Chapter Twenty-Four

Carrie

“What’s it going to be, Carrie?” Reid demands, dragging me flush against his hard body.

“I’ll go to your apartment with you, Reid, but don’t touch me until I say you can touch me. We’re going to talk first.”

His lips quirk. “You talk. I’ll fuck you while you do it.” He takes my hand and starts walking.

I fall into step with him because I really have no choice unless I want to make a scene and I do not. “The part where I said don’t touch me until I say you can touch me,” I say. “That still applies.”

He folds our elbows and pulls me closer. “I’ve got a pair of handcuffs upstairs that says differently.”

“You’re not cuffing me.”

“Tell me that when I’m between your legs licking you the way we both know you like to be licked.”

My God, why did that just make me wet? He’s crass and almost mean and yet everything about the man turns me on. He opens the door to his building and drags me inside with him like I’m his possession. Or like he just really needs to do what he suggested and fuck me out of his system. That he feels this need because I’m in his head shouldn’t please me, but it does. Almost as much as cuffing him and leaving him in that room.

He drags me close again and sets us in motion, waving to the security guard as we head toward the elevators. Some part of me knows this night will change us, and I don’t know if that is good or bad. Just that it will, but I can’t stop it. It’s in motion. It’s already happening. Maybe it happened back there with Elijah. Whatever the case, we’ve been headed here from the moment we met. Reid punches the elevator button and the doors open. Butterflies attack my stomach and in a quick maneuver, Reid has me against the wall of the elevator car, his powerful thighs caging mine, even as he punches in a code on the panel, followed by his floor number.

The doors seal us inside and his hands come down on my waist as he stares down at me, just stares. “Did you listen to the messages?”

“Yes.”

I study him for several beats. “It changes nothing,” I say, reading it in his face.

“That’s right. I was, and am, going to fuck you ten ways to Sunday in my apartment.”

“Because that’s what you do. Fuck your enemies?”

The elevator dings and halts, and he has my hand again, leading me out of the car. I don’t even know what floor we’re on. I just know that I’m about to be in this man’s private space, and I’m curious about what it tells me about Reid, about the man beneath the stone.

He pulls me between him and the door, his big body hot and hard behind me. He unlocks the door, opening it and presenting me with the entry. I cross the threshold, a light automatically dimming and before I can do more than walk a step or two, he’s behind me, turning me to face him, pressing me against the door. “Because,” he says, his legs caging mine once more, his hands on the wall by my head, “getting back to your question in the elevator, I can’t stop thinking about fucking you and that’s a distraction neither of us can afford. It’s s distraction that’s in my head when it can’t be in my head. You’re in my fucking head.”

He says it like he’s angry. Like it’s my fault. He’s blaming me for whatever sins he’s decided I created. “You’re consuming my whole damn world,” I all but growl at him. “Everything I am. No one can claim that, but you. And I didn’t even invite you to do it.”

“And so you tried to take control yourself tonight.”

“No, damn it. I called you. I thought I could find out the information you needed to know. That we needed to know. And Elijah implied he knew what everyone seems to know about my father but me.”

“You have plenty of reasons to betray me. Reasons I can’t ignore.”

“I also have reasons not to,” I remind him.

“What reasons, Carrie?”

I’m in over my head, I think. I need you, I think, but I don’t say those words. They make me weak. I can’t be weak. Emotions I don’t want to feel well up in my chest. Emotions that are more personal than professional. “Because you saved me. And because…”

“Because what?” he presses.

“I really don’t want to be your enemy, Reid. Can we just not be enemies?”

He looks skyward, seeming to struggle with what comes next, or maybe something he knows that I don’t know, and there is something before he fixes me in a turbulent stare. “I cannot do this with you. I fuck. I move on. That is what I do.”

“Did I ask you to do anything else? Did I? No. No, I did not. I don’t want a relationship and I don’t know where you get off acting like I do. I’m not that girl. So fuck me or let me off this damn door and out of here.” I press on the hard wall of his chest, and his heart thunders under my palm.

He’s stone, he’s always stone. I’m suffocating in this man. In how he looks. How he smells. How much I want him. How much I keep hating him and not hating him. “You’re not going anywhere,” he promises. “Not until we fuck this out of our systems, so don’t plan on sleeping.” He rotates me, forcing me to move, and now I’m in front of him, facing the door and he’s dragging my jacket off my shoulders. It’s barely off and he’s pressing me to the door again, forcing me to catch myself with my hands, working my skirt down my hips. I yelp as he yanks the panties. “You could have at least shown me your apartment before you destroyed my panties.”

He turns me to face him, me against the door. One of his hands is at my hip and the other next to my head. “You want to see my apartment?”

“This doorway sex isn’t any different than office sex.” A sharp pang in my chest has me cutting my stare before I look at him again. “Never mind. Just fuck me here. We don’t need different.”

“We do need different and more,” he says. “A hell of a lot more.” And suddenly he’s throwing me over his shoulder and walking down the hallway, my bare bum under his palm.

“Reid!” I yelp. “The blood is running to my head.”

“You’ll survive,” he assures me and one of my shoes falls off.

“That was my shoe,” I say, and the other one falls, too.

“I promise not to wear it,” he says, and I can see nothing but his legs before he lays me down on a soft gray couch. “Take off your blouse and bra or I’ll rip them, too.” He kisses me, a deep slide of tongue over too soon. “Now,” he adds, standing up.

I love this blouse and I quickly sit up, pull it over my head, and toss it and my bra, with a fleeting awareness of high ceilings and walls of windows. Reid shrugs out of his jacket, his gaze raking over my naked body, before he tosses it away. “My phone was in my jacket in that hotel room where you left me,” he comments. “My jacket was out of reach.” He reaches for his tie.

I can’t help it. I laugh, pressing my hands to the cushions. “What did you do?”

He leaves his tie dangling and unbuttons his shirt, toeing off his shoes, because as I know well, he’s quite the multitasker when it come to fucking. “I picked up the whole damn couch.”

“How very resourceful of you. Who did you call for help?”

“Royce.”

“Of course. A man paid to keep your secrets.”

He removes his shirt, and my God, the man is really the definition of asshole perfection, complete with rippling abs and broad shoulders, but I don’t get the full package just yet. With his pants still on, he lowers me to the couch and presses me against the cushion, his big wonderful body on top of mine. His lips linger over my lips and the air thickens around us in that combustible way I’ve only known with Reid. We’re fucking, I know we’re fucking and it’s all I want, but there’s something between me and this man, something that is more real than anything I’ve ever felt. “I can’t believe you told me about the jacket.”

“I just wanted to make sure you know all the reasons I have to punish you tonight.”

There’s something in the way he says those words, something that cuts from deep inside him and my hand goes to his jaw. “I didn’t betray you,” I whisper. “I swear to you, Reid.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I heard it in your voice in the message. I know, and it would be so much easier if I didn’t.”

“What would be easier?”

“Everything.” He gives me no chance to ask what he means. His mouth closes down on mine, and in the depth of that kiss is the everything he’s just declared. Everything he wants. Everything that I want. Everything that he intends to take from me tonight.