“Shut up, Eva.” His gaze was scorching hot, his jaw tight and hard. “Listen to me-”
“I’m only here because I was told you wouldn’t be. I’m here for Cary and his career. So you can go back to the party and forget about me all over again. I assure you, when I walk out the door, I’ll be doing the same to you.”
“Shut your damned mouth.” He caught me by the elbows and shook me so hard my teeth snapped together. “Just shut up and let me talk.”
I slapped him hard enough to turn his head. “Don’t touch me.”
With a growl, Gideon hauled me into him and kissed me hard, bruising my lips. His hand was in my hair, fisting it roughly, holding me in place so I couldn’t turn away. I bit the tongue he thrust aggressively into my mouth, then his lower lip, tasting blood, but he didn’t stop. I shoved at his shoulders with everything I had, but I couldn’t budge him.
Goddamn Stanton! If not for him and my crazy-assed mother, I’d have had a few Krav Maga classes under my belt by now…
Gideon kissed me as if he was starved for the taste of me and my resistance began to melt. He smelled so good, so familiar. His body felt so perfectly right against mine. My nipples betrayed me, hardening into tight points, and a slow, hot trickle of arousal gathered in my core. My heart thundered in my chest.
God, I wanted him. The craving hadn’t gone away, not even for a minute.
He picked me up. Imprisoned by his tight grip, it was hard to breathe and my head began to spin. When he carried me through a door and kicked it shut behind him, I couldn’t do more than make a feeble sound of protest.
I found myself pressed against a heavy glass door on the other side of a library, Gideon’s hard and powerful body subduing my own. His arm at my waist slid lower, his hand delving beneath my skirts and finding the curves of my butt exposed by my lacy boy shorts underwear. He wrenched my hips hard to his, making me feel how hard he was, how aroused. My sex trembled with want, achingly empty.
All the fight left me. My arms fell to my sides, my palms pressing flat to the glass. I felt the brittle tension drain from his body as I softened in surrender, the pressure of his mouth easing and his kiss turning into a passionate coaxing.
“Eva,” he breathed gruffly. “Don’t fight me. I can’t take it.”
My eyes closed. “Let me go, Gideon.”
He nuzzled his cheek against mine, his breath gusting hard and fast over my ear. “I can’t. I know you’re disgusted by what you saw the other night…what I was doing to myself-”
“Gideon, no!” God. Did he think I left him because of that? “That’s not why-”
“I’m losing my mind without you.” His lips were gliding down my neck, his tongue stroking over my racing pulse. He sucked on my skin and pleasure radiated through me. “I can’t think. I can’t work or sleep. My body aches for you. I can make you want me again. Let me try.”
Tears slipped free and ran down my face. They splashed on the upper swell of my breasts and he licked at them, lapping them away.
How would I ever recover if he made love to me again? How would I survive if he didn’t?
“I never stopped wanting you,” I whispered. “I can’t stop. But you hurt me, Gideon. You have the power to hurt me like no one else can.”
His gaze was stark and confused on my face. “I hurt you? How?”
“You lied to me. You shut me out.” I cupped his face, needing him to understand this one thing without question. “Your past doesn’t have the power to push me away. Only you can do that, and you did.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” he rasped. “I never wanted you to see me like that…”
“That’s the problem, Gideon. I want to know who you are, the good and the bad, and you want to keep parts of yourself hidden from me. If you don’t open up, we’re going to lose each other down the road and I won’t be able to take it. I’m barely surviving it now. I’ve crawled through the last four days of my life. Another week, a month…It’ll break me to give you up.”
“I can let you in, Eva. I’m trying. But your first response when I screw up is to run away. You do it every time and I can’t stand feeling like any moment I’m going to do or say something wrong and you’re going to bolt.”
His mouth was tender again as he brushed his lips back and forth over mine. I didn’t argue with him. How could I, when he was right?
“I hoped you’d come back on your own,” he murmured, “but I can’t stay away anymore. I’ll carry you out of here if I have to. Whatever it takes to get you back in the same room with me, talking this out.”
My heart stuttered. “You were hoping I’d come back? I thought…You gave me back my keys. I thought we were over.”
He pulled back, his face set in fierce lines. “We’ll never be over, Eva.”
I looked at him, my heart aching like an open wound at how beautiful he was, how broken and in pain he was-pain I’d caused to some degree.
On tiptoes, I kissed the reddened handprint I’d left on his cheek, clutching his thick silky hair in my hands.
Gideon bent his knees to align our bodies, his breathing harsh and erratic. “I’ll do whatever you want, whatever you need. Anything. Just take me back.”
Maybe I should have been scared by the depth of his need, but I felt the same passionate insanity for him.
Running my hands down his chest in an effort to soothe his trembling, I gave him the hard truth. “We can’t seem to stop making each other miserable. I can’t keep doing this to you and I can’t keep going through these crazy highs and lows. We need help, Gideon. We’re seriously dysfunctional.”
“I saw Dr. Petersen on Friday. He’s going to take me on as a patient, and-if you agree-he’ll take us both on as a couple. I figured if you can trust him, I can try.”
“Dr. Petersen?” I remembered the brief jolt I’d felt at seeing a black Bentley SUV when Clancy pulled away from the doctor’s office. At the time, I’d told myself it was wishful thinking. After all, there were countless black SUVs in New York. “You had me followed.”
His chest expanded on a deep breath. He didn’t deny it.
I bit back my anger. I could only imagine how terrible it must be for him to be so dependent on something-someone-he couldn’t control. What mattered most at that moment were his willingness to try and the fact that it wasn’t just talk. He’d actually taken steps. “It’s going to be a lot of work, Gideon,” I warned him.
“I’m not afraid of work.” He was touching me restlessly, his hands sliding over my thighs and buttocks as if caressing my bare skin was as necessary to him as breathing. “I’m only afraid of losing you.”
I pressed my cheek to his. We completed each other. Even now, as his hands roamed possessively over me, I felt a thawing in my soul, the desperate relief of being held-finally-by the man who understood and satisfied my deepest, most intimate desires.
“I need you.” His mouth was sliding over my cheek and down my throat. “I need to be inside you…”
“No. My God. Not here.” But my protest sounded weak even to my own ears. I wanted him anywhere, anytime, any way…
“It has to be here,” he muttered, dropping to his knees. “It has to be now.”
He chafed my skin ripping the lace of my panties away; then he shoved my skirts to my waist and licked my cleft, his tongue parting my folds to stroke over my throbbing clit.
I gasped and tried to recoil, but there was nowhere to go. Not with the door at my back and a grimly determined Gideon in front, one hand keeping me pinned while the other lifted my left leg over his shoulder, opening me to his ardent mouth.