Page 42 of Ruthless Bond

“Do I?”

“A long time. A while ago. Years.” I take a sip of wine. “It’s very effective at sounding like an answer without actually being one.”

The corner of his mouth shifts. “You’re very observant.”

“So I’ve been told. Usually by people who wish I wasn’t.”

“I don’t wish you were less observant.” He sets the knife down. He picks up his wine glass and leans against the counter across from me. “I find it terrifying. But I don’t wish you were less.”

“Terrifying is a strong word for a man who doesn’t seem afraid of anything.”

“I’m afraid of plenty.”

“Name one thing.”

He looks at me. The not-smile fades. What replaces it is something more honest, more exposed, an expression I haven’t seen from him before.

“You,” he says. “Specifically when you look at me like you’re figuring something out. Like you’re disassembling a machine and you’ve almost found the part that makes it run.”

“Maybe I have.”

“Maybe you have.”

The air between us changes. The playful quality tightens into something denser, heavier, a pressure that I can feel against my skin. His eyes are on mine and they’re not warm anymore. They’re hot. The gray is darkening the way it does when his control starts slipping, the iris contracting, the pupil expanding, and I can see the faintest ring of gold at the very edge.

I should be afraid of that gold. I know what it means now, or I think I do. I know the word my father wrote in his notebook, circled three times. I know what they are. And the gold in Dominic’s eyes is the visible edge of that truth.

I’m not afraid.

I set down my wine glass.

“Dominic.”

“Sophia.”

“I don’t want dinner.”

He sets his glass down. His hands are at his sides, fingers slightly curved, and I can see the tension in them, the effort of keeping them still.

“What do you want?”

I slide off the counter. My feet hit the cold tile and the temperature difference between the floor and the heat radiating from his body, two feet away, is so extreme that it feels like stepping from shade into direct sunlight. I close the distance between us. I put my hands flat on his chest, just as I did the night of the kiss, and his heartbeat slams against my fingers, hard and fast and absolutely uncontrolled.

“I want you to stop holding back,” I say.

He breaks.

His hands come up and grip my hips and lift me and I’m on the counter again but this time he’s between my legs, his body pressed against mine, and his mouth is on my mouth and the kiss is nothing like the first one. The first kiss was desperate and urgent and chaotic. This kiss is purposeful. He knows what he wants now and he’s taking it, his tongue sliding against mine, his hands pulling my hips to the edge of the counter so that the hard length of him presses against my center through our clothes and the friction is so precise that I gasp into his mouth.

“Tell me to stop,” he says against my lips. His voice is lower than I’ve ever heard it, scraped raw, barely recognizable. “Tell me to stop and I will.”

“I don’t want you to stop.”

He makes a sound. The sound from the night of the first kiss, the low vibration in his chest, but louder now, more animal. The sound vibrates through me and makes every muscle in my body clench. He picks me up off the counter. My legs wrap around his waist and his hands are under my thighs and he carries me out of the kitchen and down the hallway.

He sets me on the edge of the bed and kneels in front of me, and the sight of Dominic Voronov on his knees between my legs is so far outside anything I imagined that my brain short-circuits for a second.

He pulls my dress over my head. Unclasps my bra and slides the straps down my arms, slowly, his eyes following the fabric as it falls away. He looks at my breasts and his expression makes me feel completely, devastatingly wanted.