Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (37 page)

My heart had started beating harder the moment I’d seen him headed across the bar to me. Now, it picked up the pace.

“Are we going to dinner?” I asked.

“Why?” His voice was silky, deceptively soft. “Are you hungry?”

“Um…actually, yes.” I was, but I needed something else first. My breasts were tingling, and the throb at my center was telling me it needed his hand there
now.

Hemi held my gaze, and it was a faceoff.

He won, but then, we’d both known he would. My hands went to the tie at the side of my dress and pulled at it, and then I lowered the side zip until, with a whisper of cotton, the dress fell open to my waist.

He didn’t touch me. He just looked at the wisps of transparent pearl-pink fabric that made up my bra, at the feathers of lace edging the band. The moment stretched out as I watched him look at me and…not move. He finally said, “You’re wearing stockings, I noticed. Unusual.”

“Well, yes. I am.”

“Describe them.”

I almost laughed. “What?”

“You heard me. You bought new lingerie. Describe it.”

“Is this my interview for writing marketing copy, or what?” You see how I was still in there swinging?

“You can call it that, if you like.” His eyes were holding me in place, pinning me down. “Or you can just call it a question I’m asking you to answer. And I’m waiting.”

The swinging was over, because another hot, sharp spike of desire went straight to my core, so sudden and so hard that I shifted on the seat. He saw that, too. I knew right then that I
was
going to see some consequences for the conference room, but not in any way I’d expected or could anticipate. He was going to make it last, and he was going to make it good.

Are you thinking that he was too demanding, too controlling? But you see, he knew how much I loved him that way. Hemi knew all my dirty secrets, and he loved every one of them. It was like he’d said back in that café. We were wired the same way, and he’d never given me anything I hadn’t wanted. He gave me tenderness when I needed it, and maybe when he did, too. And he gave me ferocity when we both needed something more.

Like right now.

“Well, um…” I said. “I bought this bra. It’s, well, it’s got lace trim, and it has little bows at the bottom of each strap, and you can see through it. Well, actually, I bought it so
you
could see through it.”

“So I could watch your nipples harden,” he said. ‘So I could touch them through it.”

I had to swallow. “Yes.”

“Show me how you want me to touch you, then,” he said.

My gaze flew to the partition, and Hemi said, with the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth revealing the smile he was hiding, “Charles won’t stop until I tell him to.”

“You…” I had to stop and breathe. “You told him it would be a while?”

He didn’t bother to answer that. “Show me.”

I looked at him some more, and then I did it. I lifted a hand slowly to my face, ran it down my jaw, then over my lips, tracing their shape. Hemi loved my mouth, and I knew it.

It worked. He didn’t say anything, but I could swear his own breathing had picked up.

I didn’t smile, even though the satisfaction was warming me as I watched his reaction. Instead, I ran my hand down my throat, tipping my head back as I did. My lips parted to let in the breath that was coming harder already, and Hemi watched that, too.

Fingertips tracing over my collarbones, now, teasing out a response from my sensitized flesh, my tingling nerves. Up and down between my breasts, that spot where the touch of Hemi’s lips could make me squirm in exactly the way I was starting to squirm now, until, at last, I reached the low-cut edge that stopped halfway up my breasts and began to trace over it, still with the lightest touch, still excruciatingly slowly.

Surely my nipples had never been this hard, or tingled this much without even being touched. But then, the bra’s fabric was so thin, they’d been stimulated just by the cotton of the dress rubbing over them all day long. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe it was just my treacherous body, and Hemi’s effect on it. All I knew was that right now, it was telling me the wait had better be over.

So I ended it. I put a soft hand on each breast and began to run my fingers over the lightly abrasive material, circling around my nipples, then brushing over them. Drawing out the response, reveling in it.

The ache between my legs was almost unbearable now, sending up an answering throb with every squeeze of my fingers on those tender peaks, with every second that Hemi watched me. The flames were licking me as if it were his tongue there. I could
feel
his tongue there. I
needed
his tongue there. Why didn’t he do it?

“Lift your skirt,” he said, his voice coming out hoarse. “Pull it above your waist.”

Yes.
I didn’t play games, because I wanted it. I forced myself to do it slowly all the same, though, even though all I needed was for him to take off my clothes and
touch
me.

When he saw what was under the dress, he got more still than ever. He was frozen, in fact.

I wasn’t. My dress was still on my shoulders, but lying open to the waist, the full skirt pulled up high and spread on the seat around me as I lay back on the seat and showed Hemi the rest of my purchases.

First, my beautiful ankle-strapped heels. Above them, stockings so sheer they were barely a whisper against my skin, ending in tops edged with white lace. And above
that
…a G-string to match the bra. A piece of lingerie so skimpy, it could barely justify its existence, let alone its price tag. It was made of the same pearl-pink material as the bra, the tiniest triangle of sheer fabric in front, and absolutely nothing else to it but a couple of ribboned straps.

Oh, and there was the garter belt. It matched, too. Delicate, lacy scallops ran along my lower belly, offering up a semicircle of pale skin for Hemi’s viewing pleasure before the G-string hid me from view. Well, partially.

Hemi still hadn’t moved, and he didn’t speak, but the dark flush on his cheekbones sent a message I had no trouble at all reading.

“Do you like what you see?” I asked in a throaty voice that belonged to a much curvier woman.

“Not yet,” he said, making my head jerk up in surprise. “But I will when you’re touching yourself.”

He held me with his gaze, and if I’d been melting before? Now, I was liquid.

I said, when he didn’t go on, “What? Now?”

“Yeh. Now. And while you show me how you do it, you’re going to talk to me. You didn’t do so well describing your lingerie, so I’m going to give you a failing mark and move on. You’re going to tell me your nastiest, dirtiest, most secret fantasy. The one you use when I’ve been gone too long, the one that makes you come the hardest and moan in spite of yourself and blush the most to remember. The one you can’t believe you let yourself even think.”

“What if it isn’t about you?” I asked sweetly. I still had a little push-back left, it seemed. I treated him to my most innocent look, pretending I wasn’t so wet I was embarrassing myself.

If I’d thought I’d disconcert him, I’d been wrong. “Ah,” he said, nothing but dark satisfaction in his melted-chocolate voice. “Then you’ll give me something else to take up with you later, won’t you? Make it dirty, sweetheart. Seems I’ve got to remind you of a few things tonight. So go on. Inspire me.”

I didn’t want to do it, and I was dying to do it. Well, to be honest, I was dying for
him
to do it. But one of us had better do it, because the throb between my legs needed attention, and it needed it now.

I didn’t give in entirely, of course. I made him wait. I started by stroking the bare skin between the scalloped edge of the garter belt and the top of the G-string. Over and over, my fingertips pleasuring, stimulating, my other hand going to my inner thigh above the top of the stocking, tracing, moving slowly up.

When my eyes drifted shut at the intensity of it, Hemi said, “Oh, no. You’re not doing that. Eyes open. Look at me. And tell me. Don’t disappoint me, Hope.”

I forced my eyes open, and there he was, his dark gaze pinning me in place exactly like the butterfly I always felt with him. I said, “Uh, I guess…I imagine, uh…” My fingers stilled, and so did my tongue.

“No,” he said. “Tell me like it’s happening. Tell me what I’m doing. And get busy. I want to see your hand disappear in there, and I want to see it now. I’m going to watch you come, and you’re going to show me. Right now.”

I took a breath, looked into his eyes, and did it. It wasn’t exactly an effort to find the right place. My hand smoothed over the damp fabric, which felt pretty fabulous all by itself, then edged inside, and I hauled in a hard breath as my fingers finally touched me where I needed it most.

All I wanted to do was close my eyes and enjoy it. Instead, I talked, because Hemi had ordered me to, and I needed to obey him exactly as much as I’d needed to disobey him earlier, but for an entirely different reason. For a reason that had nothing to do with logic and self-determination and independence, and everything to do with being the other half of the woman I was, here in the secret spaces, in the dark.

“We’re in a restaurant,” I began. Haltingly, because…could I really say this? “A fancy one. Candles on the tables, white tablecloths, good silverware, classical music, you know. You’ve taken me there, but you’ve told me it’s going to be different tonight, but I don’t know how, or when it will happen, and I’m nervous. It’s, um, dark outside, low lights inside, so people walking by can, uh, look in and see.”

Touching myself felt so good. So incredibly good. “There are all these men at the other tables,” I went on, part of me burning with embarrassment at what I was saying, what I was doing, the other part drawn irresistibly onward. “Men in suits. They’ve been…looking at me all night long, because I’m wearing something…” I could feel myself blushing even as my hand found its pace and started to carry me up, riding that wave.

“What?” Hemi asked. “What are you wearing?”

“Something…too revealing.” My fingers were a whisper over swollen, aching flesh. “A jersey dress, red, and a bra like this one. They can all see my nipples getting hard, and they’re all looking. And you’re not…” I drew in a shaky breath. “Not sitting across from me. You’re beside me. You’re telling me to eat, making me drink my wine, and I’m doing it, but you…you…”

“Yes?” His gaze was burning me, compelling me onward.

“You’ve got your hand under the tablecloth. It’s on my thigh, and you say, ‘Take a drink, sweetheart,’ and when I do…you lift up my skirt under the table and put your hand on me. Inside my…my thong. You’re rubbing me, and you’re telling me…”

“What am I telling you?”

“That you’re going to…” I was so close. The tingle had long since turned to a hum, and then to a pulsating beat that resonated deep inside me. “That you’re going to take me home and…”

I looked into his eyes, seeing in his face the absolute confirmation of everything I was saying, and feeling it pushing me higher.

I wanted to stop telling him. I wanted to close my eyes, too. But I couldn’t do either thing, because Hemi wouldn’t let me, and because I needed to watch him looking at me, to watch him being so turned on by me, and I needed to say it out loud, too. I needed to share it, because it was too exciting not to.

“You tell me,” I went on, “that you’re going to take me home and tie me to your bed, and you’re going to spank me, and then, when I’m all pink and warm for you, when I’m shaking, when I’m moaning and begging you to stop…you’re going to fuck me hard, over and over, until I scream. Until I can’t walk. Until I’m your slave. And while you’re telling me…you’re making me come. I’m sitting at the table, and every man there is watching me, and I’m coming so hard, grabbing the edge of the table, biting my lip and trying to hide it, but I can’t. And you let them all watch me. You let them all see what you’re doing to me.”

It was too much. I broke off, gasping as the wave of pleasure broke over me and dragged me under. I kept my hand moving, because I couldn’t have stopped it, desperate to keep it going, to release the unbearable tension.

I came again and again, one orgasm after the other, climbing up and falling back the tiniest bit only to climb again. And Hemi watched that, too.

Hemi

If a man sets out to play with fire, he may just get burned.

I’d made Hope do it to excite her. And, yes, to dominate her, too, because that excited both of us. Neither of us may have had the best day ever, but this part of it? This part was going to be perfect.

When she’d walked out on me this afternoon, it had taken every bit of self-control I’d had not to go after her, throw her over my shoulder, haul her back into that room, and…yes. To do all those things she’d just said.

But I hadn’t done any of it, had I? She’d drawn the line, and I’d respected her decision. I’d waited until seven to collect her, too, even as my focus grew harder to maintain and my eyes kept straying to the clock. Even as the disciplined part of my brain continued to deal with the disastrous consequences of three weeks away from the office, of a hand missing from the tiller.