His hand shifted again, his finger finding her achingly sensitive clit and pressing down. She stiffened, her spine a lightning rod conducting the bolt of pleasure that struck her, tearing a moan from her throat.
“Well?” he demanded. “Tell me, Phoebe. Give me the words.”
She was shaking now, his finger rocking subtly against her, making her burn, making her sweat. Coaxing out the wild part of her that she didn’t want to admit was there. Something was building inside her, a desperation that both frightened and exhilarated her at the same time.
It was never Nero you were frightened of. You were frightened of yourself.
Of course, she was. She was frightened of her own desires, of what she wanted. They felt too raw, too intense. And there was only one way she could cope with them.
“Yes,” she gasped out. “Yes, I want you. But if we do this, we do it my way.”
Nero’s stroking fingers paused, his eyes narrowing as he studied her face for one long, aching second. As if he was either trying to work out whether she was lying or not or merely trying to work out what she meant.
Then his mouth curled in a dark, feral smile. “No,” he murmured roughly.
And moved.
Chapter 7
Nero let go of Phoebe’s wrists and was on the bed, kneeling astride her, before she had a chance to move. Forced back against the pillows, her eyes went wide, her palms coming up to push against his chest, but he ignored that. Putting his hands on the pillow on either side of her head, he leaned down, watching her eyes get even wider and her pupils dilate. He flared his nostrils, taking in the scent of musk and flowers. Fucking hell. He was going to have to revise his opinion of her not being pretty, because right now, lying back with her red-gold curls spread all over the white pillows, a rosy flush staining her skin and the gold flecks in her eyes glittering, she was a goddess.
He still didn’t know why his cock was straining against the fly of his pants for her, when apparently the two redheads he’d gotten rid of not twenty minutes earlier hadn’t managed to get it up, but there was no denying the truth.
He’d kissed one of those women and she’d tasted of the breath mints she’d just eaten, not of heat and honey like Phoebe. Pleasant but unengaging. And when the other woman had touched him, he hadn’t gotten hard. He’d only gotten annoyed. He didn’t want to push them to see if they’d get mad, irritate them to see if they lost their cool. They were beautiful, and yet he didn’t want to watch their faces to see what they were thinking. In fact, he didn’t give a shit what they were thinking at all. He was completely uninterested in them, and apparently, so was his cock.
It had infuriated him that he couldn’t get them out of the door fast enough, and yet the moment they’d gone, his thoughts had returned to Phoebe. To the kiss he’d taken. To the taste of her mouth and the way it had opened under his at the very last moment, as if she’d lost her grip on the resistance she was holding so hard onto.
He didn’t know why she’d run out on him, and he didn’t know why there had been a tear on her cheek. And after those women had gone, he’d prowled into his control room, flicking open the screen with the camera feed of her room, unable to help herself.
The camera had an infra-red mode so he could see her lying in her bed in the dark, tossing and turning, restless as he was himself. Then she’d let out a low moan and it had sounded like fear, and for some reason every muscle in his body had tensed. But that hadn’t been the worst part, because then she’d screamed, high and terrified, and he was up and out of his control room, out into the hallway and walking fast in the direction of her bedroom before he was even conscious of moving.
It was only when the hallway began to telescope in front of him and the walls began to loom, making him feel like he was at the bottom of a massive canyon, that he realized what he was doing. That he was out in the rest of the house, beyond the small collection of rooms he lived his life in.
His mind began to whisper a truth he didn’t want to hear, making him think about how long it had been since he’d gone farther than the three steps it took to get from his office to his library door. But he knew if he thought about that, he’d never make it to Phoebe’s room.
So he didn’t think about it. He kept on walking, trying to ignore the way everything felt too big and too large, and how small he was in comparison. How it felt like he couldn’t breathe. As if he’d be crushed by the empty immensity of the space around him.
No, he just kept on going until he’d gotten to her room, forcing himself to push open that door and step inside. And there she’d been, half-asleep and warm, her hair everywhere, fear from her nightmare still large in her eyes.
She’d given him something to focus on and focus on her he had, so he didn’t have to think about the larger truth that tapped on the door he kept locked in his mind. So he didn’t have to hear it.
But the sound of her voice and her sweet scent weren’t enough.
He needed more. He always needed more.
“No?” There was a throaty note in the word that brushed over his skin like cool, delicate fingers. “What do you mean no?”
Was that alarm in her eyes? Yes, maybe it was. And there was that fear, too, the same fear he’d seen in her face as she’d fled from him back in the library.
He routinely scared those who came to his door, and he knew what it looked like when people were afraid of him. But the fear in Phoebe’s gaze wasn’t that fear. It was something else, and he had a feeling it was something to do with that desire she was so desperately trying to hide.
Why? What was she so afraid of? She was a sensual woman. He’d observed it through his cameras, and yet she seemed to be afraid of the passion inside her.
“Why are you afraid?” It came out as a demand, but he didn’t bother to soften it. Instead he slid a hand beneath the back of her neck and lifted her slightly so her head fell back, exposing the long, pale arch of milky skin and the fragile, blue tracery of veins just beneath the surface of it. At the base of her throat was her pulse, beating hard and fast. Too fast.
“I’m not afraid of you.” She was trembling.
“That wasn’t what I asked.” He lowered his head, pressing his mouth to that frantically beating pulse, then touched his tongue to her skin, tasting the faint salty flavor of her. Holy fuck, she tasted good. He growled, opening his mouth to bite the side of her neck gently, feeling the delicious give of her flesh, more of that salty flavor exploding on his tongue.
She made a desperate noise, her body shuddering then stiffening, pushing against his shoulders. Yet he could feel her hard nipples against his chest, and the wetness from her pussy was still coating his fingers. “I know you’re not afraid of me,” he went on. “You’re afraid of this.” And he licked her throat before trailing a line of tiny bites up it, his hand gripping the back of her neck firmly.
She shuddered again, twisting beneath him, pushing harder. Her breathing was loud and ragged, her voice breathless as she gasped, “I’m not. I’m just . . . Please, let me touch you, Nero.”
“Stop,” he growled, losing patience. “And answer the fucking question.”
“But you’d like it if I touched you.” She wriggled beneath him, shoving him. “Let go, Nero.”
He didn’t move. Her hands on his skin felt good, though not so much the shoving. Not that she could shift him, since she was very small and he was big, and grown men had had trouble making him move when he didn’t want to.
But he didn’t want her to touch him or at least not yet. He wanted her to give him a damn answer.
What does it matter to you why she’s afraid?
He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to think about why that mattered. He just . . . needed to know.
He let her back down and grabbed her hands once again, crossing her wrists then lifting her arms above her head and easing them down. Pressing them hard into the softness of the pillow and keeping them there.
She panted, her face flushed, the anger in her eyes bright gold. “I thought you wanted me.”
“Don’t change the subject,” he ordered. “Give me an answer.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed, her chest rising and falling in a quick, hard rhythm. “I have a fiancé. I shouldn’t . . . w-want you.”
“Except you do.”
She turned her head away, but he wasn’t having that. So, keeping her wrists locked above her head with his free hand, he gripped her chin and turned her back to face him with the other. He could feel her resistance, could see the fury in her gaze. “You do,” he repeated insistently, looking down into her fascinating eyes. “You told me. Too late to deny it now.”
Her attention shifted, dropping to his mouth as if she couldn’t help herself. “I . . . can’t . . .”
“Can’t what?”
She took another breath. “I can’t want you. I can’t like this. It’s wrong.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m still engaged. I was supposed to be faithful.”
Ah, her fiancé. The man who’d been unconscious for two years.
“Faithful to a man in a coma,” Nero said. “Two years is a long time for a passionate woman like you to be celibate.”