Chapter 27
876words
He barely took them off me, and even during the short time when he wasn’t looking at me, he was stroking my palm, his fingers lingering when they got to the underside of my wrist before going back to the tips of my fingers.
He was everywhere. I was feeling him, seeing him and breathing him.
It was crazy. It was amazing. It was insane.
“Was it everything you thought it would be?” Alex asked softly, his expression unguarded.
“It was more.”
My voice came out even softer than his had been. I sounded vulnerable. So freaking vulnerable and something else that I couldn’t name, and it freaked the fuck out of me.
And yet I didn’t stop it.
I couldn’t stop it.
He was stroking his thumb back and forth on my palm and I didn’t try to pull away even when it felt like I was going to combust from everything I was feeling. Tenderness, strangeness, lust, confusion, and a truckload of other emotions I couldn’t begin to name right now.
Something was happening to me but I didn’t know what it was, and that terrified me.
Oh God, what have I done? I should have never agreed to come on this date—
“Laura.” My name, spoken in that soft but firm tone, pulled me out of my thoughts and had me looking up into my date’s face. My dilemma must have shown on my face because he looked worried. “Don’t overthink things. Stay with me, love.”
It wasn’t the order that had me going lax in his arms and melting back into my seat. No, it was the emotion in his eyes. The vulnerability and wariness and want and longing. God, so much fucking longing, he was vibrating with it, his fingers starting to shake on mine.
I wanted to say something sharp and sassy that the usual Laura would say, but the only thing that came out of my mouth was, “Okay.”
He visibly relaxed, the tension leaving his shoulders. He ordered champagne, and two glasses in, I was already starting to feel like myself again.
“Alex, do you tan in the nude?” I asked after we had been quiet for a while.
His eyes jumped to mine in surprise, whether because I was initiating conversation for the first time tonight or because of my question, I wasn’t sure.
“Where the hell did that question come from?”
I shrugged, bringing my glass to my lips to take a sip. “I’ve noticed you don’t have tan lines.”
His brows shot up. “You’ve noticed?”
I shrugged again, hiding my smile behind the rim of my glass.
Who just upped and asked such a question out of nowhere? I had been obsessing over it and he knew. Of course he did.
“I do, actually,” he supplied.
“Hmm,” I said noncommittally. “Where?”
Amusement danced in his eyes. “My house. Why? You thinking of paying me a visit?”
I wish.
Slipping my foot out of my heels, I asked, “Do you have fun, Alex?”
If he was surprised by the change of topic, he didn’t show it. “I…” He frowned. “I don’t think so. I suppose it depends on your definition of f—“ He stopped abruptly when he realised what I was doing. Felt, rather.
My bare foot was ascending up his thigh, slow but steady in its journey.
I leaned back in my seat and hiked my foot higher. The position of our table meant that no-one would be able to see what I was doing, but even if they could, I wasn’t sure that I cared.
All I could think about was making him lose his mind. I wanted to see his perfect control snap. But to what end? I wasn’t sure yet.
“Laura,” Alex warned, his tone laced with danger that ignited me. He had probably been expecting me to stop, but all it did was make me want to tease him even more. I wanted to push him over the edge.
I wanted to watch him break.
A purr escaped my lips when my foot made contact with his groin and I felt how hard he was. How deliciously thick and long and steel-like he was in his pants already, the length of him going running down his right thigh. How had he gotten that hard just from a little footie?
I held his gaze as I massaged him with the arch of my foot, watching and loving as he squirmed in his seat, his eyes dark and full of promise of all the things he would do to me. Of the way he would take his revenge.
Of the way he would make me pay.
My hands shook and some of the drink sloshed over the rim of my glass just as Alex stood all of a sudden, adjusting his tux to hide the bulge of his erection. It didn’t do much—and I couldn’t stop staring.
“We’re leaving,” he informed me, and I rose on slightly wobbly legs, moving over to him.
He watched me like a predator watching its prey and I knew—I knew that the moment we got into the limo, he was going to descend on me.
