Page 52 of Strict Confidence (Rochester Trilogy 2)
“I didn’t set the fire,” I say, breathless, shaking. “I swear to you. I would never do anything to hurt you, and God, I would never hurt Paige.”
He reaches behind him and shoves the door closed with his palm flat. The thud penetrates even my frantic, panic-drenched mind. “I know you didn’t set the fucking fire,” he grinds out. “This is the way Causey’s trying to get to me. Through you.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it, and I didn’t even know about the will and—why did you do that, Beau? Why did you change your will?”
Both hands on my shoulders, his grip as intense as his expression. It’s hard, almost bruising, but I wouldn’t want him to go softer. This isn’t a moment for gentleness. “I wanted you to have it. The money. What the hell good is the money if it can’t make your life easier? If it can’t send you to college? If it can’t give you everything you dream about?”
I don’t dream about money. I’m not dreaming about anything right now. I’m nerves and fear in a body that’s out of my control. They keep accusing me of things I didn’t do, and I can’t stop it.
I don’t want to stop Beau.
“Give me this,” I tell him. I’m not even sure what I’m asking for. More. More of his intensity and his storm. Let it break over me. My teeth chatter with the adrenaline rush. I need his rough control to meet whatever this whirlwind is. “Please.”
His dark eyes widen. “Tell me what you mean. Tell me exactly, Jane.”
“I need—” I don’t have the words for it. I can only feel it there under his skin. Coiled and waiting. As hard and possessive as he is, with his big hands on my shoulders and his body generating heat in the room.
“I don’t want to think anymore. Please.”
I don’t have answers. I didn’t have them downstairs, and I don’t have them now.
He must see it in my face.
“Fuck,” he says, expression even darker. A raincloud about to tear open and pour. The ocean about to crash on shore. He takes my face in both his hands and pulls me into a kiss that’s harder than any we’ve shared before. He tastes like salt and fury. Like the metallic aftertaste of a lightning strike.
The kiss is so all-consuming that it pulls my body into a new response. I was shaking before out of terror. Out of panic from that interview. Now it’s pure need.
I don’t need what he can give me.
I need what he can take.
All these roiling thoughts. All this fear. He can take it.
“You want me?” he asks, walking toward me. I’m forced to back up, back up, back up, until the wall stops me. It’s cool and impersonal, that wall, keeping me flush against Beau’s hard body. He grips my chin. His thumb runs over my trembling lips. “You want me in your mouth? Lick me? Suck me with this pretty little mouth?”
Words have escaped me. They’ve flown right out of my head, leaving only sensation. The sensual, ticklish feeling of his touch on my lips. The iron length of his erection against my stomach. I can’t answer him with words.
Instead I flick my tongue out against his thumbpad.
His eyes turn midnight black. It’s a threat, that color. The kind of night when the wind kicks up, making one-hundred-year old trees sway in the wind. There’s not a single star in his sky. “Get on your knees,” he says, his voice low and velvet.
For a moment I think he means he’ll step back. He doesn’t move. His thumb taps once, twice, three times on my lips, and I understand he means for me to slide down the wall. My knees hit the floor. He rests his hand on the wall above me, looking down, eyes glittering.
“Your leg,” I manage to say, my concern for him overriding my lust.
“I’ll survive,” he says, a mocking half-smile on his face. “Go on.”
I reach up and fumble at his belt. My fingers feel thick under this haze of arousal. Clumsy. I finally manage to open the buckle. Then I work the zipper of his jeans down over a rock-hard arousal. It’s difficult at first, the denim stretched taut, and then fast the rest of the way down. There’s still a layer of black fabric shielding my view.
His words come back to me in a rush. I only wear boxer briefs. Boxers are too loose. Briefs are too tight. Boxer briefs are perfect. He’d been teasing me, offering me that superficial intimacy, but now it strikes me as deeply personal knowledge—that I know what he prefers to wear. That I’m touching it, curling my fingers over the top, pulling the elastic down.
His cock springs out, heavy and almost painfully hot against the back of my hand. It leaves a streak of precum painted across my wrist.
