Chapter 136

“That’s big talk, Lexi. But it’s easy to think you’ll feel one way now, then find you feel a completely different way later. You don’t have to make a speech. All you have to do is tell me. Stop. No. Raise a hand. Push me off. No matter how far we’ve gone, or what’s going on. Do you understand that?”

“I understand that once again, there’s a whole lot of talking and explaining and anticipation, and yet nothing happens.”

“This is nonnegotiable.”

There was that kick to his voice, and the cool, certain way he looked at her. She remembered, yet again and with that same flood of awareness, that this person she was discussing sex with was not the easygoing friend she knew so well. This was the other Tyler. And the other Tyler was one of the most powerful men in the world. And he wasn’t kidding around.

“I’m beginning to think I trusted you more before all of this,” Lexi said.

“We don’t have to do it then,” he replied, too easily for her liking. He even shrugged. “It’s entirely up to you. I’m happy to go on home, sleep it off and wake up tomorrow as if none of this ever happened.”

Lexi wanted to punch him. Hard, right in his annoyingly gorgeous face. She felt distinctly violent, and it seemed connected to all the other sensations dancing around inside of her. “I have to tell you, so far I don’t really understand how you’ve managed to talk any woman into sleeping with you. Much less legions.”

“Most of them aren’t you,” he replied. Wholly unbothered, it would appear. “I’m not the one who’s stalling, Lexi.”

Ouch.

“I will tell you to stop if I want you to stop,” she said, very directly, and she knew that he was right. That she was the one who’d been stalling, because her pussy was still swollen, she was too wet and she couldn’t get her head around what happened already. She could feel his shoulder against her thigh and his ravenous mouth, devouring her. And that flush was a part of her now, betraying her and heating her in turn. “And now I want that challenge.”

A different sort of smile played around Tyler’s mouth, then. “Last opportunity to keep that door shut,” he said softly. “To keep it at a crack. Not throw it wide open.”

“Now who’s stalling?”

Tyler didn’t look away. He kept that green gaze trained on her and as she watched, it grew more intense. Until she felt as if his intensity overtook her pulse, then moved through her veins.

“There’s a bathroom in the hall,” he said quietly. “We passed it on our way in. I want you to go there. I want you to take off all your clothes, though you can leave your shoes on. I like the heel.”

She was mute. Overwhelmed. But she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his.

By contrast, Tyler looked perfectly relaxed, save for that glittering in his green eyes that made her clit throb.

“I’ll want you bent over, bracing yourself on your elbows. Eyes closed, hair down. And I want you to wait for me.”

“With the door unlocked?”

“I want you to wait for me,” he said again, with that pointed patience that made her feel weak. And something like bubbly. “Can you do that?”

“I…” But her throat wasn’t working properly. And her mouth was so dry she thought she might go up in flames.

Maybe she already had.

“You don’t have to tell me about it, Lexi,” Tyler said in that quiet, powerful way of his. It hummed inside of her. “You don’t have to find the words. You can either get up from the table and make your way to that bathroom, or you can sit here. We can discuss the weather, or the football.

Old stories from uni. And everything will go back to normal. It’s entirely up to you.”

The breath in her lungs felt too hot. It took up too much space, and was much heavier than normal breath. Lexi was shaking so hard she worried she might fly apart at the seams, but when she looked down at her hands, she wasn’t shaking at all.

And she wanted to find the words, to find something to help her gain her footing again— But something washed over her as she gazed into the quiet, unmistakable challenge in his green eyes. It wasn’t quite peace. It was too jagged and edgy for that.

Still, it helped. And he was Tyler. With new and surprising facets, but still her Tyler. He would keep her safe. He would keep that bubble of his around them, and whatever happened there, it would be okay. She knew without a shred of doubt that he would fight to keep it that way.

Lexi pushed her chair back. She stood and tossed her linen napkin on the table.

Then she turned, and walked off to take his challenge. And she had every intention of acing it.

_________

Lexi made her way through the rooftop restaurant, only vaguely aware that there were other people tucked away in their own little pockets of privacy in the soft, close dark. Because all she could think about was Tyler. All versions of Tyler.

She found the door that led into the building, then down the same hallway they’d come up—while she’d been reeling from his mouth and barely aware that she was upright and walking. Sure enough, there was another door with a WC slapped on the front. She stood in front of it for a moment, wracked with indecision, and then swallowed. Hard. She looked around, but there was only the one. No chance that she might arrange herself fetchingly in the wrong bathroom.

She laughed a little bit at that, but when the laugh was done, she was still standing there in the hallway. Definitely stalling, and after all that big talk at the table.

“Right, then,” she told herself bracingly, as if that could launch her forward. As if what she really needed here was a stern talking to, and then what she was about to do would all seem normal.

But it was Tyler. And she’d come here for this. And even though everything that had happened tonight was so far out of the realm of what she’d imagined or anticipated, it was all right, somehow.