“I really liked this dress, you know.”
“Oh yeah?” His eyes sparkled with a challenge. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Me?” I pretended to look confused. “Oh—I don’t have to do anything. I don’t know if you understand how fighting works, Nicholas, but you’re the one on your back.”
He didn’t miss a beat.
“And you’d rather I was on top?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it right back up again. Truth be told, it seemed rather counter-intuitive to reply. His eyes flashed and he took my silence as an invitation.
“Understood.”
There was another swish of air, and the next thing I knew—we were flying back around again. As I clung to him for balance, all the muscles in his body tightened of one accord, turning into some kind of super-human wall of strength. He pressed me down with a taunting slowness, completely immune to the fact that I was pushing back up against him with all my might.
It was like fighting against a statue.
“For fuck’s sake!” I anchored my entire body against him, giggling breathlessly all the while. After only a few seconds, my arms had already begun shaking. “What the hell have you been doing all these years—prowling the rooftops at night, solving crime?”
He laughed loudly, thoroughly amused with my pathetic struggles.
“As my publicist, I couldn’t possibly admit such a thing. I’m sure you’d hardly approve.”
I bet I wouldn’t. But before I could say as much, he beat me to the punch.
In one graceful motion, he took my hands off his chest and pinned them up above my head. I gasped softly, as he lowered his lips playfully to my ears. “But between you and me, I can think of a lot more interesting things to do with my nights.”
At this point...I think the fight was officially over.
My body was pressed flat against the mat, my hands were pinned inescapably above my head, and Nick was hovering just an inch above me, staring down into my eyes.
He didn’t move. I didn’t move. The hands on the clock froze in place.
Until...
With a breathless crash, the two of us came together. Pulling, grasping, clutching...doing anything and everything we could just to hold on.
That inch of space between us vanished as Nick pressed his body onto mine. His mouth forced mine open in the deepest kiss I’d ever had. His legs hooked around mine—spreading them slightly as he pinned me to the mat. And while one hand continued to imprison my wrists, the other slipped through the ripped fabric stretched across my hips.
It was here that he paused. He pulled back for a second, glancing down, before his lips pulled up in a sudden grin. “That lingerie I got you from Dior...you’re wearing it.”
I blushed slightly, taking a second to catch up.
“You wanted to see it, didn’t you?”
In a surge of reckless abandon, he bowed his head back to my neck, attacking every inch of skin he could find with a force and passion that took my breath away.
“For a long time, Abby. I’ve wanted to see it for a long fucking time.”
Apparently, the man was unaccustomed to waiting.
Not content to just feel the pricy little number, Nick ripped apart the rest of my dress with a single swipe of his hand. I lay there, flushed and exposed, while he feasted his eyes—taking his time before lowering himself back down on top of me.
Things got rougher after that. As long as we’d both been waiting, as long as that damn frustration had been building, we suddenly couldn’t wait for even a second more.
My fingers clawed desperately against the buckle of his belt, ripping it off with a leather hiss and tossing it toward the rest of our clothes. His pants were soon to follow—as was the shirt he’d been wearing beneath the suit.
It was here that I paused, glancing