He carries me up the stairs, then sets me on my feet in front of the now-closed doors that lead to the balcony. I have barely got my balance when his mouth catches mine again in a bruising kiss and we stumble together backward. The bed is right there, barring our path even while keeping us from falling to the ground in a claiming, grasping flurry of lips and hands.
The mattress brushes against the back of my thighs, but before I can even think to sit, Damien breaks our kiss. “No,” he says, and then turns me around. “Bend over,” he says. “Hands on the bed.”
I comply, the cord dangling from my neck like an ornamental leash. I wriggle my ass as coquettishly as I can manage in such a position. “For someone who says he can’t wait you’re taking an awfully long time.”
“Perhaps I’m waiting for an apology. It’s not kind to remind a man that heaven is ending in mere hours,” he teases sternly. “A young woman with your meticulous upbringing should have more tact than to bring up such a sore subject several times over the course of one evening. Whatever happened to etiquette and decorum?”
“That’s a very good question, Mr. Stark. Perhaps I’m not as polite and refined as you think I am.”
“Perhaps not,” he says as his fingers trail over my back. “I don’t like being reminded that the end is near. It was quite unkind of you to mention it so boldly.”
“Quite unkind,” I agree. “Rude, even. Definitely thoughtless. And certainly not worthy of the Emily Post seal of approval.”
He doesn’t answer. I’m pretty sure his silence is masking a laugh.
I manage another flirty ass-wiggle. “Maybe you should punish me.”
I immediately know that I’ve said the wrong thing. He is still silent, but now the quiet feels dark and heavy instead of playful and light.
“Should I?” he finally says, his voice low and controlled. “Do you think I didn’t see the way you dug your nails into your thighs in the car on the way to the restaurant? We were only talking about the paparazzi then. It was worse when they accosted us. You kept control, Nikki, but you had to fight for it.”
I close my eyes, not wanting to remember.
“Nikki, look at me.” His voice is a tight command, and though my instinct is to tease him, I know better.
I don’t alter my body’s position, but turn my head to the right. He steps sideways into my line of sight, and I force myself to meet his eyes. There’s fire there, but there’s worry, too. I should have expected it. It is one thing when he initiates, surprising me with a sting to my bottom to complement the ache between my thighs.
But when I ask for the pain, he hesitates. It is his way of protecting me, but right then, it isn’t protection I want. It’s the sensual thrill of his palm against my ass.
“Nikki,” he says. That’s it. Just my name. But I hear the question in his voice.
I start to answer, but the words don’t come as easily as I had hoped. Because the truth is that I know now that I haven’t left the cutting as far behind as I had thought. True, I’ve done nothing but dig my own nails into my flesh tonight. But it’s barely been a week since I tossed a knife across my kitchen, angry and scared by how much I wanted to press the blade against my skin and erase my fears and doubts in the consuming rapture of the pain. I’d won that battle, but I hadn’t won the war, and my now-short hair is a scar upon my soul as much as the raised ridges on my thighs are scars upon my flesh.
Is that why I want this? Do I crave the sting of his palm because I need the pain? Does the pleasure I feel when I give myself over so completely to Damien flow from the same place that has fomented my compulsion to cut?
The thought twists inside me, dark and unpleasant, and I force it away. It’s not true. And even if it is, I am safe with Damien no matter what the source of my desire. He’s proven that much to me so many times.
Suddenly I’m no longer bent over the bed. He has me by the arms and he’s pulling me up to stand in front of him. “Dammit, Nikki,” he says. “Talk to me.”
I press my palms against his cheeks and take his mouth with mine, letting the kiss deepen as he pulls me tight against him. I feel his body relax, and the fear that must have been growing in him as my silence lingered now seems to seep out from his pores.
“I need you,” I tell him when I break the kiss. “You. I don’t need that.” His eyes are intent, and they seem to see so far inside me that I know I can’t keep even the slightest of secrets. I take a deep breath and lay out my heart for him. “I don’t need it,” I say, “but I want it.”
I see the slightest twitch of the muscle in his jaw, as if he’s fighting for control.
“Do you?” he says.
I nod, then swallow. My cheeks are warm, which irritates me. I’ve been more intimate with Damien than with any person in my life, and yet I’m blushing? It’s a ridiculous girly-girl reaction, probably instilled by my mother, and that in and of itself pisses me off—and that gives me strength.
“I want it,” I repeat. “And not because I need the pain. But because I need you.”
I need him even more than I can say. I want his hands on me. I want to be the object of his pleasure, and I want to lose myself in the knowledge that there is nothing Damien wants more than to please me, and nothing I want more than to surrender to him.
He swallows, looking humbled by my words. “I need you, too, Nikki. God, how I need you.”
I breathe in deep, cherishing those words more than he can possibly know. “Then touch me.”
He does—oh, how he does—and though I expect the caresses, the passion, the immediate sensual assault, I am jarred off-center by the fervency I see in his eyes, and by the firm line of his mouth. There is nothing else in the world to him except me, and I can see it with every glimpse of him. I taste it in his hard, lingering kiss.
“Bed,” he says, once he breaks the kiss. “Bend over. Legs apart.”
I raise my brows in question. “Bossy much?”
He slaps me lightly on the bottom, and I gasp, both surprised and excited. “What do you say?”
“Yes, sir,” I say obediently, forcing myself not to smile. I turn back to the bed and bend over, my hands firmly on the mattress, my excitement so raw I’m certain that it clings to me like perfume. I no longer question my motives; I am not in an analytical mind-set. All I want is Damien setting my body on fire. Damien thrusting himself deep inside of me.