She smiled brightly and stood. She didn’t look back, but she knew he followed her. Her awareness of him was so acute, she probably could have walked straight to him if a room if she was blindfolded and he was as quiet and still as a statue.
When she reached for the control on the private elevator, Christian’s hand shot out to restrain her before she made contact.
“Megan—“
He spun her around into his arms. Part of her had been expecting his touch…anticipating it. She more than met him halfway as they crashed together.
She kissed him hungrily, every bit as greedy for the sensation of Christian as he seemed to be for her. Maybe it was because restraint had made their desire so distilled—Megan didn’t have enough experience to know. She only knew the explosive impact of that kiss.
He thrust up against her with slow, rhythmic movements, Megan pressed back with an equal urgency. Their bodies sealed together. She felt his taut abdomen, his heat…his heart throbbing strong and rapid against her breasts.
She felt the contours of his aroused sex perfectly through the fabric of his shots. She pressed tighter and closer, wanting more of the sensation of him. When he lifted her hips over his tensed thighs and thrust with force, Megan’s eyelids flew open.
If it weren’t for the barrier of their clothing Christian would be pressed high against the final limit of her womb right now.
She tore her mouth from his and backed away. His breathing was ragged; his eyes ablaze.
He could change her forever with this power he held over her, Megan realized dazely. He could transform her. The thought didn’t as much frighten her as overwhelm her, it seemed so...
…big.
He didn’t interfere this time when she reached shakily for the call button.
She looked small and very vulnerable when she got on the elevator alone, pushed the button, and turned to face him. His mind silently screamed for the mechanical door to hurry up and seal off the space between them. After the excruciating wait, he postponed his mounting frustration until he thought Megan would have had ample time to get off the elevator downstairs.
Then he slammed his fist into the doors hard enough to make a dent in the metal. The jolt of pain that ensued wiped his mind completely clean for all of three merciful seconds.
By the next morning, the sight of the dent in his elevator doors and the pain in his hand was enough to make Christian cringe with self-mortification.
Christ, where was his usual considerable self-restraint? He hadn’t done anything so asinine as punching an inanimate object since his father had accused him of being a spoiled, undisciplined brat when he was fifteen years old. Christian had idiotically confirmed the truth of his father’s allegations by punching a hole in the entrance hallway of their home.
He thought he would have learned his lesson when his dad made him repair the hole he’d punched in the drywall and repaint not only the hallway, but also the entire first floor of their home.
“Apparently not,” Christian murmured in self-disgust, without even glancing back at the elevator doors when he entered his loft at almost midnight the following evening.
Jamie Gonzalez and Mike Simone—the two other members of Lasher Down—had flown into Chicago this morning. They hadn’t rehearsed as a band in months. He had to admit that although things had become tense at times between the four of them as they rehearsed at a leased studio up in Lincoln Park, the experience had been nowhere near as negative as Christian had imagined it was going to be. Both his agent and Lasher Down’s manager were ecstatic at the band’s sound and their relative ease in getting along.
Relative. That was the operative word.
He opened the refrigerator door and stared inside dispiritedly. Warmth surged through him when he saw the salmon that Megan had insisted that he save the night before. He recalled all too clearly the way Megan had laughed when he’d tried to give her the huge hunk of fish flesh on a plate.
“It’s too big, Christian.”
“Well, you’re awfully small, so it should even out.”
“I can’t eat it all.”
Christian had rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. “So we’ll throw away what you don’t eat.”
“No, it’s wasteful.”
And in the end, Christian had only been touched by the working-class frugality that she’d demonstrated—the same ethic that he’d grown up with and respected even if he didn’t follow it like he should—by cutting the fish, wrapping it up carefully in plastic wrap, and placing it in his refrigerator.
“You’ll be happy when you open up the refrigerator tomorrow night and have something good to heat up,” she’d told him.
And the funny thing was, Christian really did imagine at this moment that she’d pictured him coming home, beat and hungry after a long day’s work, only to open up the fridge and find her forethought preserved in plastic for him.
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