“You’re soaked,” I muttered against her skin, the words raw. “I can feel it.”
A sob caught in her chest. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell you the truth?” I rocked again, harder. The friction was torture. “Tell you how much you want this?”
“I hate you,” she chanted, desperate.
“I don’t care.”
My hand on her thigh slid higher, pushing the delicate fabric. My fingers found bare skin. Hot, trembling. I traced the lace edge. The lace was damp, the heat beneath it an inferno. I pressed the heel of my hand against her, and her body bowed off the coats.
“Alois.” My name. A broken plea.
It broke me. The last control snapped. I fumbled between us. The button, the zipper. I freed myself, the air cool on my tender skin.
I shoved the lace aside. One finger slid into her. Hermuscles clenched. I groaned, my forehead on her shoulder. A second finger, stretching her.
“Look at me,” I demanded.
Her eyes opened. Her gaze locked on mine, drowning. She bit her lip, trying to stay quiet as she moved against my hand.
I withdrew. She made a sound of loss.
I positioned myself at her entrance. The broad head of my cock pressed against her, nudging into the slick, tender flesh. I held there, trembling with the effort of not driving in. Every instinct screamed to bury myself, to lose myself in her, to fuck the fight away.
This was the edge. The door.
Her nails dug into my arms. Her breath came in sharp pants, fogging the air. Her body was open, waiting, her eyes on mine. The hatred was still there, but fused now with a wild, hungry want. For me. For this.
Outside, the muffled music swelled.
The pressure was a blade’s edge. My cock throbbed, a brutal, insistent pulse against her. The slick heat of her was a promise, a torment. Every muscle in my back and thighs was corded iron, shaking with the effort of stillness. I needed to hear it. I needed the words. “Tell me,” I ground out, my voice shredded. “Tell me you want this.”
Her eyes were wild, her chest heaving against mine. The tension was still there, a live wire in the dark. But beneath it, under the fury and the fight, was the raw, naked truth she’d been hiding for days. I’d seen flashes of it in boardrooms, across dinner tables, in the way her gaze would snag on my hands and then dart away.
I didn’t move. I let the pressure speak. The broad head of me, notching into her, stretching her just that fraction. A whimper tore from her throat. Her nails were anchors in mybiceps, drawing blood, I was sure of it. The pain was clean, sharp, a grounding wire. “The truth, Bea. Just once.”
She shook her head, her dark hair a riot against the velvet coats. The emerald silk of her gown was crushed between us, a ruined flag. I could smell her perfume, something expensive and floral, and under it, the musk of her arousal. It was the most honest thing in the room.
“You want me to beg?” Her voice was a ragged scrape. “Is that it? You need to hear me beg?”
“Yes.” The word was absolute.
I lowered, my lips a breath from hers. “I’ve watched you,” I whispered, the confession torn from a place I never visited. “I’ve watched you spin your lies and build your walls. I’ve watched you look at me like I’m a problem to be managed. But your body doesn’t lie. It never has.” I rocked my hips, the smallest, most torturous increment. Not entering, just reminding. Her inner muscles fluttered, a desperate pulse around the tip of me. “Tell me.”
Her defiance was a beautiful, crumbling thing. I saw the war in her brown eyes—the strategist, the controller, being overrun by the woman. Her jaw was clenched, her lower lip trapped between her teeth. A tear escaped, tracing a path through the perfect makeup on her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.
The music outside swelled again, a stupid, graceful waltz. In here, it was all grunts and heat and the rustle of fabric. Two animals in a dark hole.
Her voice, when it came, was muffled against my sternum. So quiet I almost missed it over the thundering of my own heart. “I want you.”
The air left my lungs. A direct hit. “Again.”
She lifted her head. Her eyes were shattered glass, full of fury and shame and a longing so deep it hollowed me out. “Iwant you, Alois. I have. I hate it. I hate you for it. But I want you. Now. Please.”
The ‘please’ did it. A broken syllable that unstitched me from the inside.
The control I’d been clinging to vaporized. A growl ripped from my throat, something primal and victorious. I didn’t enter her slowly. I surged forward, one driving, relentless thrust, burying myself to the hilt in her scalding, tight heat.