Page 52 of Dirty Rival

“Yes. That is exactly my plan. Now are you walking, or am I carrying you?”

Chapter twenty-four

Carrie

“What’s it going to be, Carrie?” Reid demands, dragging me flush against his hard body.

“I’ll go to your apartment with you, Reid, but don’t touch me until I say you can touch me. We’re going to talk first.”

His lips quirk. “You talk. I’ll fuck you while you do it.” He takes my hand and starts walking.

I fall into step with him because I really have no choice unless I want to make a scene and I do not. “The part where I said don’t touch me until I say you can touch me,” I say. “That still applies.”

He folds our elbows and pulls me closer. “I’ve got a pair of handcuffs upstairs that says differently.”

“You’re not cuffing me.”

“Tell me that when I’m between your legs licking you the way we both know you like to be licked.”

My God, why did that just make me wet? He’s crass and almost mean and yet everything about the man turns me on. He opens the door to his building and drags me inside with him like I’m his possession. Or like he just really needs to do what he suggested and fuck me out of his system. That he feels this need because I’m in his head shouldn’t please me, but it does. Almost as much as cuffing him and leaving him in that room.

He drags me close again and sets us in motion, waving to the security guard as we head toward the elevators. Some part of me knows this night will change us, and I don’t know if that is good or bad. Just that it will, but I can’t stop it. It’s in motion. It’s already happening. Maybe it happened back there with Elijah. Whatever the case, we’ve been headed here from the moment we met. Reid punches the elevator button and the doors open. Butterflies attack my stomach and in a quick maneuver, Reid has me against the wall of the elevator car, his powerful thighs caging mine, even as he punches in a code on the panel, followed by his floor number.

The doors seal us inside and his hands come down on my waist as he stares down at me, just stares. “Did you listen to the messages?”

“Yes.”

I study him for several beats. “It changes nothing,” I say, reading it in his face.

“That’s right. I was, and am, going to fuck you ten ways to Sunday in my apartment.”

“Because that’s what you do. Fuck your enemies?”

The elevator dings and halts, and he has my hand again, leading me out of the car. I don’t even know what floor we’re on. I just know that I’m about to be in this man’s private space, and I’m curious about what it tells me about Reid, about the man beneath the stone.

He pulls me between him and the door, his big body hot and hard behind me. He unlocks the door, opening it and presenting me with the entry. I cross the threshold, a light automatically dimming and before I can do more than walk a step or two, he’s behind me, turning me to face him, pressing me against the door. “Because,” he says, his legs caging mine once more, his hands on the wall by my head, “getting back to your question in the elevator, I can’t stop thinking about fucking you and that’s a distraction neither of us can afford. It’s s distraction that’s in my head when it can’t be in my head. You’re in my fucking head.”

He says it like he’s angry. Like it’s my fault. He’s blaming me for whatever sins he’s decided I created. “You’re consuming my whole damn world,” I all but growl at him. “Everything I am. No one can claim that, but you. And I didn’t even invite you to do it.”

“And so you tried to take control yourself tonight.”

“No, damn it. I called you. I thought I could find out the information you needed to know. That we needed to know. And Elijah implied he knew what everyone seems to know about my father but me.”

“You have plenty of reasons to betray me. Reasons I can’t ignore.”

“I also have reasons not to,” I remind him.

“What reasons, Carrie?”

I’m in over my head, I think. I need you, I think, but I don’t say those words. They make me weak. I can’t be weak. Emotions I don’t want to feel well up in my chest. Emotions that are more personal than professional. “Because you saved me. And because…”

“Because what?” he presses.

“I really don’t want to be your enemy, Reid. Can we just not be enemies?”

He looks skyward, seeming to struggle with what comes next, or maybe something he knows that I don’t know, and there is something before he fixes me in a turbulent stare. “I cannot do this with you. I fuck. I move on. That is what I do.”

“Did I ask you to do anything else? Did I? No. No, I did not. I don’t want a relationship and I don’t know where you get off acting like I do. I’m not that girl. So fuck me or let me off this damn door and out of here.” I press on the hard wall of his chest, and his heart thunders under my palm.