She couldn’t help but correct him. “You mean after you screwed me on your truck and then dumped me off like the trashy whore I am, at the back door of Relinquish Control.”
He laughed, actually laughed at her words, making her want desperately to reach out and slap the smug look right off his face. How dare he laugh at her? He was in serious danger right then, and from the continued mirth see saw dancing in his eyes, it was apparent that he knew that — and wasn’t in the least worried.
“Calm down, Jewell. We’re not getting anywhere with your little burst of temper. Though, I must say, it turns me on to see such fire light up in your eyes,” he said with a wink. He paused, then went on. “But we can certainly put your heightened emotions to better uses than venting.”
Oh, how she wished she could be as cold and unaffected as this ice sculpture of a man. He wouldn’t know true human emotion if it were right in front of him — which it was, since she was aching inside and out.
“Why are you this way, Blake? How can you be so cavalier, so unfeeling? Do you not care at all that you make me lose any sense of control?” She was vulnerable, angry, and struggling with other emotions she didn’t even know how to name.
“I see nothing wrong with the way I act,” he said levelly, refusing to back away. As a matter of fact, he drew nearer, and there wasn’t much nearer to go. “I like who I am, and no one can make you feel any emotion, Jewell. We choose how we feel; we choose what we think, what we want, what we desire. You can choose to enjoy this, or you can choose to run from it, but either way, you are mine, and I know you want me. I know you want all of this. To try to escape when we’ve come so far together would be foolish.”
The way his breath whispered over her flesh, across her cheek, her lips, her neck, made her shudder. She had no doubt there was fire burning in her eyes, flames hot enough to match the embers burning in his. To even try to deny it would be a wasted effort — they’d both know she was lying.
Jewell instead did something she knew she’d later regret — or maybe not — but she acted with emotion, with rage, with desire. Without her giving it a conscious thought, her fingers clenched and she watched, almost as an outsider looking in, as her fist rose involuntarily and slammed into the side of his face.
And yet his expression remained neutral, and though he flinched, it was almost imperceptible. He simply stared at her with eyes that were still cold, still all-knowing and hyperaware. That was outside of enough. And then she was pulling back and slamming her fist into his jaw again.
When she still didn’t get a reaction from him, she lost all semblance of sanity, and lifted both hands, her claws coming out as she reached for him and tugged on his hair. She was beyond reason and control now, lost in a blaze of fury. The past few months came to a head and she lost complete control.
Who in the hell did he think he was? It wasn’t fair that that he could mess so easily with her emotions and what she was feeling, and that he even got to choose her destiny. He had no right to make her feel anything. She’d thought she could spend the next month as a hollow shell, devoid of any feeling, whether good or bad, but how could she possibly be like that with Blake? She knew this was a battle she couldn’t win.
But for some reason she couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t retreat, which meant she could only keep fighting.
“I hate you!” she screamed when he still showed her no emotion.
Then, so quickly that she had zero chance of stopping him, he thrust out one hand and grabbed both of hers, then jerked her arms above her head while the fingers of his other hand snaked behind her head and tangled in her hair.
Before she even thought of struggling, she was being pulled up from the chair and shoved backward until she was flat against the wall, his body a mass of impenetrable steel boxing her in. Her arms were stretched high above her head, her heart thudding, her breath gone yet again.
Blake displayed just a hint of emotion as he pushed against her, and she couldn’t mistake how hard their struggle had made him. Somehow, that turned her rage into a burning passion — a passion she despised herself for feeling.
Before she was able to recover herself, to firmly lock away anything other than hatred for the man now entrapping her, his eyes narrowed and he went on the attack. He quickly bent his head down and captured her mouth in a kiss of pure — and impure — possession.
And the three months they’d been apart evaporated in an instant and she was right back with him, right where they’d been their last night together, where anger and frustration had morphed into heat and passion.
His kiss was masterful, and it didn’t take him long to part her closed lips and access the warm recesses of her needy mouth. There was hunger, danger, and so much more in the very way he held her body, in the way he completely devoured her, leaving no room for thoughts of anything or anyone other than him.
One feeling merged into the next as he plundered her mouth, intimately reacquainting himself with the feel and touch of her, making her knees grow weak, her heart beat erratically, and her core heat to the point of boiling. This was pure sex at its most basic level.
His fingers tightened in her hair as he moved his body rhythmically against hers, his arousal pressing as intimately against her womanhood as their clothes would allow. She was ready, so ready, for him to take her wherever he chose to.
“I want you, Jewell, I want you more than any other woman I’ve ever desired. You make me burn,” he said when he pulled back for air. He trailed his lips down her throat after his words made her insides dissolve even further.
Jewell tried to remember why this was wrong. She tried to regain her composure, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe, let alone try to resist this pull he had on her. Even knowing she would hate him and herself even more than she already did, she couldn’t stop herself from responding.
The only way this would end was if he allowed it to.
But Blake obviously wasn’t finished yet. He freed her hands only to let his fingers glide down her body, stroking the sensitive skin of her sides, hips and ass. Her head fell back and a sigh escaped her lips while his mouth caressed the skin of her neck.
It took a moment for her to realize he had finally stilled. He rested his hands on her hips, and his mouth no longer made its seductive way along her skin. She slowly tilted her head forward and once again found her eyes captured by his ardent gaze.
It must have been an eternity that the two of them stood there, neither saying a word, their breathing now returning to something like normal — though Jewell’s body would never be normal again. She didn’t know what to do or say, and still couldn’t think with his hard body pressed against hers.