He leaned forward and took my hair between his finger and thumb. Slowly, he twirled the strands around his finger, each twist lightly tugging against my scalp. “You should have been a cop. You’re very persuasive.”
“In that case, you could probably learn a thing or two from me. Your own skills are lacking.”
“I don’t know.” He dropped his voice to a low murmur. “I think if I tried hard enough, I could persuade you into a few things.”
I raised my eyebrows. We’d moved on from talking about business. Once again, the Master of Deflection was doing what he’d been doing for most of our evening together.
“I still haven’t forgiven you for your antics yesterday, so I wouldn’t even try it.” I tapped his hand so he released his hold on my hair. It tumbled away from his finger so I could smooth the strands back down and gave him a pointed look.
“Forgiven me, or yourself?” His eyes glinted knowingly. Almost self-assuredly.
Hell, there was no almost about it. He knew exactly how I’d felt when he’d left me. He knew exactly what he’d done to me, and I did, too. Denying that I was annoyed at myself because I could still remember how it’d felt when he’d taken my chin in his hand was pointless.
“Both,” I answered, sitting up a little straighter. “That doesn’t invite you to exercise poor judgment and make another attempt to mix business with pleasure.”
“Attempt? Sweetheart, if I’d attempted to do that, there would have been a lot less business and a lot more pleasure before I’d left you.”
“You think I’d give in to you so easily?”
At those words, Damien slid smoothly across the leather seats. His arm, still resting along the back of them, hung down behind me, his thumb just brushing against my back. The rest of his body was mere inches from mine, and I bit the inside of my lip as he trailed his fingertips up my bare arm. My eyes followed his feather-light touch while his stayed fixated on my face.
He coasted his fingers over my shoulder where he touched them to my jaw. Lightly, he tilted my face around and up until I had no choice but to look him in the eyes again—to look right there where I could see exactly how much he wanted me.
Dark.
Hot.
Full of temptation.
Heavy and intense, his eyes screamed of raw lust and selfish need.
“I don’t think you’d give in at all,” he whispered. “I think your body would do that for you, and you’d be helpless to it.”
“You think a lot of yourself, don’t you?” I said quietly. I touched my finger to his belt, then ran it up the length of his torso, ghosting it over the solid packs of muscle that made up his body until I flicked the starchy collar of his shirt. “You think you can do this and I’ll give in to what is essentially a biological reaction? I’m stronger than you take me for, you know.”
He curled his fingers around my chin and dipped his face to mine. “She says with a racing heart.”
I pressed one finger against his mouth and ran another along his strong thigh…right up to where his hard cock was straining against the soft material of his pants. “Don’t you hate it when your attraction to someone is so obvious?”
His jaw clenched. “If you have any sense at all inside that gorgeous head of yours, you’ll move your hand.”
Now, who was the helpless one?
“I thought you’d make me give in,” I said, trailing my nail down the length of his cock and back up again. He twitched beneath my touch. I was playing with fire, but it was too fun to stop. “Looks like I’m not the one struggling right now.”
The hand that was just hanging limply clasped the back of my neck as Damien adjusted his body. His other grasped my hip. His fingers dug right into my skin, so hard it was almost painful, but it was the way he yanked me toward him that made me gasp.
My body was now flush against his. I wasn’t even sure if I was sitting on the seat or if he was holding me just off of it, but heat spread through my body when my hand pressed hard against his cock.
“Struggling?” The word was husky in my ear. “I’m fucking struggling all right, Dahlia. I’m struggling not to roll that damn dress to your hips and fuck you stupid. Struggling not to make you pull my cock from my pants and play with it, since you touched it. Struggling not to find out what it would be like to see my dick in your mouth.”
My clit throbbed, adding to the wetness between my legs. My hand was literally curved right around his cock, and he held on to me so tight that from the position I was in, rolling up my dress wouldn’t be a hardship for him.