“Maybe I just think you’re an asshole and I regret doing this. Marrying you.”
His heartbeat against her ear sped, but his hold on her didn’t loosen. “I see.”
The words were tart, but she didn’t regret uttering them.
“So what do you want? Are you done? Ready to start our year’s separation before you file your paperwork?” he asked.
“Is that what you want?”
“What I want is obviously irrelevant.”
She leaned back and craned her neck up to see his dark expression. “Excuse the hell out of me? You entered this agreement willingly.”
“I did. Just as you entered kicking and screaming.”
“You haven’t seen kicking and screaming yet.”
All of a sudden, the angles and planes in his face looked sharper, more shadowed. His enlarged pupils made his hazel eyes dark, and the slight flaring of his nostrils gave her warning that she’d pushed some button he’d never before exposed to her.
“Really?”
She was gonna push that button again. She jutted her chin up and said, “That’s right, Red. I spend every waking moment looking for an avenue out of this thing.”
“I see.” In one second, he had her hauled up over his shoulder, and before she could register direction or intent, her tennis shoes were yanked off one by one, and he didn’t lose his stride one bit. By the time he slapped on the bedroom light, she’d lost her socks, too.
He tossed her onto her own bed like a sack of laundry, still wearing that cold expression that was so alien and unfamiliar to her.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer. Just hooked his fingers into the waistband of her yoga pants and gave them a purposeful yank downward, taking her panties along for the ride.
He sat her up, and she complied as he pulled her sweatshirt and T-shirt over her head. Was he really doing it? Picking up the leash?
He laid her back down, wadded her clothes into a shapeless blob, and tossed them over the edge of the bed.
Time to poke the button again. “Should I just lie here and moan at all the right times, or do you want to feed me some lines to recite?”
No response to that either. He just dragged her by the legs so her ass was at the edge of the bed and dropped to his knees. “Going to help you with your kicking-and-screaming problem.” He draped her legs over his shoulders and stared up her torso at her, waiting for her to rebut.
“You’re welcome to try.”
He started off slow. Gently. Lapping his tongue around her clit without touching it, spreading her legs wider to expose more of her.
Her breath hitched when he drew back, not touching, not teasing—not engaging her at all beyond his breath tickling the skin he’d wet with his tongue.
She realized then he was staring at her. Studying her.
Unnerving the shit out of her.
“What are you doing?”
He directed a stream of air on the skin he’d licked that sent her fingers scrambling for purchase. Was he just going to tease, or was she going to get off? If she had to be nearly naked, she wanted to get off. He was reliable for that.
Now he buried his nose into her curls, probing the entrance of her sex with gentle flicks that had her clenching and toes curling.
She drew in a breath and grabbed the back of his hair. “If you’re going to order the meal, you’d better eat it.”
Nothing else seemed important at the moment. Not her bruised ego, Rosamund, bloggers and reporters who wanted to make her life a circus, preschool angst, the fact Toby was out of his favorite cereal, being in love with yet another man who didn’t consider her an equal partner, nothing. All that mattered at that moment was getting off at his touch, because he was the only one who could do it.
He had the nerve to chuckle with his face pressed so firmly there, so she pulled his head even closer.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but don’t stop.”
“Right.” He resumed his probing, deeper and more forcefully, and igniting a series of quakes in Meg that escalated when he put his fingers where his tongue was. He stroked deeper inside, flicking and fluttering fingertips over her second-most erogenous spot, as his mouth latched onto her neglected clit.
She bucked off the bed. “More of that.”
“Mm-hmm.” He thrummed his tongue beneath her clit hood, and his free hand—the bruised one—inched upward to her lace-covered breast, easily palming her. He flicked a rough thumb across her nipple while grazing her clit with his teeth.
All she could do was blink and breathe and occasionally squeeze his head between her knees.
His fingers inside her worked faster, teasing her mercilessly, until she was close, so close.