The Magnate's Manifesto(58)

She pulled in a breath, but the air in the tiny plane suddenly seemed nonexistent. The joy exploding inside her that she hadn’t ruined everything was almost overwhelming. “Maybe we both need to try…” she managed to get out. “Try to move beyond our pasts.”

His mouth twisted. “We’re quite a pair, no?” He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her skirt and pulled her flush against him.

Her lashes drifted down as heat ignited inside her. “We make a good one, though.”

He nodded, his gaze resting on hers. “You said you’d settle for a man who respects you. A man who tells the truth. A man who wants you for who you are. I cannot, will not, make promises I’m not sure I can keep. But I can promise you those things, Bailey. And I’m willing to try with the rest.”

Emotion clogged her throat, so big, so huge, she felt as if she might choke on it. She didn’t need his promises. It had never been about that with them. It had been about trust. And for the first time in her life, she trusted a man explicitly, without reservation.

“Last night might not have been the last time you need to pick me up,” she murmured, offering him an out. “I am definitely a work in progress.”

He brought his mouth down to brush against hers. “Consider me on board.”

He kissed her then, a long, lingering promise of a kiss that lit her from the inside out. Her arms crept around his neck. He ditched their glasses, swung her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom at the back of the plane. It was tiny, dominated by a king-size bed and a chest of drawers, and when he set her down on the soft carpet and sat on the bed, her pulse rate skyrocketed.

“Last night,” he murmured, leaning back on his palms, “I didn’t want sex between us to be about anger. I didn’t want you lowering yourself to that. But tonight,” he amended huskily, his gaze on hers, “feel free to demonstrate.”

She stared at him. “Jared—”

He shook his head. “I don’t want that memory between us. The thought of you doing this for me is a massive turn-on, Bailey. For no other reason than you are you and you do that to me. Not because you did it for hundreds of other men who couldn’t have you and I can.”

The heat in his gaze got her. The deep, powerful throb of the jet beneath her feet mirrored the one pulsing between them. Her head went there and then her body followed. She wanted to do this for him. She wanted to wipe away the memory of last night.

She bent her leg and tugged a shoe off. He held up his hands, eyes glittering. “No missiles, please.”

She tossed the shoe on the floor. Reached for the second. Then she moved forward to stand in front of him. His electric-blue eyes darkened into deep metallic as she reached for the top button of her blouse.

“There are rules,” she murmured. “No kissing and no touching.”

His gaze narrowed. “I think I’ve changed my mind.”

“No, you haven’t.” She took her time, working her way down the buttons. Watched him as she stripped off the shirt and dropped it to the floor. His gaze fell to her breasts encased in cream-colored lace, her nipples already hard and pressing insistently against the confining material. He swallowed hard.

“Still want to change your mind?”

“No,” he rasped. “I’m good.”

She straddled him. Waited for the detached feeling that always came with this. But his eyes wouldn’t let her; they held hers firm and forced her to connect. With Jared there was only the truth. There only ever had been.

His heavy-lidded stare dropped to her erect, pink-tipped nipples. “I’m not sure why they call this a lap dance. Feels more like torture to me.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “it could be described that way. Except,” she murmured, rotating her hips in a seductive circle against him, “if you’re a very good boy you might get more.”

He muttered something under his breath she thought she deciphered as, “I sure hope so,” and closed his eyes.

He was hard beneath her, thick and long under his suit pants, and this time it was she who swallowed. She remembered how he had filled her. Remembered how her muscles had clenched around him and how powerful her release had been. Lord.

She kept up her sinuous rotations. His thighs tensed beneath her, his hands fisting at his sides. “This better be special treatment, Bailey. Because if you did this for another man, I might have to kill him. Kill them all.”

She leaned down and gave him a kiss. “Easy, tiger. It is.”

He slid his hands over her hips. She removed them. “No hands.”

“But you just kissed me…”