I remembered, of course I did.
“Would it be so bad? You looking at me?” Her voice had a quality that I didn’t like, as if I’d hurt her. Something I couldn’t stand but didn’t know how to fix.
She pulled at me again, bringing me even closer to her. Ripping at my restraint.
Now I felt the outline of her body—the curve of her breasts, the dip of her stomach—against me, pushing me to my very limit.
And when she said, “I want you to open your eyes, Lucas. I need you to.”
I need you to.
It was that need that killed me, knowing that she needed me, wanted me, to do something for her. My willpower good and done. I was long past the point where I could play the noble friend anymore.
My restraint snapped.
And I opened my fucking eyes.
My gaze bathed in the sight before me. Of Rosie, in nothing but her underwear, all curls framing her beautiful face, all plush curves that called out to me. To touch her—not like I’d done at any point in the past—but to learn her. To let my hands roam leisurely along her skin until there wasn’t an inch I didn’t know by heart.
She was gorgeous. Stunning. Everything and anything a man could want. And she was looking at me as if bracing herself to see me bolt when I’d do anything to stay.
“Rosie,” I said after I caught my goddamn breath. “If you think this is something I don’t want to see, then you have me figured out all wrong.”
Her lips parted with surprise.
Surprise.
I shook my head, and because my restraint was gone, I finally, openly, let my gaze take their fill. My eyes ran down her smooth neck, taking in the soft curve of her shoulder and reaching the swell of her breasts, hardly contained by a matching black lace bra.
Because my restraint had vanished, I also allowed myself to touch her—finally, fucking finally—to circle her waist with my hands, feeling her warm and supple under them, to wrap my palms around her sides so I could move her as I pleased.
Rosie’s breath left her in a puff, and she took hold of my shoulders.
My hands traveled up, until my thumbs were brushing the underswell of her breasts. “Do you think I don’t want to see these?” The tips of my fingers grazed her again, the contact through the lace already doing mad, crazy things to me. “Touch you like this?”
Rosie arched her back in answer, bringing herself closer, and my dick twitched in my pants at the sight, the nearness of her body.
“There’s nothing about you I don’t want to see.” My hands flew to her wrists, my fingers wrapping around them. I brought one to my mouth and said into her skin, “You’re a sight, Rosie. A fucking sight. Like a mirage. An illusion. What man in his right mind wouldn’t want to see you?”
Rosie’s mouth released a whimper that spoke to that primal part of me I’d tried to keep at bay tonight.
Without any sense of rational thought, I stepped toward her, and in a swift motion, I turned us around until I had her against the closed door.
I leaned down, making sure my mouth was close to her ear when I asked her, “Are you even real?”
“I’m real,” Rosie said so breathlessly that they were barely words. “You can touch me, if you don’t believe me.”
“Touch you.” I groaned at the idea of me really doing that, not the simple brush of my fingers against her skin but really touching her, everywhere. Want that. I pulled Rosie’s arms up, pinning her hands above her head. “Don’t say things you don’t mean, Rosie. Don’t offer things you’ll take back.”
She arched her back again, pushing her breasts into my chest. “I won’t take it back.”
My hands tightened against her wrists as I leaned down, and I pressed my lips on her skin when I said, “I want to do the noble thing, Rosie.” I dipped my nose in her hair, taking that deep whiff of her scent like the animal I was. “But I’m finding it really hard when all I want to do is sinful things to you.”
Her chest heaved against mine before she said, “You can be both. Do both.”
No. “Remember me telling you I couldn’t give you cute and messy?” I rasped, stepping into her, pressing her harder into the door. She nodded her head, and I hummed deep in my throat. “This is the same. If I’m noble, I step away. Wrap you in my jacket and take you home.”
Rosie pulled against the hold I had around her wrists, and when I didn’t give in, she met my gaze and said, “No.”
It was the need in her eyes, the way she shuddered at the thought of me pulling away, that obliterated that last thread and snapped something inside of me, something bigger, wilder. What poked at the beast.