Page 84 of Cruel Kiss

He turns onto a wider road, and the streetlights slide across his face. "You want to talk about Vera and her hand on my face? I don't remember it at all. I barely remember Vera being there. I spent the whole night staring daggers at every man who looked at you a half second too long, so you'll forgive me if I didn't have any attention left over for an old flame from twelve years ago that I felt nothing about even at the time."

The car goes quiet except for the engine.

"So you were jealous," I say.

"Disgustingly," he spits. "The entire time. It was one of the worst nights of my life."

"That's not—" I start, and then I can't finish it, because I don't know what I was going to say. My skin feels too tight to contain all the things inside me. "That's not the same thing. Nobody was actually flirting with me."

"They were all taking you to bed in their heads. I could see it."

"Now, you're just being ridiculous."

"Maybe. But you asked for a fight, and this is the one I've got." He glances at me again. His eyes are dark, and there's a heat coming off him now that has nothing to do with the summer temperature. "I was jealous, Calista. All night. So don't sit there and tell me you don't care about Vera when we both know that's a lie, because I know exactly what you're feeling. I've been feeling the uglier version of it for four hours straight."

That's the thing that takes it over the top. Both of us. Him admitting it, out loud, plainly, without dressing it up as anything reasonable, and me feeling it slam into me that I've been jealous,too, and so has he, and we've both been dwelling on it all night like two idiots.

"Pull over," I say.

He looks at me.

"Pull over. Right now."

He doesn't ask why. He hits the signal and swings the car onto the shoulder of the road, gravel crunching under the tires. We're somewhere along a dark stretch with the water on one side and nothing on the other, no houses, no people, simply the two of us and the pitter-patter of my aching heart.

He puts it in park. "Cali?—"

I'm already climbing over the console.

I get a knee up onto his seat and my hands in his collar and I kiss him, hard, before he can say one more reasonable word, before either of us can talk ourselves out of it. He's surprised for maybe half a second, and then his hands come up to my hips and haul me the rest of the way over into his lap, my dress bunching up my thighs, my knees on either side of him against the leather.

"You want to be jealous?" I breathe against his mouth. "Fine. Be jealous. But you don't get to be jealous about a room full of men who never touched me when you're the only one who does."

"Say that again," he growls.

"You're the only one." I kiss him again, deeper this time, and his hand slides up my back and grips the base of my skull, tangling in my hair. "You're the only one who touches me. Nobody else. Just you."

He kisses me like he's trying to leave a mark on the inside of me. One hand fists in my hair to tip my head back, and his mouth goes to my throat, to the soft place under my jaw. He drags his teeth over it just hard enough that I gasp and grind down into him without meaning to.

He's huge and hard beneath me. I can feel him through the tuxedo trousers, right where I'm pressing, so I roll my hips against him.

"You spent the whole night," he says against my throat, "in that dress, and every man in that room wanted you. But you belong to me." His hand slides from my hair down my back, down to the hem of my dress where it's rucked up around my thighs, and his fingers find the bare skin there and drag up. "Mine."

"Yours." I don't fight it, don't even feel the old instinct to make myself small, to fold up, to say the safe thing. "Say it again."

"Mine." He tugs the strap of my dress off my shoulder and puts his mouth to the top of my breast. I arch into him. "Every part of you. Mine."

His hand slides up under the dress, between us. I lift up onto my knees to give him room. His fingers find my pussy over the thin lace and press. He drags the fabric aside with two fingers and touches me bare. Slow. Exactly the way he knows I like. I'm already so wet that his fingers slide easy, and my whole body jolts.

"You're soaked," he says against my ear, wonder and want tangled together. "You were dripping all night, weren't you? Sitting next to me, being jealous, being furious, beingmine."

"Yes." I can barely get it out. "Yes. God." I'm rocking against his hand now, shameless, both of my hands fisted in his lapels. "Ronan. Ronan, please?—"

"Please what, kotyonok?"

"I don't want your fingers. I want your cock. Now. Right now."

I feel him swallow. Then his hands are at his belt. I lift up on my knees, my forehead pressed to his, both of us breathing hard. I hear the buckle and the zipper, and then he's freeing himself. His cock is hot and hard against my palm when I reach down. I stroke him once and he shudders.