Avenge Me

“Oh.”

“I mean, a driver.”

“That makes more sense. Kind of.”

He held his hand out and she took it, delicate fingers curling around his. “I assume you want to get out without being seen?”

“I’d rather not parade back through the ballroom, now that you mention it.”

“You don’t want to advertise that you’re leaving with me?”

“Not so much. Can we keep it clandestine? That’s pretty sexy, really.”

“You’re ashamed,” he said.

A slash of color faded into her cheeks. “Maybe a little.”

“Because you want me so much.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s bad to you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think having sex with a stranger is pretty bad.”

“But you sort of like the idea of being a bad girl, don’t you?”

The color in her cheeks deepened. “Seriously, let’s go.”

“We’re going to have fun,” he said, tugging her down the empty hall. Fun was the wrong word for it, though. He could already sense that.

But it would be a release.

And he needed one. More than he’d realized.

When they got into the elevator and the doors closed, he felt the tension wrap around them like a cloak. Thick and heavy. He thought it might suffocate him. He could have her. Push the stop button and push her against the wall. Work it out in five minutes. Take the edge off the intense need.

But it wasn’t what he wanted. Not really.

He wanted to make them both wait.

Wanted to have her to himself. A whole night. A night to play with his demons instead of shoving them down deep. He would feel worse if he didn’t get the sense that she was doing the same. That she was about to perform an exorcism, using his body as holy water.

That suited him just fine.

But the wait didn’t.

“These elevators are effing slow,” she said, letting out a long breath as a five flashed across the light board at the top of the wall.

“They are a bit. I hadn’t noticed until now.”

“Me either. They seemed normal until tonight.”

Four, three, two, L. Thank God.

The doors opened and he walked out ahead of her. He didn’t touch her. Not again. Because it would be too tempting. It would be too much. He was on the edge as it was, and one more brush of her soft skin on his and he would lose it completely.

He picked up his phone. “Car. Up front. Now.”

The lobby doors opened just as his black town car pulled up to the front of the building.

He opened the door and waited. “Get in,” he said when she approached and paused.

She obeyed, lowering her head, the lights from the building shimmering over that hair, still contained in the tight bun. Heat burst through him, starting in his gut and spreading outward, pooling in his groin.

He got in and closed the door. “The Black Book Hotel,” he said to his driver before leaning back in the seat and pressing a button that put up a black divider between them and the man in front.

They hadn’t exchanged names. And that suited him just fine. He didn’t need a name to know that tonight she was his. Though, she might feel differently.

“Did you want to exchange names?” he asked, not sure, if she did, if he would be honest or not.

“I sort of like it like this.”

“Do you?”

“Not being me for the night? It works.”

He’d been right about the demons. Maybe she had a husband or boyfriend. Or it was related to what she felt she owed Jason. He didn’t care. Didn’t care if she loved someone else, as long as tonight, she didn’t think of anyone else.

None of that would come between them tonight. Nothing existed tonight but the fantasy. But a few blessed moments of feeling like there was something in his life that wasn’t beyond him.

“I’m going to kiss you again,” he said. “Come here.”

She was across the car from him, her seat belt buckled. She pressed the button slowly and then put her hands on the seat, crawling to him slowly, on her hands and knees.

Everything in him tightened to the point where he thought he might break. It was the practical way to move across the car; he knew that. But there was something about it that grabbed him by the throat and shook him hard.

His eyes dropped to her breasts, emphasized by the motion, pale and round, spilling over the top of her black dress. Her red lips were parted slightly and it was so easy to imagine them wrapped around his cock. And her hair loose, wrapped around his hand...

Not yet.

He captured her face and leaned in, kissing her firmly, his tongue sliding along the seam of her mouth, delving in deeply when she parted for him. A muffled sound escaped her and he captured it, kissing her harder.

Lust, need, fired through him. All heat and desire, the kind he’d never known had existed before. He’d tasted it. On the edge of dreams, with fantasy women, when he woke up, sweaty and wrapped in his sheets, slick with shame and release.

But never in reality. Because he’d always held a part of himself back. And he’d imagined he always would.

Not tonight.