I smiled sweetly up at him. “Is that what you’ve lowered yourself to, Lucan? Are you Daddy’s lapdog, running off to him to yap about how the mean lady wouldn’t answer your questions?”
“Or I could do whatever it takes to get the answers out of you myself,” he retorted.
“And what’s that?” I pressed my advantage, seeing his reactions, remembering how I’d gotten Felix off balance. Leaning forward, I slid my hand down his chest. “Maybe I’ll enjoy it.”
Lucan’s voice hardened. “Not as much as I will.”
He pushed me backward without warning, crowding me until I reached the edge of the bed. Rather than let him call the shots any farther than that, I took charge in the only direction I was sure I could compel him—grabbing him by his shirt collar and yanking him down with me on the mattress.
He caught himself on his hands, braced over me, his pale eyes flaring in the dimness. Before he could pull away, I tucked my knee between his legs and slid it against the hardness behind his fly. “Youareenjoying this quite a bit. What a depraved man you’ve become. But I’m not a kid anymore either. You can’t play me the same way you did back then.”
“Playyou?” Lucan sputtered before he clenched his jaw. Instead of jerking away, he dipped closer, his gaze fixed on my face. “This is all a game to you, of course. Except you can’t help getting off on it too. Are you as wet now as you were for Darius?”
I fluttered my eyelashes at him. “Are you brave enough to check and find out?”
I hitched my knee a little faster, provoking a tic in Lucan’s cheek. He shoved his hand down my leggings to finger my panties, and I bit my lip against a gasp.
For all the roughness of his words and the initial motion, he stroked over the admittedly damp fabric with shocking tenderness. It woke up way too many of my nerves to tingling alertness. As he increased the pressure, I felt more slickness seep out of me.
Lucan smiled, but it was a cold smile, all cruel satisfaction. He rocked his hand against me, studying my reactions with the analytical gaze that missed so little. Heat tickled across my cheeks, but I managed to keep my face impassive, my lips shut.
It shouldn’t feel this good, but it did. I wasn’t sure how much it was his fingers rubbing up and down over my pussy, his thumb pushing down on my clit with each pulse of his hand, and how much the feel of him hard against my leg, knowing I hadhimheated up too. I could bring him to the brink, and as soon as he made a move for more, I’d leave him with the worst case of blue balls in the history of the universe.
I adjusted the strokes of my leg to make sure I was working him from base to head, brushing his balls each time I lowered my knee. A flush was creeping across his face too, and maybe a faint sheen of sweat at the top of his brow. His hand flicked faster against my sensitive flesh, and I swallowed down a whimper. Pleasure was spreading all through my core along with an urgent need for more, but I couldn’t let him see how much he’d affected me.
“I’m going to make you come undone, but not the way you want,” he promised, but there was a faint waver in his voice, as if he wasn’t as sure of himself as he wanted to sound.
How many women had he been with since me? The caress of his hand against my sex wasn’t particularly practiced—and that was part of what was turning me on so quickly. It didn’t feel like a man going through the motions but something raw and hungry.
I inhaled as evenly as I could to steady my own voice. I could make use of his unsettled state.
“Whatever you want to believe. I’m not sure you’re in controlanyway you think you are. I hear an entire deal with my brother went wrong under your watch? You haven’t questioned this Mick guy about how it all fell apart? Too busy trying to prove what a tough guy you are to the ladies, I guess.”
“Mick’s been through enough,” Lucan said with an edge in his voice. “He practically died thanks to your brother’s people—or should I sayyourpeople? He had to watch good men die.”
So he really believed that. I guessed that explained some of his hostility toward me, even though I hadn’t known anything about the deal until well after it’d gone down, regardless of who was to blame.
I opened my mouth to question him further and immediately shut it again to clamp down on a moan. Heat was surging up from my pussy, the tension building and unfurling at the same time. More than anything, I wanted to clamp my thighs around his hand to urge him on, but the second I showed I was that into his attentions, he’d stop.
I focused as much as I could on the stroke of my leg against his groin. I teased my fingers along the side of his neck to distract him from examining my responses, and his eyes flickered shut. His hand hitched against me, swiveling over my clit at just the right speed, once, twice, with a fresh burst of pleasure—
A dam broke inside me. As I came, I couldn’t keep quiet. A choked cry burst from my lips; my head arched back against the bedspread. Pleasure washed all through my body like I hadn’t felt in years, not from someone else’s touch.
Lucan yanked himself away. He stared down at me, his cock straining against his slacks, his eyes startlingly wild. “Fuck,” he spat at me, and marched out of the room without another word.
I pushed myself upright on shaky arms, watching the door thump shut behind him. My breath rushed in and out of my lungs raggedly. The afterglow of the momentary physical release was already fading.
Technically, I’d won. He’d meant to tease me until I was begging without letting me tip over the edge, but I’d gotten off despite his intentions, while he’d been left hard as a rock. Ishouldbe triumphant.
So why did I feel like I’d lost something by falling apart at the stroke of his hand?