“No. Thank you,” she said awkwardly. He’d already been more generous than she was comfortable with—there was no missing the way her curves were making his nice clothes beg for mercy. “I just need to figure out something to do with this.” She lifted her sodden mass of hair that had started to soak through the shoulder of his sweater.
Clark looked up from where he was hanging his towel. “I could plait it for you, if you like.”
“You know how to braid hair?”
He raised one shoulder. “My nan likes it done.”
“Oh.” She refused to find that endearing. “Okay, then. I guess, if you don’t mind?”
“Have a seat.” He gestured to the foot of the bed.
Riley made her way over and tried to sit as primly as possible for someone whose brain had melted to goo at the sight of her nemesis’s hairy quads.
Clark grabbed a comb from one of the cabinets built into the bookshelf （So he does have one） and then, standing behind her, proceeded to part her hair.
The first press of the comb’s teeth set off her already tingling nerve endings. Riley made herself hold still, keeping her back straight in a callback to his posture when she’d given him a massage.
With their positions reversed, she couldn’t help noticing that for all she’d been trying to break him then, he was careful with her now. Starting at the ends of her hair, patiently working his way through snarls. No matter how many times she pushed him, how many ways she tried to prove she didn’t want coddling, he always found a way to be careful with her. That, more than his condemnation, was hard to shake.
For a few breaths there was nothing but his presence at her back, large and close and warm, and the gentle tugging of the comb at her scalp. Riley didn’t know whether to laugh or whimper. It was maddening, having this man she wanted to loathe constantly find ways to burrow beneath her defenses.
Clark’s knuckles brushed the sensitive arch of her neck as he sectioned off her hair for the braid. Riley’s lips parted. Even though he couldn’t see her face, she felt so exposed, here in his bed, wearing his things, letting him touch her.
She tried to calm herself by taking a deep breath, but of course these clothes smelled like whatever fancy organic detergent he used—fresh but not floral, with a lingering hint of the sunscreen and bug spray he wore. Summer scents that made her think of grilling and swimming and heated, glistening skin.
While he constructed the braid in quick, sure strokes, she sat there helplessly, trying not to focus on the dexterity of his fingers. When the next tug on her hair pulled sharply, Riley let out a soft gasp.
“Sorry.” Clark immediately relaxed his grip. “I’ll be more careful.”
“Don’t bother. I like it,” Riley blurted without thinking.
There was a heavy pause.
Her pulse began to match the wild riot of the storm pounding against the metal roof.
There’s no need to get embarrassed, she told herself, fighting off a mounting urge to panic. So she liked a certain kind of sex. So what? She knew this about herself and had for a while. It wasn’t a big deal.
And sure, it required a partner with certain complementary inclinations, but Riley didn’t expect Clark Edgeware to give her what she needed.
He was English. His people had practically invented repression.
Except he was slowly wrapping the tendrils of her hair more firmly around his fist.
“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.