The Seduction of Destiny Rhode [The Seduction 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) (5 page)

“Jealous much, sweetheart?”

She strangled the scream in her throat, but wasn’t so lucky about stopping herself from lunging at him. Both fists pummeled his chest, causing her serious discomfort, but she doubted he even noticed.

“I am
not
jealous! You complete arrogant jackass…”

He grabbed her wrists and turned her back against the wall, his body pressed hard against hers, his face a mere inch away. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her lips and caught the scent of mint mixed with cigarette smoke.

“Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those steamy romance novels, and I’m not going to kiss you or rip the clothes off you…not that I’d mind, but come on, let’s be real. I just wanted your attention. I don’t give a fuck if you want Aiden’s cock or not. I don’t give a fuck if he and his wife are blissfully happy or merely putting up a front like every other married couple I’ve ever known in all my life. I’m here to do a job. Yes, I’m attracted to you, but I’m not a relationship kinda guy. I’m a
fuck ’em and leave ’em
kinda guy.”

She gasped at his brutal honesty.

“At least I’m honest about it,” he defended himself.

“Why are you telling me any of this?”

“Because I’m going to be here another three months at
least
on this job, and you’re the woman I’d like most to fuck then leave. You seem to have your hands full at the moment anyway, so I was guessing no time for a relationship, so what exactly are you doing with all that pent-up need? I thought perhaps this would be win-win for both of us, but if you’d rather sit around waiting for Prince Charming to ride in on a white horse, I believe parade times at Disney are three and five.”

He let her go and stepped back enough so she could breathe again,
think
again.

As things went, it wasn’t a bad offer, but…

“Have you lost your mind?” Her head began to throb. “I mean seriously? You want to have an affair…” She gasped, quickly covering her open mouth with her hand as her eyes filled with tears. “Oh my God, what do you people think of me?”

The emotion was rising quickly to the surface. A fierce sense of panic was choking her.

“I made
one
mistake like a million years ago and…” She couldn’t even finish it.

“Destiny, I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I think is that you are one of the sexiest women I’ve ever seen. Those curves make my fingers twitch. Your lips give me cravings the likes of which I’ve never had. I can’t stop thinking about you,
dreaming
about you. I lie awake at night wondering how well my cock would fill your pussy and how you taste and wondering how you’d feel in my arms. I thought maybe you felt the same, is all.”

He bent over to pick up several hand tools, now ignoring her completely.

“I overreacted?”

“Perhaps just a bit.” He didn’t even look at her, just continued collecting tools until his arms were full, then started to walk away.

She wanted to say something to stop him, but what? He was getting farther and farther down the hall, and she still had nothing. Did she even really
want
to stop him? She couldn’t give him what he wanted, but she should probably at the very least explain why.

“Ronan, wait.” She ran down the hall after him.

He stopped and turned around, but the desire in his eyes had gone cold, and his expression remained blank.

“I appreciate your offer…”

He groaned and turned away, starting to walk again.

“Wait!”

He stopped.

She took the few steps necessary to catch up with him. This time he didn’t turn around and forced her to step in front of him so she could face him.

“Honestly, you are the most infuriating man I have…well, no, I gave Oscar that title years ago…” She shook her head to clear her thoughts and redirected herself at Ronan. “I’m flattered, but no. You don’t know me, I’m sure I wouldn’t be a good fit for a man such as yourself. Good day.”

She turned to continue down the hall, feeling she had salvaged at least
some
of her pride. She was rather shocked she’d been able to keep her rejection so brief and not spiral down into a long tale of woe about her sex and love life.

“Wait just a damn minute, woman!”

Crap
.

She froze and waited as she heard his footsteps coming toward her.

“First of all, you don’t get to say what kind of a woman would satisfy me or not. Second, I’m not interested in you being
flattered
. It was a straightforward offer for sex, to which ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ would have been sufficient in response. As for
infuriating
…Good God, don’t get me started there!”

He had come around in front of her so he was facing her again. She didn’t know what he’d done with the tools, but his arms were empty again. She folded her arms hard across her chest and stared straight up at him, barely resisting the urge to go up on her tiptoes to level off the height difference somewhat.

“Are you implying that I might be infuriating?” She used her most sugary-sweet tone.

“Honey, I’ll go one step further and just out right tell you that you are!” He folded his arms over his chest, and if she wasn’t mistaken, straightened himself to appear even taller.

She fumed and made strange strangled sounds she hadn’t recalled ever making before, but much to her disappointment, no sharp, stinging, witty comeback came flying out.

“Damn it.” He spoke so deep in his throat she wasn’t even entirely sure he’d spoken at all, but not a second later he had his hands on her head and his mouth solidly locked on hers.

Her first instinct was to fight him. Her entire body stiffened and she pulled away hard, but a moment later she realized just how long it had been since she’d been kissed and realized just how nice it was, and she surrendered everything she had to him.

When she relaxed into him, his one arm lowered to wrap around her waist, pulling her body seamlessly to his. His tongue quickly entered her mouth. He tasted of coffee and mint, and good Lord but did he have skill with that tongue!

Her body shivered, and she distantly heard a moan she thought might be hers, but she didn’t want to examine it too closely. She was being kissed literally senseless by the sexiest man she’d seen in a good long while. For as long as it lasted, she was going to enjoy it.

“That mouth of yours has been driving me nuts from the day I met you.” He pulled back just far enough to look into her eyes. “You have the sexiest damn lips I’ve ever seen.”

She blinked up at him, not even sure how to respond to that, but it didn’t matter. Before she had any chance to make a response, he was kissing her again. He walked them back the two steps it took for her back to hit the wall behind them and he clasped both her wrists in his one hand, securing them above her head to the wall. She was beginning to feel ravaged, and that wasn’t a bad feeling at all!

His other hand stroked her cheek and neck, while he continued exploring her mouth with his tongue, nipping her lips with his teeth and pressing his entire hard body against hers, making her feel small and feminine. She drank it all in, every nuance, every sensation. It was all exquisitely lovely, and she wanted to remember it.

At the end of the day, though, she was still after all, herself. She needed to stop him before they crossed a line she couldn’t cross, not with him or anyone.

With deep regret, she pushed him away and turned her head so he couldn’t kiss her anymore.

“Stop.” The one word she managed to say sounded weak and needy.

He didn’t move away, but he didn’t try to kiss her again. They stood there, bodies still touching, their shaky breathing the only sound in the hallway.

“Why?” He sounded tortured.

She couldn’t look at him. She also couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation. It was complicated and probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone other than herself. At the end of the day, though, it just came down to the fact that she didn’t trust herself enough not to get into trouble with men. So she simply stayed clear of them. She couldn’t change that now when so much else in her life was as complicated and risky as it was.

“I just don’t want this.” She looked him in the eye. “I don’t want
you
.”

“Liar.”

His harsh response tore into her, and she gasped, but couldn’t find a response to his accusation, especially since it was true.

He kept her hands pinned above her head and brought his face just as close as it had been when he was kissing her.

“I think you dream about me when you sleep. I think I make your panties wet. I think when you come at night by your own hand, you think of me and wish it was my hand or better yet, my tongue. And do you want to know how I know this?”

She shook her head a bit frantically. He was too close to the truth, and she didn’t want to hear any more. She tugged at her hands, but he held them too tight.

“Because I’m in the same boat, sweetheart. I lay awake at night, hard as fucking granite thinking about you. I walk across that lobby twenty times a day just to see if I might get a glimpse of you and if you’ll notice me. I jack off as often as a kid, and every time I’m holding my cock, I imagine my hand is your pussy…” He ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “Or your lips. So don’t tell me you don’t want this, because I won’t believe you.”

Any words she might have used against him dried up in her throat. She didn’t know what to say or what to think. She’d never met a man like Ronan before, not in looks, not in personality, certainly not in directness, and she clearly didn’t know how to handle him.

“I just…” She closed her eyes briefly and released a long breath before looking back up to him. “I’m bad with men. I had a rotten marriage. Even worse, I cheated on him with Aiden. I can’t…I don’t trust myself.”

She looked away, acutely embarrassed.

“Princess, I’m not asking to marry you. I only want to fuck the life out of you and far as I can see, you aren’t married
now
, so there won’t be any cheating. Call me thick, but I’m not following. I don’t see the problem here.”

She tried again to tug free of him, but he was simply much bigger than she was. It wasn’t that she was in any danger, just feeling exceedingly exposed.

“You don’t have to see the problem. I do.”

He looked at her for a long moment before speaking. “When was the last time you had an orgasm…and I mean with a man, not whatever electronic devices you keep hidden in your panty drawer.”

She felt her cheeks heat and could only imagine how red they turned. She felt equal pulls to tell him a lie, slap him, though he still had her hands bound, and simply tell him the truth of it all.

“Why won’t you let me make you feel good, Destiny?”

“Oh, so you do remember my name.” She was relieved to find something neutral to grab onto.

“Oh, I remember your name all right. I have a splendidly fine memory for things. Like last week when you were wearing that brown pencil skirt, did you know I could see the line your garter belt made beneath it?”

She sucked in air so fast she choked on it, but not showing her the least bit of compassion, he continued.

“I could. And did you know I spent the entire rest of the day trying to guess what color it was? I imagined laying you out on your prissy little desk behind the front check-in, running my hands up those silk stockings you wear right up until I found that garter.”

She was finding it exceptionally hard to breathe, but attempted to act as if he was having no effect on her at all.

“I know I shouldn’t spend money on such luxuries right now, but the silk feels nice against my skin.”

He purred into her ear, then nipped the lobe before whispering against it, “Baby,
I’d
feel good against your skin.”

She moaned. She was rapidly losing the battle to stay detached.

“You wanna know what the trouble is with men and women?”

“Wh…what?” The apparent change of subject made her head spin.

“The trouble. Why relationships don’t work and marriages fail and men hate women and women hate men and you and I have to do this dance when we could be fucking. Do you wanna know?”

She didn’t know why she felt the need to defend marriage and love. After all, it hadn’t worked for her, but she couldn’t let the hope die she secretly held in her heart that someday, somehow prince charming would show up.

“It works for some people. Look at Cassidy and Aiden! He
loves
her.” She had a valid point there, and he couldn’t possibly argue with her on it.

“And you know this how? You been in their bed at night with them? Honey, that ‘love’ you speak of, the
way
you mean it, doesn’t exist. That romantic, fairy-dust love spell that turns all women into desirable goddesses and men into drooling imbeciles is a fantasy. You women all want the fairy tale, but God help you, if you ever got it you’d be bored senseless within ten minutes. Prince Charming isn’t gonna make your panties wet, darlin’. He can’t grab you by the hair and make you breathless. He can’t bring you to your knees with a single look. He’s never gonna satisfy that ache so deep inside you that you can’t breathe at times for it. It takes a
real
man to do that. A man that doesn’t ride horses, write poetry and doesn’t bring flowers, but that can fuck you so that you feel it in your soul. That’s what you want, Destiny. I can read it all over you.”