matter how I shoved or scratched at his steely arm, I couldn’t budge him. I could only watch as he
yanked the drawstring free of his sweats.
Desire and apprehension twisted together inside me. “Gideon … ?”
His gaze met mine, so dark and haunted. “Can you keep your hands off me?”
“No. I don’t want to.”
With a nod, he released me, only to spin me around to face the rear of the car. Caged by his body, I had little room to maneuver.
“Don’t fight me,” he ordered, his lips to my ear.
Then he tied my wrists to the handrail.
I froze, startled that he was actually restraining me. So surprised and disbelieving that I barely
struggled. It was only after I watched him knot the thin cord that I realized he was serious.
Gripping my hips, he nuzzled my hair aside and sank his teeth into my shoulder. “I say when.”
I gasped, tugging at my hands. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer me.
He just left.
Twisting around as much as I was able, I caught him walking into the living room just as the doors
slid shut.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. “You wouldn’t.”
I couldn’t believe he’d send me away like this … tied up in the elevator in only lingerie. He was
presently screwed up in the head, yes, but I couldn’t believe my wildly jealous husband would
expose me that way, to whoever might be in the lobby, just to get rid of me.
“
Gideon!
Goddamn it. Don’t you dare leave me in here like this! Do you
hear
me?! Get your ass back in here!”
I wrenched at the cord binding my wrists, but it was knotted tight. Seconds passed, then minutes.
The car didn’t move and after screaming myself hoarse, I realized it wouldn’t. It waited for the push of a button, standing by for Gideon’s command.
Just like I was.
I was going to kick his fucking ass when I got loose. I’d never been so pissed.
“Gideon!”
Bending over, I walked backward, then lifted and stretched one leg to reach the button that opened
the doors. I pushed it with my big toe. As they slid open, I sucked in a deep breath to scream …
… then promptly lost it in a startled rush.
Gideon strode through the living room toward the foyer …
completely naked
. And drenched from head to toe. His cock was so hard it curved up to his navel. His head was tipped back as he guzzled
bottled water, his stride loose and easy, yet entirely predatory.
I straightened as he drew closer, panting from both the riot of my emotions and the depth of my
hunger. Asshole or not, I wanted him with a ferocity I couldn’t fight. He was complicated and sexy,
damaged and perfect.
“Here.” He brought a crystal tumbler to my lips that I hadn’t noticed because I’d been too busy
ogling his magnificent body. The glass was nearly full, the reddish-gold liquid sloshing against my
lips as he tipped it.
My mouth opened by instinct and he poured the liquor in, the potent proof burning my tongue and
throat. I coughed and he waited, his gaze heavy-lidded. He smelled clean and cool, refreshed from a
shower.
“Finish it.”
“It’s too strong!” I protested.
He simply poured another large swallow past my parted lips.
I kicked at him, cursing when I hurt my foot—and didn’t do any damage to him at all. “Stop it!”
He dropped the empty water bottle and cupped my face in his hand. His thumb brushed away the
drops of liquor on my chin. “You need to let me settle, and you need to mellow out. We go at it like this, we’ll tear each other apart.”
A stupid tear slipped out of the corner of my eye.
Gideon groaned and bent toward me, his tongue licking the trail of the droplet off my cheek. “I’m
shattered and you’re beating at me with your fists. I can’t take it, Eva.”
“I can’t take you shutting me out,” I whispered, tugging at the damned cord. The liquor was
spreading fire through my veins. I could feel the tendrils of intoxication curling around my senses
already.
He put his hand over mine, stilling my restless movements. “Stop that. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Cut me loose.”
“You touch me and I can’t keep it together. I’m hanging by a thread,” he said again, sounding
desperate. “I can’t snap. Not with you.”
“With someone else?” My voice became shrill. “You need someone else?”
I couldn’t keep it together, either. Gideon was the rock in our relationship, the anchor. I thought I could be the same for him. I wanted to shelter him, be his haven. But Gideon didn’t need shelter from the storm; he
was
the storm. And I wasn’t strong enough to bear up under the weight of his crashing mood.
“No. Christ.” He kissed me. Hard. “You need me in control.
I
need to be in control when I’m with you.”
I felt the panic building. He knew. He knew I wasn’t enough. “You were different with the others.
You didn’t hold back—”
“Fuck!”
Gideon spun away, slamming his fist into the control panel. The doors opened to the sound of Sarah McLachlan singing about possession and he threw the tumbler, shattering it against the foyer wall. “Yes, I was different!
You
made me different.”
“And you hate me for that.” I started crying, my body sagging into the car wall.
“No.” He wrapped himself around me, his water-chilled body curving over my back. He rubbed
his face against me, his embrace so tight I could barely breathe. “I love you. You’re my
wife
. My goddamn life. You’re everything.”
“I just want to help you,” I cried. “I want to be here for you, but you won’t let me!”
“God. Eva.” His hands began to move, to pet and glide. To stroke. To soothe. “I can’t stop you. I
need you too much.”
I gripped the handrail with both hands, my cheek pressed to the cool mirror. The liquor began to
work its magic. A heated languor slid through me, drowning my anger and what fight I had left until
they drifted away, leaving me sad and afraid and so desperately, terrifyingly in love.
His hand pushed between my legs, rubbing, searching. With a forceful tug, he opened the snaps that
held the front and back of the teddy together. I moaned at the sudden release of pressure. My sex was wet and swollen from the skilled movements of his hands and the image in my mind of the way he’d
looked walking toward me.
My head fell back against his shoulder and I saw his reflection. His eyes were closed, his lips
parted. The vulnerability etched on his gorgeous face undid me. He was hurting so badly. I couldn’t
bear it.
“Tell me what I can do,” I whispered. “Tell me how to help.”
“Shh.” His tongue rimmed the shell of my ear. “Let me settle.”
The featherlight stroke of his thumb over the mesh covering my nipple was driving me mad. The
slide of his fingers between the slick folds of my cleft had me quivering. He knew where to touch me, how much pressure.
I cried out when he pushed two fingers inside me, my feet flexing, lifting me onto my toes. My
knees weakened, my legs quivering with the strain. The air in the elevator felt thick and steamy, heavy with the need that pumped off him in waves.
“Ah, Christ.” He groaned when my sex tightened around him, his hips rolling against me to grind
his erection into my buttocks. “I’m going to bruise this sweet cunt, Eva. I can’t stop it.”
His arm banded around my waist and lifted me, pulling me back so that my arms were straight and I
was bent over. He kneed my legs apart, his fingers sliding wetly from my cleft. I felt his hand graze my hip, and then he was dragging the wide crest of his penis through the seam of my buttocks and
notching it between the lips of my sex.
I held my breath, squirming against that plush pressure. I’d wanted him all day, craving the feel of his big cock inside me, needing him to make me come.
“Wait,” he groaned, reaching for both my waist and my shoulder, his fingers flexing impatiently.
“Let me—”
My sex clenched, tightening around the thick head.
Gideon cursed and thrust, one hard stroke that shoved him deep. I cried out in pleasured pain,
arching away from the rigid fullness, feeling the burn of stretching inner muscles and tender tissues.
“Yes,” he hissed, yanking me back into him until the lips of my sex hugged the thick root of his
penis. His hips circled, his balls lying heavily against my engorged clitoris. “Fucking tight …”
I moaned and tried to hold on to the handrail; my body rocked as he began to fuck. The sensation
was devastating, being filled so completely, then emptied abruptly. My knees gave out, my core
spasming in delight as he reamed me hard and thoroughly. All the emotion he’d pent up inside him
was hammered into me, the relentless drives of his cock massaging every sensitive nerve.
I was coming before I knew the orgasm was on me, gasping his name as pleasure racked my body
in violent trembles.
My head dropped between my arms, my muscles weak and useless. Gideon held me up with his
hands, with his erection. Using my body. Taking it. Grunting primitively every time he hit the end of me.
“So deep,” he growled. “So good.”
In the periphery, I caught movement, my dazed eyes focusing on our reflection. With a low, pained
cry I started coming again, if I’d ever stopped. Gideon was the most searingly erotic thing I’d ever seen—his biceps thick and hard as he supported my weight, his thighs straining with exertion, his ass flexing as he pistoned, his abs rippling with power as he rolled his hips with every stroke.
He’d been built to fuck, but he had mastered the skill, using every inch of his amazing body to
enslave a woman to pleasure. It was innate to him, instinctive. Even drunk and near feral with
anguish, his rhythm was tight and precise, his focus absolute.
Every thrust took him deep inside me, hitting the sweetest spots again and again, driving the ecstasy into me until I couldn’t resist the onslaught. Another climax churned through me like a tidal wave.
“That’s it,” he groaned. “Milk my dick, angel. God … You’re making me come.”
I felt his cock thickening, lengthening. Tingles raced across my skin; my lungs heaved for air.
Gideon threw back his head and roared like an animal, spurting hotly. Gripping my hips, he
pumped me onto his ejaculating cock, coming hard and forever, filling me until semen slicked my sex
and inner thighs.
He slowed the thrust of his hips, gasping, bending over to press his cheek to my shoulder.
I started sinking to my knees. “Gideon …”
He pulled me up. “I’m not done,” he said roughly, still thick and stiff inside me.
Then he started again.
I woke to the feel of his hair brushing over my shoulder and the press of warm, firm lips. Exhausted, I tried to roll away, but an arm around my waist pulled me back.
“Eva,” he rasped. His hand cupped my breast, clever fingers rolling my nipple.
It was dark and we were in bed, although I barely remembered him carrying me there. He’d
undressed me, washed me with a damp cloth, and rained kisses over my face and wrists. They were
bandaged now, slicked with ointment and wrapped with care.
It had turned me on to feel his tender caresses over the chafing, the mix of pleasure and pain. He’d noticed.
With eyes hot with lust, he’d spread my legs and eaten me with an insistent demand that robbed me
of the ability to think or move. He’d licked and sucked my cleft endlessly, until I lost count of how many times he made me come around his wicked tongue.
“Gideon …” Turning my head, I looked at him over my shoulder. He was propped on one arm, his
eyes glittering in the faint light of the moon. “Did you stay with me?”
Maybe it was reckless to hope he’d stayed with me while I slept, but sharing a bed with him was
something I loved. And craved.
He nodded. “I couldn’t leave you.”
“I’m glad.”
He rolled me over and into him, taking my mouth, kissing me softly. The coaxing licks of his tongue
stirred me again, made me moan.
“I can’t stop touching you,” he breathed, gripping my nape to hold me still as he deepened the kiss, his teeth tugging gently on my lower lip. “When I touch you, I don’t think about anything else.”
Tenderness blended with the love. “Can I touch you, too?”
Closing his eyes, he begged. “Please.”
I surged into him, my hands sliding into his hair to hold him as he held me. I brushed my tongue
against his, our mouths hot and wet. Our legs tangled, my body arching to press against the hardness of his.
He hummed softly and slowed me down, rolling to pin me to the bed. Pulling back, he broke the
seal of our mouths, nibbling, sucking. Tracing the curves of my lips with the tip of his tongue.
I whimpered in protest, wanting deeper, harder. Instead, he licked leisurely, stroking the roof of my mouth, the lining of my cheeks. I tightened my legs, dragging him closer. He rocked his hips, pressing his erection into my thigh.
Gideon kissed me until my lips were hot and puffy and the sun was rising in the sky. He kissed me
until he came in a hot rush against my skin. Not once but twice.
The feel of him coming, the sound of his low pained moans of pleasure, knowing I could bring him
to orgasm with just my kiss … I slicked his thigh with my need and ground against him until I
climaxed.
As the new day began, he closed the distance he’d put between us in the elevator. He made love to
me without sex. He pledged his devotion by making me the center of his world. There was nothing
beyond the edges of our bed. Only us and a love that stripped us bare even as it made us whole.
WHEN I woke again, I found him sleeping beside me, his lips as kiss-swollen as mine. Gideon’s face