“I’m not.”
“You weren’t there.”
“I didn’t have to be. I know you, Sebastian. I know what a good person you are and I know that you did everything you could to save Dylan. What happened to him was out of your control.”
The words slam into me like bullets and my much-touted control shatters like glass. Like nothing. The iron grip I’ve kept on my emotions—on myself—for so long rends into a million unfixable pieces.
I grab Aria then, yank her to me. Shut her up the only way I know how, with my mouth against hers. With my tongue and teeth and lips sucking, licking, biting at hers sharply enough to cause pain. To draw blood.
She gasps, her hands coming up to my shoulders and I figure this is it. This is when she finally understands and pushes me away.
But she doesn’t push, doesn’t try to wriggle free from what I know is a punishing grip. Instead, she tangles her fingers in my shirt and pulls me closer. She opens to me, giving herself to me completely when I have never been less deserving.
Frustrated, furious, aroused, I rip my lips from hers. Whirl her around and slam her back against the wall—not with enough force to hurt, but definitely hard enough to soothe the savage pressure building to a boiling point inside of me.
“Do it,” she tells me, her voice low and husky in my ear.
I think about stopping, think about stepping back and walking away before things get completely out of control between us. Pushing Aria’s boundaries is fun, taking her farther, deeper, than she’s ever been before arouses me like nothing ever has. Nothing ever will.
But this is different. This is her deliberately provoking me, deliberately trying to get me to lose control in a desperate need to appease the violence inside of me. It’s wrong. It’s dangerous. And I want it—want her—more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. Even redemption.
Knowing that should stop me, should have me pulling back and walking away as fast as I possibly can. But I’m caught in her web now, completely wrapped up in the sweet surrender of her demand, the desperate demands of her hands and body and soul.
Crushing her mouth with my own, I grab on to the front collar of her shirt, where the first button brings the two sides together. And then I yank hard. Buttons go flying in all directions and the shirt falls to the floor in tatters.
“This is my work shirt,” she murmurs against my lips.
“Yeah, well, now it’s my play shirt.” I reach down, scoop it up from where it fell and rip first one sleeve off and then the other.
She’s gaping at me now, eyes wide and wild. “What are you doing?”
In response, I pull her hands together behind her back, tie them with one of the sleeves. There’s a lot of give in the material and because I know it’ll relax at the first tug from her, I tie it a little too tight. Then double knot it to make sure she doesn’t get free before I let her free.
She’s still wearing her bra, though—a lacy, white thing that manages to look both demure and totally debauched at the same time. Of course, the fact that she’s tied up could have something to do with that perception. As well as the fuzzy awareness creeping into her eyes—the first step into subspace.
But no matter how good she looks like that, I want more. I want everything she has to give and more—need it with a desperation that is both uncomfortable and exciting as hell.
Yanking her bra down so that the cups actually press against her breasts from the bottom, lifting them up even higher than they already are, I drag my thumb roughly around first one areola and then the other.
Her nipples are already hard. I can’t resist pinching them, making them harder. Any more than I can resist the little gasp she makes or the way her lower body moves restlessly against mine.
I do it again, harder this time, and she cries out, turns her head so that her face is buried against my biceps. And then she bites, hard enough to have me swearing, long and low and vile. More than hard enough to have my dick jumping in my fucking pants.
Before I can think better of it, before I can even attempt to calm myself down, I tangle my hands in her hair and yank. Hard. Aria’s head hits the wall, but she doesn’t seem to notice as I grind my mouth to hers. As I take and take and take.
She tastes bittersweet—like pain and pleasure and every craving I’ve ever had. Like coffee and caramel and the wild desert wind that late at night sweeps through the city in barely controlled gusts. She tastes like everything I’ve ever needed and I want to stay here, right here, like this forever. My tongue in her mouth. My chest against her breasts. My dick rocking slowly against her sex.
Breaking away from her lips is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I want her naked. Open. Completely vulnerable to me and everything I want to do with her.
I tug at her skirt, yank it roughly down her legs. Then grab her delicate lace panties and tear them off with one twist of my hand. Her gasp turns into a moan as I slide two fingers through her already damp flesh and then thrust them roughly inside her. It’s a bad move on my part because now that I’m here, now that I can feel her warm heat clutching at me, I want to stay right here forever.
But it’s not enough. When it comes to Aria, nothing is ever enough. I always want more, always want to take everything she has to give and then more. More. More.
I’m desperate, devastated, completely enthralled—and in these moments I’m more out of control than I’ve been in my entire adult life. I want her. Want to touch her, taste her. Want to pour myself inside her until—
With a groan, I bend my head and take as much of her breast into my mouth as I can manage.
“Sebastian!” It’s a high-pitched plea for help, for relief, for surcease, but I have no surcease in me right now. I have no mercy—not for her and not for myself.