Do Your Worst(50)

“Do you?” The words fell like velvet against the skin he’d exposed at the back of her neck.

This time when he pulled the pressure was deliberate. A test.

Riley shouldn’t do this.

They’d been in a constant power struggle since they met.

He thought she was beneath him.

She wanted to be.

“Yes,” she said, heart thrashing inside her chest.

“How much?” The question wasn’t breathy. He didn’t just want to hear her say it—though she assumed there was an element of that. No, Clark asked like a scientist—curious, assessing. Like he wanted to know precisely how to make her hot.

“Just . . .” Riley closed her eyes for a second, gathering her strength. “Harder.”

He placed one knee on the bed beside her and leaned forward until his back almost covered hers and his face was just above her left shoulder.

“Really,” he said, low, interested. Not a question.

Clark used his grip on her hair to tilt Riley’s face toward his, until only a handful of inches separated their lips and her scalp stung.

“Tell me to stop.” The rough stubble of his permanent five-o’clock shadow lay in vivid contrast to the soft invitation of his mouth.

Riley stared into his eyes, defiant. There was nothing he could do to her that she couldn’t take.

His breathing had shifted, his chest rising and falling under the rugby shirt with exaggerated movement. Clark moved his mouth to the underside of her jaw and planted the faintest, barely there kiss.

“Tell me you don’t want me.” The command was gravel rough, grinding. As harsh as the hand in her hair.

“No.” Riley relished the refusal, leaning forward so the tension from his grip grew even tighter as she closed the distance between them.

Clark pulled back from the kiss almost immediately, his eyes wide, shocked. He hadn’t thought she’d go through with it. Had assumed this, like so many of their interactions, was another game.

This time when he laughed, it was soft, dark. “You’ll be the death of me yet.”

The proclamation seemed to unlock something inside him. When he kissed her after, there was nothing tentative about it. He took her mouth like it belonged to him. Like all of her did.

His lips should have been poison with the way she went dizzy, pliant in an instant. Nothing should feel this good. Each press and slide of his tongue going straight between her thighs.

They kissed the way they did everything, a heady give-and-take.

Clark slid his free palm from her jaw slowly down her throat, the touch light, caressing, to rest between the wings of her collarbone. He sucked her bottom lip, bit the swollen curve. More than a little bit cruel.

I’ll pay for this, she thought, and, determined to get her money’s worth, closed her eyes against a shiver.

The scent of his skin, the warm weight of his hand on her chest, the way he held her hair. It was all terrible and exquisite.

“Riley.” Clark scraped his teeth against the hinge of her jaw. “Let me leave a mark.”

She nodded, the movement limited by his grip, ready to spread her legs just from the way he said her name.

He raked her from head to toe, assessing. “Where?”

Riley imagined her naked skin marked by imprints of his desire.

She was an agent of her own destruction. As reckless as he’d said.

“Anywhere.” She breathed hard in and out through her nose, feeling positively feral. “Anywhere you want.”

The most severe parts of his face—the slash of his dark brows, that hard mouth—pulled wicked with delight.

Riley expected him to go for her neck, to leave his first bruise where it would be most visible as a conquest, but Clark brought his lips to the meat of her shoulder instead and sucked, hot and hard on the tender skin.

“I can’t believe I’ve got you in my bed, bare beneath my clothes.” His voice was low and incredulous, something like starry-eyed delight underpinning the words.

“And?” Even though fighting for the upper hand seemed vaguely insincere at this point, Riley could at least make him work for it. “What do you plan to do with me?”

Clark reached between her legs and pressed the rough ridge of his knuckles against the thin inseam of his sweats. “Take you apart.”

Riley’s back arched. She brought her hands to his shoulders, biting her lip to silence a moan.

It wasn’t her fault. How dare he turn hair braiding into foreplay?

Clark let her rock back and forth against his fist, working her hips in tiny circles, seeking friction.

Riley wanted to come so bad she couldn’t see straight. She recognized every terrible instinct inside herself—to whimper, to mewl, to beg.

But she wouldn’t. She pressed herself harder against his hand, working her hips. If she had to get herself off, just like this, even, she would.

Clark watched her face. “I can’t believe you’re gonna make it this easy on me.”

Heat flooded her cheeks.

And, okay. No. Riley refused to be the only one unraveling. She yanked his sweater over her head with one hand, using the other to force him to sit back.

For a long moment he just looked at her, breathing hard through his nose.

Her nipples tightened under his gaze, so fast it almost hurt.

Clark swore as he moved to cup her breast, testing the weight in his palm. His thumb grazed her nipple, back and forth, maddeningly soft.