“Not one word,” I admitted. “I was preoccupied.”
“With what?”
“Envisioning my hands on your ass as I take you from behind right on this table.”
She sashayed to me, one hand lazily caressing the long wooden table by her side. When she reached me, she handed me a book.
“Open it randomly and read me a paragraph.”
“Why?”
“Because I asked.”
“That’s your selling point? Because you asked?”
She gave me a blank stare.
I laughed. “Okay, then.”
For the first time—I had this feeling she was onto me. That she knew who I was. Because fourteen-year-old Arya had known damn well that fourteen-year-old Nicholai would do anything within his power at her order. I took the book, flipping the pages, my eyes still holding hers. Very well. We were going to play it like that. I stopped at a random page, my eyes gliding over the text that stuck out to me. I read it out loud. It was about women being poisonous.
I turned the book around. First Love by Ivan Turgenev.
“Why did you pick this book?” I asked.
“Why did you pick this paragraph?” she quipped back, not missing a beat.
“I didn’t.”
“Neither did I.” She smiled. “I just wanted to see if you’d play my games too.”
I put the book aside, gliding toward her. She took a step back.
“I always seem to be in the market for whatever the hell you’re offering.”
She took another step back. Only a few feet from one of the tables. “Why is that, Christian? You don’t strike me as a big romantic.”
I took a step forward. “I’m not.”
“Why, then?” She retreated one last time, the backs of her legs hitting the table, and stopped. I grinned, eating the space between us with one final step.
“Because, unfortunately, Ms. Roth, no one else will do.”
Pinning her to the table by pressing my hands on either side of her thighs, I lowered my head to hers, my mouth pressing against her warm lips. She opened for me, tasting of powdered sugar and Nutella and peppermint tea. Of poison and destruction and inevitability. She pressed one hand against my chest, the other one circling my shoulder, her nails scraping at my hair. I groaned into our kiss, thinking she might pull me away, when her hand descended my abs, down to the button of my dress pants. My erection was impossible to manage, my cock standing to attention between us, waiting to be acknowledged.
Her hand slid down to cup it through my pants. I could no longer kiss her and concentrate at the same time, so I dropped my head to the side of her neck, covering every inch of it with lazy kisses. My body wrenched and spasmed to see what she’d do next.
Arya grabbed me by the dick—and balls—and jerked me forward, until there was no more space between us. I almost came on impact. And then she was gone, the space where her neck had been just a moment ago cold. I looked left and right, confused. I found her on her knees in front of me, undoing my button and zipper.
Okay. Okay.
I smoothed away her wild hair from her face. Not affectionately, I told myself, but so that I could get a better view of her lips wrapped around my dick. Said dick sprang free just as I managed to lean forward, lighting one of the lamps on the table behind her back.
Arya didn’t look up at me shyly, or even seductively, the way women did a second before taking your cock in their mouths. She grabbed me, then gave my cock a thorough lick, base to tip, rolling her tongue around the crown for good measure. I let out a low hiss, looking away. It was too much. The sight of her pleasuring me.
As if reading my mind, Arya chose that moment to try and take most of me in. She grabbed the part she couldn’t get to, closer to the root, in her hand and began pumping. I was willing to sign over the remainder of my life to her and everything I valued, including Arsène and Riggs, if it meant making her never stop.
“Arya.” I thrust my hand into her hair, caressing her, unable to stop myself from looking at her. “This feels so good.”
She didn’t answer, not even with a small moan, and now I craved her words even more than I did my dick inside her mouth. Also, I was pretty sure I was going to come like a fourteen-year-old if she continued for twenty more seconds, and I wanted to spare myself from that particular form of humiliation. With that in mind, I used the collar of her dress to tug her back up to her feet, filling her mouth with my tongue in a messy, hot kiss.
“We’re such a train wreck.” Her breath tickled my chin, my tongue, as she roamed my body with her hands. Clutching my ass. Rolling her fingers over my back, my shoulders, my collarbone. “This is going to end badly.”