“I demand, and receive, exactly what I want in bed.”
“Then it’s sad that what you demand and receive is so paltry. And unsatisfying.”
“I think you’re full of it,” she threw at him, her eyes overly bright. “The truth of the matter is, everyone has different bodies. You can’t make sweeping statements like—”
“Like, I can make you come?” Another laugh came out of him, astonishing him. But then, this whole scenario was astonishing, and here he was. Still participating in it. “But I can. In minutes, as I said.”
She moved forward in a display of aggression that he would never have tolerated in any of the women he normally played with.
But there was something about Rory that entertained him. He couldn’t have said why. She was different. All wrong, in fact.
Yet that wasn’t really what he was concentrating on as she put her hands on her hips, stuck her face in his, and scowled at him.
Actually scowled.
At him.
“Okay, big guy,” she threw at him, which was obviously unacceptable on every level, and yet only made him hard. “Then prove it.”
CHAPTER THREE
RORYHADMADEa mistake.
A huge mistake, she thought while everything inside her shuddered and those dark, navy blue eyes of his seemed to...turn to steel.
It was as if he’d put on a mask, suddenly.
Or worse,a voice in her suggested,taken one off.
It wasn’t that his face changed, really. He was still as beautiful. As striking, no matter he wasn’t her type. It was as if he was suddenly...morethan all that.And she could feel her response prickle all over her, inside and out, until she felt almost feverish.
Hot. Cold.
Back and forth.
While she was wholly unable to jerk her gaze away from his.
Rory had the insane notion that he’d picked her up and was holding her in the palm of his hand, though he was only staring down at her in that darkly unreadable way of his. And wasn’t touching her at all.
Another man might have reacted. She’d banked on a reaction, but Conrad onlyburned.And studied her as if he was a sheathed weapon she had no business getting near.
She could suddenly see nothing else when she looked at him but that danger.
Rory couldn’t say she’d ever paid that much attention to her nipples before in all her life, but now they were so sensitive that the weight of her T-shirt against them was almost unbearable.
But if she let herself think too much about why, she thought she might pass out on the spot.
And the way her heart kept battering at her ribs, that was a very real worry.
“See?” She made herself demand, aware that her voice was a little too much on the uneven side. That wasn’t good. But she was still standing there, hands on hips and her face in his, and she was sure that if she didn’t double down, she might die.Or worse,something in her whispered. “All talk and no—”
“That’s enough.”
There was something about that voice of his. It wasn’t harsh. It wasn’t sharp or loud, even. If she’d had to describe it, Rory would have said it waspatient,and surely there was no reason that word should have rattled around inside her like that. Particularly when it wasn’t the sort of patience she would normally think of when she used that word. He was no saintly, self-sacrificing grandmother type.
His patience was charged, somehow. Weaponized.
But the truly astonishing thing was that she simply...obeyed. Her mouth shut with an audible snap. Her hands slid off her hips. She didn’t exactly shrink or cringe, but she stood normally.