Page 23 of Hollywood King
Nine
Heath
It tooksome convincing to get her in my car and let me take her home. Okay, it took everything I had, including bribery with more chocolate chip cookies to get her permission to drive her home.
I waived the driver away and opened the back door myself, holding it while she slipped in. The leather creaked as she moved and settled, and I berated myself for staring down the length of bare her legs as she neatly tucked one under the other.
Once she finished moving, I climbed in and shut the door. After the noise and crowd of the wake, the silence echoed through the car. She gazed out the window, but not with any other purpose than hoping to ignore me. It seemed like we were in for the same sort of tension-stretched ride we took to get to the wake. And I couldn't allow it this time.
“You did an amazing job on the party. Everything was beautiful, just the way he would want it," I said, trying to get her to say something, anything.”
She cleared throat, but still no eye contact. “Wanted.”
I knew what she meant, but I pressed anyway. “What?”
“Wanted. The way he would have wanted.”
I couldn’t take it anymore, the way she pretended I didn’t exist, as if by avoiding my gaze, peering around me, I might go away. I gripped the side of the door, my fingers digging into the formed material. “Will you look at me?”
It took almost a full minute, which crawled, until she finally tilted her head my way, still not really meeting my eyes. “Fuckinglookat me, Cathy.”
Her gaze shot up, and her anger clashed with mine. “Is this what you want? My attention? What does it matter? You’re going to take me home, and I’ll probably never see you again. You’ll leave like you did last time and never have to think about me again.”
Some of my anger fizzled as her look softened at the edges. “Is that what you think? I don’t want anything to do with you?”
My hand shook as I reached across the seat and grabbed her upper arm. She jerked it back, but I was stronger, dragging her across the middle seat separating us, until our thighs touched.
I lowered my voice. “Do you have any idea how much self-control it takes to stay sane around you? All I want to do it throw you across my lap and spank you until you realize you don’t need anyone but me to see to your needs.”
She jerked her arm again, but with less effort this time. When she dragged her bottom lip between her teeth, my fractured control broke. I shifted toward her and dragged her sideways over my legs as I moved.
It took seconds to work the bottom of her tight dress up her thighs and over the plump curves of her ass.
"You're not wearing any underwear," I said, barely recognizing the hungry edge to my own voice.
"You need a certain kind of underwear with this dress," she explained in a whisper. The bedraggled edge of hunger in her tone matching mine spurred me on.
I laid a palm flat just where the curve of her butt met her thighs, and I traced the shape of her skin all the way to the flat of her back. The muscle dipped in so beautifully there.
"If you are going to pet me, I could get that elsewhere."
Was she encouraging me to do this? And why in God's name did it make me so hard? My erection pressed painfully into my belt. I was tempted to use it, let the taut leather teach her a lesson about smarting off, but not for her first time. I wanted my flesh against hers. My hand leaving red palm prints into her skin. My need and rage and yearning displayed for her later inspection.
She jumped at the first light smack. Her ass, thighs, and belly all tensing up under my hand. Once she relaxed back onto my legs with a little noise I couldn't wrap my mind around, I laid my palm down again, a little harder this time. I wasn't mistaking her groan. It nearly broke the thread of control I'd barely been clinging to. One more slap, the hardest yet, and when she arched her bare hips against my thigh, I couldn't take it. I lifted her slight but muscular frame with ease so I could get to her face.
She met me in the middle, reaching out the second I could get her upright. With her dress already rucked up, she straddled my lap easily. Her body came down on me as her mouth touched mine.
The dam of longing I'd been mortaring year by year burst open, and I couldn't get enough of her. I wanted to taste, bite, lick, grind into her, fuck her, and then do it again. I wrapped both arms around her back and squeezed her tight against me while I put all of my need into our first kiss in a decade.
Fuck me, how had I lived without her? Without this?
She ground into my erection, and I wanted my skin on hers, both of us hot and wet and aching for more.
I broke the kiss to catch my breath and look at her face. Her lipstick was smeared sideways, her cheeks reddened, and at the corners of her eyes, I caught a faint sheen of tears. It helped pull the feral creature inside me back. I reverently touched my finger there, catching a drop before it fell. "Cathy," I whispered.
Her entire body tensed as I said her name, and all she gave me in return was a shuttered, "Please."
I knew what she wanted. I wanted the same thing, over and over and over. But not here and now, not in the back of my car where the driver could hear, and I couldn't take my time savoring every inch of her body.
