I keep my eyes on him, watching his face and relishing the tightness in his jaw that signals he is fighting for control. Good, I think as I shamelessly stroke my sex. I want him on edge. I want him off kilter.
I close my eyes, telling myself to go with it. To push the envelope. To push him.
But then his hand closes around my wrist. And when I open my eyes, he is right there—right in front of me.
“No,” he says, and there is steel in his voice. “That orgasm belongs to me, baby.”
And just like that, he’s turned the tables on me again.
Fine. I’ll turn them back. “Does it?” I say, then reach over and cup his cock. “Then this belongs to me.”
He laughs as he takes a step back, breaking contact. “You think you’re the one in control? Think again, princess.”
I meet his eyes and see that he has known all along what I have just fully figured out. That I do not have the upper hand. That I never did. And that so long as we are playing this game, Jackson is setting the rules.
“No touching,” he says. “Not unless it’s me touching you. But don’t worry,” he adds as he strokes a finger up my bare belly and over the curve of my breast. “I intend to do a lot of touching.”
His hands are like a live wire sending sparks of electricity to crackle over my tender skin, and despite myself I let my head tilt back and close my eyes to this onslaught of pleasure.
“So damn beautiful,” he murmurs as his hands touch and stroke and tease and caress. “I wonder,” he says, as he cups my sex. “Do you still taste as good as you look?” He drops to his knees, his hands on my hips, then very gently kisses the juncture of my thigh. I whimper, expecting his mouth on my sex, but he teases me by sliding a fingertip under the thong to find me hot and wet and so very ready. “Oh, yes,” he says. “I think you like this.”
He torments me with his finger, sliding it over my sensitive flesh, then thrusting inside me while my body clenches tight around him, wanting so much more than that simple, complicated, wonderful touch.
When he withdraws, he stands, then traces the finger he’d penetrated me with over my lips. “Suck,” he demands, and I do eagerly, tasting my own arousal and watching the reflection of his in his eyes.
After a moment, he withdraws his finger, then takes my hand. He leads me toward the couch, only to pause by the coffee table. I’m confused at first, and then I realize that he has seen the photographs that litter the tabletop.
I wince, because those are a secret that I am not ready to share.
He releases my hand, then goes to the table. He looks down at the spray of photos that I’d left lying there, then reaches down to pick up several. “Who took this?” he asks, holding up a photograph of the Union Bank building in Las Vegas.
I consider lying, but the photo is important to me, and I do not want to deny it.
“I did.” I meet his eyes, mine defiant.
“When?”
I don’t bother to answer; the picture says it all.
“You were at the grand opening?”
“I was in Vegas for work.” That was a lie. I was in Vegas for the grand opening.
His eyes linger on me long enough that I think he has seen the lie. Then he holds up the photo of the Winn Building. “This one?”
“I go to New York with Damien all the time. And photography is a hobby. I think I mentioned that back in Atlanta. Or had you forgotten?”
“I haven’t forgotten a thing about Atlanta.” His voice is low and steady and his eyes never stray from mine. “Not a single moment.”
I say nothing, but my mouth has gone strangely dry.
“Why?” he asks. “There must be more than a dozen pictures of my buildings on that table. I want to know why.”
“I told you why in Atlanta. I like architecture.”
“I want the truth, Sylvia.”
My name sounds soft on his lips, and I sag a bit, losing some of my defiance. “Maybe I misstated reality a little when I said I didn’t follow your career.”
He cocks his head. “You took all these pictures? Of dozens of my buildings?”
“I like architecture,” I say again.
He returns to the table and pulls out a few of the photos that sit inside the open box. The first are additional shots of Jackson Steele buildings. But under that, he finds my house photos.
He pulls out one, two, eight, a dozen. After he’s spread them on the table, he turns to me again. “I know you like architecture,” he says with more than a little irony in his voice. “But I never saw you as going fangirl over residential buildings.”
