Page 76 of Coerced
Didn’t the table between us feel like a massive obstacle? If I could have crawled across it—or under it—just to get to him, I might have done it.
How could he not feel the same?
When I spent too long attempting to figure it out, he asked, “Do you like to dance?”
“I like dancing.”
“You don’t seem excited about it,” he noted.
I swallowed hard, ultimately deciding it was best to be honest. “I’m surprised by it,” I admitted. “I… well, first, I guess I didn’t expect that you were the dancing type. I’m happy to be wrong about that, but I think the bigger challenge for me is that I expected you were going to take me home after dinner.”
His brows pulled together. “You’re ready for this date to be over?”
Oh God.
He thought I wasn’t having a good time. That I wanted him to take me home so we could part ways for the night.
Horrified, needing to reassure him, I reached across the table, curled my fingers around his arm, and said, “Paxton, I feel like I’ve been burning up for you since you kissed me last night. I had a momentary reprieve earlier today, but by the time I opened my front door and you kissed me again, I haven’t been able to focus on much else. I’d love to go dancing with you sometime, but tonight, I’dreally like it if you’d take me home. Not so we can end this date, but so we can continue it in my bed.”
His stare darkened, the muscle in his jaw flexing. After he took a deep swallow, forcing my gaze to drop to his throat, he stood, held out his hand to me, and urged me out of my seat.
The moment I was steady on my feet, our bodies mere inches apart, I tipped my chin slightly to look at him. His eyes roamed over my face, the hold he had on my hand growing firmer.
With his voice a deep rumble, Paxton said, “Looks like we’re heading home.”
He waited just long enough to catch the shiver that ran down my spine, and with a glint in his eyes, he took me by the hand and led me out of the restaurant.
TWENTY-ONE
Aria
“Paxton.”
I barely recognized the sound of my own voice—a breathy whisper filled with need, dripping with desire.
We were finally back at my place. The drive here felt entirely too long; the urge to crawl over the center console to get my mouth on him anywhere I could had been undeniable. Somehow, I succeeded in keeping myself restrained, but that might have been because I was slightly distracted by having Paxton’s fingers linked with mine, his thumb stroking gently along the side of my hand, throughout the entire ride from the restaurant.
That simple movement shouldn’t have done what it did to me, but with each stroke, I couldn’t stop imagining the feel of his fingertips on other parts of my body. It took superhuman effort not to let out a moan at the fantasy that had built in my mind.
Fortunately, the made-up scenario in my head wasn’t far off from the real deal. Because now that Paxton and I had made it to my bedroom, he was making it clear he intended to explore.
And luckily for me, that exploration wasn’t only happening with his hands. He was using his mouth, too.
Paxton had started kissing me right about the moment we stepped into the house and closed the door. With our mouths connected, we moved through the house and toward my bedroom.
His hands had been in my hair and around my waist. I was hanging on just as tight to him, my fingers wandering up over his solid chest toward his shoulders before linking behind his neck and drifting into his hair.
We’d stopped several times along the way, the first time when we bumped into a decorative table I had in the foyer. The second time we’d stopped had nothing to do with the furniture, though. Despite having been willing to prolong us getting to this point by suggesting we go dancing somewhere, Paxton had lost his battle with patience. We’d gotten about halfway up the stairs when he stopped us from climbing farther, and he pressed his body firmly against mine, pinning me between him and the wall.
My body shuddered as I stared up at him in silence for several long moments before his fingers gripped my hair firmly at the back of my head and angled it back to give him better access to my mouth. He took my mouth in a bruising kiss, his tongue dipping between my parted lips.
Our tongues danced, the moment built, and when Paxton’s opposite hand slid up my side and over my breast, I stopped fighting. The moan tore up my throat, my mouth disconnecting from his.
Paxton didn’t like not having his mouth on me, because it immediately dropped to my neck and kissed up the side of my throat before moving along my jaw.
His hand on my breast, squeezing and kneading, floated back down to my hip and slid around to my ass, where he squeezed just as his teeth nipped at my earlobe.
Another shiver.