The Billionaire Beast(41)

“I don’t give a shit what Stacey told you,” he snarled, leaning even closer, the raw anger and white lightning in his eyes swamping her. “You broke the rules. You made me fucking hard in front every single board member in that room. In front of my fucking father.” His thumb at the side of her neck moved slowly up and down, stroking her. The gentleness of the touch was so at odds with the rage in his voice she didn’t know quite how to process it.

Lorenzo leaned further in, putting his mouth near her ear, his breath whispering over the sensitized skin of her neck, raising goose-bumps. “You know that that means, don’t you, Kira?”

The stroking of his thumb was insanely distracting, adding yet another sensation to the mix already flooding her. “N-No,” she whispered raggedly, even though part of her did.

“It means,” he murmured, a note of heat in his cold, dark voice, “that now you have to pay.”

Her breathing hitched audibly, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. She was shaking and she couldn’t seem to make herself stop.

Pay. Yes, you want to pay. You want to show him how good you can be for him. You want to correct your mistake.

She’d been angry before, because it hadn’t been her fault, but now she wasn’t. Now all she was conscious of was a terrible, insatiable need to prove herself to him. To show him that she was capable of being good, that she could follow the rules, that she wouldn’t disappoint him or let him down. And not only that she wanted to, she was desperate for the chance to do so.

So yes, she would take responsibility. She would pay. She would pay whatever price he wanted her to.

She could feel his mouth so close to the delicate skin under her ear, his breath like the touch of a flame. His scent was everywhere and the astonishing heat of his body was making her a little crazy. “How?” she forced out. “Are you g-going to fire me?”

He turned his head a little more, his thumb resuming its stroking movement up the side of her neck to the base of her jaw, then down again. “No,” he said quietly, his mouth so close to her ear she almost felt the touch of it. “I’m not going to fire you.” Another minute shift of his body, his hard, muscular thigh pressing suddenly between hers. “I’m going to fuck you. Right now. Right here. Up against this door.”