Chapter 126

Sometimes, if he was being courteous, he might brush his fingers against the small of her back as he guided her somewhere. But for all the years they’d known each other, all the intimacies they’d shared, there were never any intimacies involving touch.

And as she stared up at him, she was aware for the first time how she had to tip her head back to look at him. How big he was, so tall and with such wide shoulders. And that he was remarkably beautiful for a man who seemed so rugged at the same time. Lexi didn’t bother to ask herself why. She knew.

Because touching him like this was electric.

It surged through her to become a part of that drumming thing in her veins, a restless, insistent rhythm that flooded through her. It went right to her pussy.

She felt slippery. Red hot. And all they were doing was standing close together, talking. With her hand on his chest, but not even flesh to flesh.

Tyler stood very still. Too still, maybe. And something in her fluttered at the thought, because suddenly she could have sworn that he was looking at her as if she was a meal. And one he intended to savor.

“Let me make sure we’re both very clear about what’s happening here,” he said, and there was something almost gravelly in his voice then. It only made that electric touch seemed to glow. Hot and hard. “We’ve been friends for a long time, Lexi. I wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstandings.”

“I want you,” she said. Again.

“To fuck you.”

And she was sure she didn’t imagine the light in his green eyes then, or the way it made her…quiver.

“To fuck me properly,” she corrected him. “I want to leave giddy and staggering about, like all the rest. Can you promise me that?”

“I’m insulted you would ask.” But he didn’t look or sound insulted. He looked…more, maybe. More intense. More focused. More fierce. And much more dangerous. “Let’s discuss the housekeeping, shall we?”

“Housekeeping?” She frowned at him. “Does that mean you have… Grooming requirements?”

“If I did, I’d expect you to comply with them,” he said.

And there was some kind of amusement in his gaze then, but it still wasn’t the Tyler she knew. It wasn’t that laughter. It was something else, something male and demanding, and she had never felt so feminine, before. It was as if she suddenly understood the point of fancy dresses that cinched in at the waist and made a girl breathless, or high heels that made her unsteady, because she was neither tonight and felt both of those things.

And it was glorious. She felt shivery and silly. Her breasts ached and her pussy was slick, and she wanted nothing more than to rub all that against him and see what he might do with it. With her.

“Is that part of the Tyler Connelly promise?” she found herself asking.

“Compliance?”

Again, there was that gleam in his green eyes, that hard amusement that made her sway a bit on her feet. His mouth was a stern line, but that only made it better. He reached over and took the thick tendril of her hair in his hand, then tugged it. Not entirely gently. And everything inside her…bloomed.

Tyler’s mouth didn’t move from that hard line, but she still thought she could see his smile there. “We’ll get to compliance,” he told her. Promised her. “But first, there’s this. Us. You’ve never had someone turn you out, so you have no idea how you’ll feel in the aftermath.”

“I thought the point is giddiness. Isn’t it?”

“That’s part of it. Sometimes. But the girls you’re thinking about didn’t call me their best friend. The only thing I promised them was orgasm. They didn’t know me.”

“Do I know you?” She was kidding. Or she thought she was kidding when she started speaking. And then, somehow, wasn’t. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this side of you before.”

“Because you haven’t.” He studied her face as she took that in, blinking because he sounded so uncompromising. “You need to be absolutely certain you want to open this door, Lexi. Because once it’s open, I don’t think you can close it again.”

“Why does that sound like a threat?”

He tugged on her hair again, and it was such a strange sensation. Sharp at the start, but then like a flush as it moved through her. She didn’t understand how the slightest stinging sensation on her scalp could make her nipples pinch and then travel down to make her entirely too aware of her clit.

“You’ve gone to great lengths to set your life up precisely as you like it,” Tyler said, quiet and intense. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve never wavered from this path of yours. You say you promised your father, but I think we both know you could have fought him if you had a mind to. You don’t. This is what you want. A cold fish husband who won’t ask anything of you but your bloodline. Decorous, polite society sex, genteel and very seldom, until the heirs are properly sorted out. And then you get what you really want. No more demands, nothing but an empty freedom to do what you already do. Charity work. Tending to your father. Closing yourself up tight.”

Her breath suddenly seemed harsh and loud there, down below the great opera house, and echoed in her like it was quiet. When it wasn’t. When there were so many people about she should have found it hard to hear him.

But she heard him all too well. “I prefer to think I’m in a position to do good,” she managed to say, over the mess his words left inside her. “And I plan to. I already told you, Victor isn’t a bad man.”

“Victor is the least offensive man your father could find,” Tyler replied, and she might have been outraged if there had been any heat in it. But it was a statement of fact. “At least he’s not geriatric. But you never had the slightest intention of choosing your own husband. You want the arrangement. You want to stay untested. Unchallenged. Because that’s the thing about intimacy, Lexi. It’s messy.”

“I came to Olkfield because you’re the expert on sex,” she managed to say. “Not intimacy. I’ve never known you to keep the same woman around for more than a weekend. And that’s a very rare weekend indeed.”