control.
I head to my room on unsteady legs, finding my bags beside the bed. I can hear the water and see the image behind my eyelids like a cruel tease—Christian, those broad shoulders, standing under the spray, steam clinging to his golden skin, water trailing down the ridges and valleys of muscle carved by years of hard farm work. His hands raking through dark, damp hair. His jaw clenched tight, his body wound with the same overwhelming frustration that’s making it impossible for me to fucking breathe.
I drop onto the bed, legs spread, the door still wide open. My gaze is fixed on the bathroom door, and I’m almost willing the walls to dissolve to give me even a glimpse of what I know is just beyond.
The ache simmering low in my belly is unbearable, but I already know I won’t find the relief it’s crying out for because the stubborn bitch between my legs isn’t interested in a consolation prize. She doesn’t want my hands or battery-operated stand-ins. She’s developed expensive taste and only wants Christian, and the demanding diva is making it crystal clear that nothing else will do.
My hand slides beneath the waistband of my leggings, fingers finding the evidence of just how far gone I am. I draw tight, slow circles against my clit, my breath catching, my body arching into my own touch like it’s not enough—because it isn’t. It isn’t his fingers, his mouth, or his cock stretching me wide and filling me the way I need.
It takes seconds—barely a whisper of pleasure—before my thighs snap together, my lips part, and his name tumbles past them in a breathless moan. But even as the aftershocks pulse through me, I keep going. I keep rubbing and teasing because the need hasn’t left me.
The shower cuts off, and panic slams into me. I yank my hand away from my leggings, my chest heaving as I remain sprawled against the headboard. Suddenly, the bathroom door swings open, and a moment later, Christian is standing in the doorway of my room, fresh from the shower. Steam curls behind him like a storm rolling in while water drips from his skin, lazily tracking over every defined muscle before slipping lower and disappearing beneath the towel hanging too low on his hips.
He doesn’t ask what I was doing.
He doesn’t have to.
The flushed skin, the way my breathing is still uneven, the way I’m just lying here, staring at him, looking thoroughly fucked even though I haven’t had him yet.