I shrug. “I guess I should take that as a compliment.”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t want this game to end any more than I do. Why else would you hold on to that phone, knowing your freedom hangs in the balance?”
“Because I will not let you manipulate me.”
I give her my most disarming smile, before I grab her around the waist and pull her to me. “Is that right?”
She plants both her hands on my chest and tries to shove me off her, but the effort is half-hearted. She’s concentrating on my lips, breathing fast and shallow. Telling me in every way but with her words that she’s addicted to the taste of me.
“I admire the effort,” I tell her sarcastically. “Standing ovation.”
“You think you affect me a lot more than you actually do, you know,” she says through gritted teeth. “I’m onto you, Anton.”
“What exactly are you ‘onto,’ Jessa?”
She stops struggling for a moment, her eyes bright with righteousness. “You’re bored with your life,” she snarls. “You want a distraction. And I’m the kind of easy prey you’ve always wanted.”
I’m not expecting that, and for a moment, she actually succeeds in catching me off guard. But I recover quickly. “And how did you come to that conclusion?”
“I was watching you tonight.”
“I noticed.”
She ignores that bait. “You charm the room like you charmed me that first night. You control everyone around you. Every woman in there ogles you like you’re God’s gift to Earth. But I don’t. I don’t give a shit who you are.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” I ask, gripping her waist a little tighter. “When you’re alone in your bed at night and you can’t fall asleep without wondering where I am, what I’m doing, if I’m thinking of you like you’re thinking of me?”
“I don’t have to tell myself anything,” she hisses. “I can see it all on your face.”
“Is that why you can’t stop staring?”
Her eyes drop to my lips again. Color rises in her cheeks and her lips part. Instantly, my cock is a steel rod in my pants.
Jhené can doll herself up all she wants, but she’s got nothing on the woman in front of me. She is fucking magnificent.
“I’m not the only one staring,” she musters up with as much bravado as she can find.
I smirk. Unlike Jessa, I’m not the least bit ashamed of my desires.
“Because I’m imagining all the things I’m going to do to you,” I rasp to her. “All the things I haven’t already done…”
Is it a threat? A promise? I leave that question open to interpretation. Her eyes go cloudy as she grapples for the answer. Desperate to know but too proud to ask.
Her exhale is warm across my face. I find myself leaning towards her just as she shoves her doubts aside and tilts her chin up to meet me.
Our lips slam together, all anger and passion and indignation.
She claws at my chest at the same time I grab a fistful of her delicious ass. I’ve just pushed my tongue into her hungry mouth when the door opens and I hear a familiar gasp.
Jessa jumps away from me instantly.
Jhené gawks in at us with a pinched expression on her face. She looks like she’s swallowed something horrible.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
If possible, she seems even more insulted by my tone. “I… I wanted to find you.”