Play Me Hard (8 page)

It goes on forever, seconds bleeding into minutes as I keep him locked against me with my arms, my legs. Not that he seems in any hurry to move, but I’m not taking any chances. I feel fragile, wrung out,
desperate
, and I need these moments with him. The quiet after the storm.

I keep waiting for him to try to pull away, but he doesn’t. Instead, he rests his forehead in the crook of my neck and presses soft kisses to my jaw, my shoulder, my collarbone. Wherever he can reach as we slowly, slowly come back down.

When it’s over, when I can finally stand the idea of Sebastian letting me go, I loosen my grip. He pulls back a little, looks straight into my eyes, which I know are puffy and watery, confused and hurt. So hurt. I brace myself for the inevitable questions, for the demands to know why I’m being so weird. So clingy. So needy when just this morning I told him that I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to do this with him again.

But Sebastian doesn’t say anything about my weird behavior. Just pulls out reluctantly and then steps away to dispose of the condom.

I watch him for a second, loving the sexy ebb and flow of his shoulder and back muscles as he moves. Loving even more the way he glances over his shoulder at me, like even those few seconds are too long to go without seeing me.

But I can’t stay here forever, legs spread and ass naked against his desk, no matter how much I wish I could. So gingerly I climb down, pick up my bra and dress off the floor. I slide them quickly back into place. The panties are a lost cause, so I scoop them into a ball and deposit them in Sebastian’s trash can.

Staring at them there—bright and garish and completely out of place against the pencil shavings and sheets of white paper currently residing there—totally kills whatever sex buzz is still humming through my veins. It makes me feel cheap. Out of place. Like I could never belong here in Sebastian’s world.

Which is true, right? After all, I just finished fucking the boss in his office for the second day in a row. And once again I let him do anything he wanted to me. Talk about a cliché.

The only problem is I don’t belong anywhere else, either. And of all the hats I’ve tried on in the last fourteen months, of all the people I’ve tried to be—or not to be—this is the one I like best. The one I might actually like to wear around for a while, just to see how it fits.

I don’t know if it’s that realization or if it’s the picture my panties make in his trash can or if it’s just that I’m able to think clearly for the first time since Sebastian told me to put my hands against the window last night. But whatever it is, I’m suddenly completely freaked out again. Completely terrified of what is. What was. What could be.

And once I acknowledge that emotion, all the rest of them come rushing back into me, too. Everything comes rushing back.

My sister.

My father.

Carlo.

My mother.

The choices I made fourteen months ago and the choices I continue to make today.

The look of disappoint
ment, of disgust, of
rage
on my father’s face this morning, right before I turned to flee.

I try to keep it together, to keep the seething, roiling mess of my thoughts from showing on my face, but I must not succeed, because Sebastian reaches for me. “Do we need to talk about this?” he asks in an obvious echo of his earlier question.

My answer is the same now as it was then, as well. “No.”

He looks unimpressed, his smile rueful and his electric green eyes anything but amused. “Yeah, well, now that my dick isn’t actively involved in the conversation that answer isn’t going to cut it.”

“It’s going to have to.” I nod toward the black chrome clock hanging on the opposite wall. “I need to clean up. I’m supposed to be on the floor in fifteen minutes.”

“Fuck the floor,” he tells me, and outside of sex, it’s one of the few curse words I’ve heard Sebastian use. It gives me pause. Or maybe it’s the tone of voice he says it in—firm, no-nonsense, absolute, that stops me in my tracks. He usually doesn’t talk to me like that unless he’s fucking me and judging from the fact that he’s yanking his own clothes back into place—and putting distance between us as he does it—an instant replay really isn’t an option right now.

But standing here, hashing over my feelings and my past, isn’t, either. Not now. Maybe not ever, but definitely not now. And definitely not with him.

“I don’t really have any desire to do that,” I say, going with flippant to get me out of this mess, because everything else is too complicated and hurts too much. “God only knows where it’s been.”

The look he shoots me is distinctly annoyed. After-sex humor definitely not for him, then. Good to know. Especially since that’s about the range of emotional depth I have to offer him right now. If he doesn’t want it, that’s not my problem.

“Do you mind if I use your bathroom again?” I ask, already striding across the lush executive carpet to the even more lush executive bathroom in the corner. “I’ve got to clean up.”

“Of course. Go ahead.”

“Thank you.” But when I step into the luxurious room, Sebastian won’t let me close the door in his face like I did yesterday. Instead, he nudges me deeper into the bathroom and then follows me inside. It’s a good-size room, but right now, when my emotions are so out of control, it’s nowhere near big enough for the both of us.

“What are you doing?” I demand, suddenly shaky. I came in here because I need a minute to regroup, a minute to get my head on straight and my emotions under control. I can’t do that with him around—if I could, I wouldn’t have asked to use the restroom in the first place.

“I would have thought that was obvious.” He’s crowding me now, pressing me up against the sink.

“I need to clean up!” I squawk at him, too freaked out at this point to worry about being polite. Everything is pressing in on me—my family, my life, Sebastian and the kind of sex we have—and I need a minute to process it. To get control so I can get my shit together once and for all.

“Who’s stopping you?”

“You are, obviously.”

I’m facing away from him now, and our eyes meet in the mirror. His are calm and steady and absolute and the look on his face flat-out says that he will not be denied. Not now, not in this.

I jerk my eyes away, duck my head. I can’t look at him anymore and I sure as hell don’t want to look at me right now. Not when I’m so disheveled and out of sorts and clearly—cl
early—not in control. Which is bogus, because that’s the one thing Sebastian promised me and it’s the one thing I’ve wanted all along. The control that comes from having sex like ours.

But here I am, shaky and freaked out and anything but in control while Sebastian is doing exactly what he wants when he wants. How is any of that about me gaining control?

I’m just angry enough to ask him, but then he’s right there, arm wrapping itself around my waist and pulling me back against the hard planes of his chest. He rests his cheek against the top of my head on one side, and then uses his other hand to tilt my chin up so that I have no choice but to look in the mirror. No choice but to see just how out of control I’ve gotten.

“Look at yourself,” he whispers. “Look at how strong you are.”

It’s like he’s inside me, like he knows my every weakness and vulnerability. “I’m not—”

“You take me on like it’s nothing. Demand what you want and refuse to give until you get it. You racked that bastard with the grabby hands to protect that girl, no matter the cost to yourself, and I’ve seen the way you are with the customers. Seen the way you keep them in line with just a glance.”

He thinks I’m strong because I talk a good game, because I can fake it with the best of them. But if he knew what was inside me, knew how scared and worried and hurt I am—

“Look, Aria,” he tells me again, his shoulder knocking against mine for emphasis. “See what I see.”

I’m angry that he’s doing this, forcing me to see what I’ve spent so much of my life hiding from. But if I don’t look, if I don’t listen to him, something tells me we’ll end up standing here until hell freezes over. I’m stubborn, but Sebastian is beyond belief.

Except, when I finally yank my gaze away from him long enough to take in my own reflection, that vulnerability, that weakness, isn’t what I see. In its place is a more colorful, more kickass version of myself.

My hair’s a little messed up—strands tousled and sticking out in different directions—but whose wouldn’t be when their lover just spent the last half hour running his hands through it? My skin, though. My skin looks ridiculous. Bright and flushed and glowing, I look like I’ve just spent the last hour being fucked senseless in the best possible way. Combined with my dress, the straps of which are falling off my right shoulder, there’s no hiding what’s been going on in Sebastian’s office.

Not that I want to hide it, exactly—I’m not ashamed of what we’re doing. But I don’t want to broadcast it, either. It’s nobody’s business but ours.

“What do you see?” he asks again, his breath hot against my ear.

“What do you mean?”

“When you look at yourself in the mirror every day. What do you see?”

I don’t know how to tell him that I don’t look at myself in the mirror, that this is the first time I’ve done so beyond a cursory hair or makeup check in months.

“I see you,” I finally tell him after long seconds have passed us by.

“That’s a cop-out answer.”

It is, but also it isn’t. Because I do see him—from the moment I first walked into this office and he told me that I was getting my job back, I haven’t been able to see anything—a
nyone—but him. “It’s also the truth.”

He studies me in the mirror, his eyes running over my face, my body, trying to catch and hold my own gaze. But I won’t let him do it, won’t lock eyes with him now when I’m already so vulnerable that it hurts just to stand here with him. Hurts just to breathe.

“Do you want to know what I see?” he asks.

Yes. God, yes. “No.” I turn then, push past him. And try to figure out where my shoes ended up. “I need to get to work.”

“I checked the schedule. You’re not working today.”

“Christina asked me to cover for her.”

“Well, they’re just going to have to find someone else to cover for her.”

“Oh, really?” I turn to him, eyebrow raised inquiringly. “And why is that?”

“Because you’re going home.”

“No. I’m not.”

“You’re dead on your feet, you’re obviously upset—”

“That didn’t stop you from fucking me.”

His teeth snap together and he stares at me, jaw clenched, for long seconds. “No, it didn’t. And maybe that’s on me. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make the same mistake twice. You’re in no condition to work.”

“You know, I think it’s interesting that the rich get to make that distinction. You’re in good enough shape to work. You’re not in good enough shape to work. For regular people, those lines don’t exist. You work because you have to.”

“Playing the you’re-rich-so-you-just-don’t-understand card isn’t going to work on me, Aria. I know a hell of a lot about regular people trying to make ends meet under extraordinary circumstances. I do what I can to make things easier for them, too, whenever I can. But you aren’t just some random person to me. You’re the woman I’m fall—”