“I don’t know why you’re so upset.” I tried to shrug but it was impossible with my arms pinioned overhead. “It’s not like I typically come crawling to you with my personal problems. We aren’t…close.”
For a long moment, he glowered down at me in terse silence. I was pretty certain he was contemplating the most efficient ways to dispose of my corpse once he was through murdering me for being such a monumental pain in his ass. But, for whatever reason, he decided against homicide. I had a front-row seat to watch as he locked down his fury, banking the fiery rage burning in his eyes, relaxing his brows from their deep furrow. When he finally spoke, his voice had calmed — marginally.
“From now on,” he said. “Something like that happens, anyone corners you, threatens you, intimidates you, anyone so much as blinks at you in a way you don’t like… you tell me. Not three days after the fact. You tell meimmediatelywhen it happens. Got it?”
I nodded.
His eyes dropped to my mouth. I was still chewing nervously on my lip, but released it when I felt the heavy weight of his gaze.
“Gwendolyn.”
“Y-yes?” I stammered.
“Something else you need to wrap your mind around.”
“Um… what?”
“You and me.” His eyes flickered back up to mine and I sucked in a breath at what I saw in their depths. “We’re close.”
“Wh—”
My startled question was cut off as his head slanted down and his mouth sank onto mine. All the anger and tension burning inside my bloodstream was gasoline; Graham’s lips were the match. In an instant, we were aflame. I bowed up on the bed, pressing into him as his mouth claimed mine. A low growl of satisfaction rumbled deep in his throat as I met his kiss, matched it, and then kicked it up a notch, sliding my tongue between his lips and getting my own taste of him.
He still had my arms locked above my head and, though I’d never admit it in a million years, there was something deliciously erotic about being restrained. Unable to touch him. Captive and submissive beneath his hard, capable body.
His teeth tugged at my bottom lip, drawing a gasp from deep within me. I felt the tip of his tongue slide over my jawline, to my ear, and then his teeth were there, too, a sharp graze that felt so good I practically convulsed against him. Our bodies rubbed together, my thighs pressing in against his hips, cradling him closer, pulling him into the very core of me, where delicious warmth was gathering.
My bones went liquid when I felt his rigid length pushing through the confines of his jeans, hard and ready, the thin silk of my pajama shorts doing little to cushion it. I was unbelievably turned on already, but I thought I might explode when he began to move against me in shallow thrusts, his hips rolling rhythmically, the fabric of our clothing rubbing with delicious friction against the most intimate part of me. An ache began to spread through me, growing more intense with each passing second. His lips moved at my neck, kissing, sucking, nibbling, as we ground against each other. I tried —failed— to yank my hands free from his grip, a mewl of frustration slipping from my mouth. I wanted, no, Ineededhim to let me go so I could touch him.
“Hellfire,” I breathed, the word a half-moan as he kissed the fragile hinge of my jaw, his hips rolling harder against mine.
“That feels good?”
“Mmm.”
“And this?” he asked, his hot mouth nipping at my ear, sending a shiver of pure lust down my spine. “How does this feel?”
“Amazing.”
“And this?” His teeth clamped down on the sensitive lobe and he sucked lightly.
I nearly purred, it felt so good.
“Use your words, Gwen.”
“Good,” I gasped. “It feels so good.”
“Then I guess you’re lucky it was me who came after you tonight, huh? Because I promise you, your evening would be going differently if Mickey O'Banion was here in your bedroom, Gwen.” His mouth left my ear, his hips stopped their rhythmic torture, his voice turned totally hollow. “He’s got a temper, especially when it comes to women. That temper has landed him in jail twice already in his twenty-nine years — once for assault during an ugly bar fight at The Banshee, once for trying to rape his high school girlfriend after breaking into her bedroom while her parents slept on down the hall.”
My blood turned to ice.
Graham wasn’t done. “Do you think, if he was here now, he’d bother turning you on? Getting you primed to come? Pulling those little mewls of pleasure from your mouth? Or do you think he’d just take what he wanted from you, then leave you broken after he’d had his fill, like a sadistic little boy with a porcelain doll he knows he’s too rough to play with but can’t stop himself from squeezing till it shatters apart in his hands?”
My body locked, every muscle going tight with tension, and my half-lidded eyes sprang fully open. For a long stretch of time — it felt like years, but I knew it was only seconds — I could only stare up into Graham’s face in utter shock, taking in the hard set of his mouth, the cruel bend to his brows. The switch from passion to pain was like a catapult inside me, a complete 180 degree u-turn that slingshotted me out of the grips of drugging desire and back into cold, hard reality.
He’d done this — kissed me, touched me, reduced me to a squirming, panting, pleading mess — just to teach me a lesson.
“Get off me,” I bit out, my tone icy with wrath. “Now.”