kneeling before me as she undoes my belt and pulls it from my pants. She moves to drop it to the ground but I reach down and retrieve it, tossing it on the bed.
‘We might need that,’ I say, and she lifts one eyebrow but says nothing.
Her fingers are shaking again as she unclips my pants, making her seem younger than she is, and less experienced. Hell, actually, I have no idea how experienced she is. Not a virgin. But beyond that?
It doesn’t matter.
She’s here because she wants to be here. She chose this. I’m not doing anything wrong.
That’s bullshit. This is wrong on so many levels. If Dean Walters knew I was about to spend the night seducing this shining star of the London Law School, Olivia could be expelled and I’d...well...it doesn’t matter what happens to me. But I wouldn’t find it easy to forgive myself for ruining her professional prospects.
Fuck it.
She wants this and I do, too. She knows the risks and she’s willing to stare them down.
That’s her choice. Still, I’m not completely blind to what she stands to lose. ‘Olivia?’
Her eyes lift to mine and my gut twists.
‘You’re sure you want this?’
Her expression is droll. ‘You seriously need to ask?’
She pushes my pants down, taking my boxer shorts with them, so that I am naked before her. As she drives my clothes down my legs, she crouches lower and I groan at the sight of her in the mirror. So sexy at my feet.
‘I’m serious.’ The words come out weighted by lust. ‘This would be a disaster for you if anyone found out.’
She lifts her eyes to my face, staring up the length of my body.
‘No one’s going to find out. And don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t answer my question before.’
I step out of my pants and hold my hands down for her to grab. She does so, standing, her body cleaved to mine in a way that makes me impatient to possess her.
‘What question?’
‘Who is she?’ She kisses my shoulder, her tongue teasing me in circles before she moves around to my back and begins to trace her mouth over my flesh, while her fingers curve around my chest, heating me with their gentle enquiries. Her eyes meet mine in the mirror.
The sight of us burns into my mind.
She’s so small, I feel an instinctive urge to protect her. To be gentle with her. But I know she doesn’t want that. I know she feels the same aggressive, savage need to be with me as I do with her.
This is what we both want.
‘Who?’
‘The woman in the red dress.’
‘Oh.’ Did I not answer? I can’t remember. I’d been so distracted by Olivia and what lay ahead for us. ‘Someone I went to university with.’ I am dismissive. I have no interest in Cynthia.
‘Someone you’ve slept with?’
Her question catches me by surprise, but then, I suppose her curiosity is only natural. She’s weighing me up. Assessing how many women I’ve dragged into deserted corridors, perhaps?
She steps back from me and I spin around, my eyes pinning her to the spot. She swallows, such a gentle movement of her throat and yet I see it on a cellular level. Her every gesture is like a drop in the pond that turns into a tsunami by the time it reaches me.
I was conscious of it the first day I met her. I’m used to high-stress situations. I’m used to standing in packed courtrooms, giving interviews to the media, speaking with Supreme Court justices as though we are equals.
And it was Olivia Amorelli, all five and a smidgen feet of her, that made me feel strangely aware of myself. It was Olivia, sitting there with her eyes as round as plates and tumbling blonde hair, her sweet pink lips and diligent note-taking, that made every pulse point in my body shoot into overdrive.
She’s doing it again now.
‘Would that bother you?’
I reach for her, jerking her to my body. Her breath is loud, her lips parted.
‘It was a long time ago,’ she points out huskily, unknowingly drawing my attention once more to the age gap between us. ‘It would bother me if you’d brought her home tonight.’
I laugh. ‘No chance of that.’
‘I’m glad.’ Her eyes meet mine and certainty throbs in my gut. This is wrong. This is right. It just is.
* * *
Connor lifts me up as though I weigh nothing, wrapping me around his waist and dropping me onto the bed. He towers over me, his eyes, so intensely watchful, doing strange things to the rhythm of my heart. I am completely overcome by my need for him.
I turn my head to the side and my eyes land on his belt, the dark black leather intensely distracting. We might need that.
He follows my gaze and then presses his forehead to mine. ‘Have you ever been tied up?’
My eyes flare wide and I shake my head. I’m not weirded out by kinky shit, but Pietro and I had the most perfunctory sex life you can imagine, and beyond that my experience is pretty limited.
‘I...no. I...haven’t had the opportunity.’
He’s straddling me, and his weight on my hips is so pleasing. He rests on his haunches as he sits up straighter, sliding the belt from my fingers with an expression that is darkly watchful.
He loops the belt over, forming a teardrop shape, and he presses it to my shoulder, his eyes still on mine.
He runs it lower, to my breast, dragging it over a nipple that is hard and tight, screaming for him to take it into his mouth. He lifts the belt and then slaps the end on my nipple. The pain is not a bad one. It is an intense awareness that starts in my abdomen and spirals uncontrollably through my body. I curl my toes and bite my lip.
‘Are you afraid?’
I shake my head. I’m not. I’m so turned on.
He leans forward, running his tongue over the nipple he’s just slapped, rewarding it with his mouth, flicking it gently until I am incandescent with an overload of sensations. He catches one of my hands in his and then the other, bringing them to rest in front of me.
‘I have wanted to do this since the first day I met you.’
‘I thought you’ve wanted to fuck me since the first day you met me,’ I remind him of what he said in the maintenance corridor.
‘I’ve wanted to own you,’ he says simply.
‘You can’t own another person.’
His look is meaningful; my heart lurches. ‘You think?’ and I don’t know what to make of that, and I don’t have time to process it. He’s expertly weaving the belt between my wrists and then pushing my hands higher up the bed. The bedhead itself is a wide piece of padded fabric, but on either side it is supported by a timber frame. He slides one end of the belt in the gap between fabric and wood and brings it back out again, slipping the tail of the belt through the clasp and tightening it, just enough to push a sharp breath of surprise from my lips as the leather pinches around tightly clasped wrists.
‘It occurs to me that I can’t touch you.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘I do like touching you,’ I say huskily, a smile on my lips.
His laugh is like caramel running over my flesh. ‘You’ll get your turn.’
He drops his mouth back to my breasts and I moan as he grabs the nipple he’s already tormented with pleasure between his forefinger