“I’m almost there,” she whispers.
“I said stop.”
Her lips thin, and she looks at me as if she would bite my head off if I allowed it.
This won’t do. This won’t do at all.
I shake my head, prowling over to her. She watches me through narrowed eyes, her fingers splayed across her thigh. I know what she wants. I know what I want, too.
I kneel beside her on the bed, but I don’t touch her. One hand on either side of her. I position myself above her so I can look in her eyes.
“You’re beautiful when you’re angry. You know that?”
“Then you must think me radiant,” she says, her voice tight with anger. “Since you love to piss me off.”
I lean down and brush my lips across hers, surprised when her body arches into me and her breathing quickly hitches. She’s stifling a moan when I pull away.
I bend down and whisper in her ear. “Absolutely fucking radiant. I love when I get to you, and the color of these cheeks—” I brush my finger over the apple of her cheek, watching her pale skin flush pink, then I trail my finger to her arse and cup her cheek hard, so that she hisses in a breath. “Match these.”
Her lips twitch. Her eyes dance, and suddenly she’s covering her mouth with her hand, giggling like a little girl. My heart surges in my chest, my cock painfully hard.
“You think this is funny?” But I’m having a hard time keeping a straight face. In seconds, I’ve got her pinned on the bed while I tickle her, and she’s convulsing in giggles.
“Tully!” she gasps and pants, “Oh my God, stop!”
I capture her wrists between my fingers and drag them above her head so she’s bared and vulnerable.
“I want you to read to me.”
She cocks her head to the side. “What do you mean? That is literally the last thing I expected you to say.”
“I want you to go in the living room. Choose a book. Sit on my lap, and read to me.”
I release her wrists and tip her to the side to deliver a teasing smack.
“Okayyy,” she says, shaking her head and reaching for her clothes.
“Ah-ah, love.”
Her eyes come to mine. “What?”
“No clothes.”
She smiles, as realization dawns on her. “You’re going to enjoy having me here, aren’t you?”
“Every fucking minute.”
* * *
Chapter 8
McKenna
His devious nature knows no bounds. It’s as if he’s stayed up nights plotting how to sexually torture me. It isn’t like I don’t enjoy it, though, and I wonder when things are good like this why I fight him so much. When I’m with him, the unsettled feeling of my heart’s at rest. I feel safe and… vulnerable.
Not so sure how I feel about the vulnerable part. I suppose that’s the part that makes me fight him. Maybe.
He heaves me up into his arms and carries me out to the living room. I shiver.
“You cold?”
“A little.”
He cranks a thermostat on the wall and snags a folded blanket as he walks by a chair.
“Oh, it’s a pretty blanket,” I say, fingering the crocheted squares. “Handmade?”
His brow furrows and he looks down at the blanket in his hands. “Maybe? I don’t pay much attention to those things.” That’s polite for, “I don’t fucking care.”
For some reason that strikes me as funny, and I can’t help but stifle a giggle.
“What?” He gives me a playful smack to the arse.
“Oh, nothing.” I’m not sure how to explain it.
You’re adorable when your dark brows go all stern and your eyes are focused on something? You’re very manly? Cave-manly?
Adorable isn’t the right word. There’s nothing about Tully that’s cute.
I think.
He plunks a book off the shelf and settles into an overstuffed armchair.
“Gulliver’s Travels? Really?”
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, it’s a story about a man who takes a trip and ends up in a place where all the people are tiny… so he’s like a giant? But the book is like three hundred years old, and rather… tedious… it can be a little dull with the way the prose carries on and on…”
He wraps his fingers around my jaw and makes me look at him.
“Babe.”
“Mm?”
“I don’t care if you read about Mary Fucking Poppins or whatever the fuck, I just want to hear you read to me.”
“Naked.”
“That’s right.”
“On your lap.”
“Uh huh.”
“While you most likely fondle me?”
A deep chuckle. “Precisely.”
I shake my head. “You’re a wicked man, Tully.”
He leans down, kisses, then bites my shoulder. I gasp and squirm, then he kisses it again.
“Why, thank you.”
Shaking my head, I open the book with trembling fingers, since I know any second he’s going to start to do some naughty things to me, and my body’s already primed and ready.
I begin to read. At first, he nuzzles my neck, his lips at the tender spot there making me moan a little. But I keep on, and keep reading.