Come fly with me . . .

Couples swayed quietly on the dance floor to Tony Bennett’s croon. It was all so polite, the last word he’d use to describe the woman in his arms.

“So what did Detective Martinez have to say for himself?”

“You know very well. You threatened to fire him if he didn’t end our date.”

He affected a bored sigh. “Actually, I told him if he laid a finger on you I’d beat him down to traffic cop.” He drew back to look at her. “I can do that, you know.”

Those green eyes flashed. “How can you be so high-handed about it? How. . . why would you even do that?”

“Because he wasn’t right for you.”

“Who are you to say who’s right for me?” She palmed his shoulder, pushing, but he retained his hold at the small of her back. “How dare you use your power like that?”

“You’re happy for me to use my power to solve your Cochrane problem.”

“Oh, you mean the blackmail-me-into-fake-dating-you scheme? You can forget about it. I’d hate to think what else you’d demand of me in return. How you’d use it to get some advantage. Because that’s all I am to you—a means to an end.”

The timer on the bomb in his brain did what it had been resisting for three weeks: it finally hit zero.

“Goddamn it, Alexandra, I’ve been clamping down on every muscle in my body trying not to take advantage of you. I only have to think of you and I’m as hard as steel. I only have to see you and my mouth waters, remembering what you tasted like and how wet I made you.” He squeezed her hand and pressed her body against his subtly, showing her exactly how he felt. “I only have to stand inches away from you to imagine the sheer ecstasy of burying my cock deep inside you.”

Remembering where he was, he lowered his voice to a strained whisper. “You want to know why I told Martinez to dump you? Because I overheard him talking to someone about how you were falling out of that dress, how great your tits were, and how he couldn’t wait to get you on your knees. He was so damn disrespectful he’s lucky I didn’t break his nose on a urinal and flush his head down the toilet.”

Her mouth wobbled. “I—I can take care of myself. I didn’t ask for your defense.”

“I know. I know you’d never ask for it. In this case, I had information you weren’t privy to, so I made the call to remove him from play.”

“Oh, for my own good, I suppose.” Her growl traveled a straight line to his harder-by-the-second dick. “So you can talk about what you want to do to me, but—but he can’t?”

“My mind might be a cesspool when it comes to the things I’d like to do to you, Alexandra, but it’s a private cesspool. I’m not sharing it with my buddies. I’m not broadcasting it to the world, though anyone in this room could look at the two of us and understand exactly what we want from each other. The only person who needs to hear my plans is the woman who’ll be on the receiving end of every filthy, depraved thing I plan to do to her. Maybe you’re looking for a bad boy or a good guy. Well, you won’t find him in me. What you will find is a man who knows how to treat his woman.”

“You’re not playing fair,” she said. Moaned.

“Fuck fair. I’m a no-good, dirty, rotten bastard who knows what he wants and will fight like hell to get it. I’ll destroy anyone who says a word against you, who lays a hand upon you, who gets in my fucking way. But I won’t accept compromise. I won’t make the choice for you or allow you to use the circumstances—me looking handsome in my tux, you feeling gorgeous in that dress—to put any kind of gloss on this. I’m not promising you the fairy tale. I don’t believe in it. But if you come to me of your own free will and spend a night in my bed, I promise you won’t regret it. I will show you what it means to be worshipped.”

She was breathing heavily, the beautiful swells of her breasts lifting with her discomfort. He planned to make her a whole lot more uncomfortable.

He buried his nose in her neck, breathed her in. “You know that buzz you get through your skin when we’re together. Talking, bickering. Just being. I know this crazy chemistry between us spins your insides like it does mine. But I won’t push you anymore. You know what I want.”

“Tell me.”

Christ, she was killing him.

Killing. Him.

“You, in my bed, begging me to take you somewhere you’ve never been. Screaming my name. Coming all over my cock. That’s what I want. If you decide that you don’t want to explore this, it will wound my pride, but I promise that I’ll absolve you of all duty to my campaign. I won’t talk to you, text you, interact with you in any way except for what’s necessary to protect you from Sam Cochrane. This decision is yours, Alexandra. It will always be yours. You don’t have to say a word now. In fact, I like the idea of you being stunned speechless because you’re going to use these moments of quiet to think about it.”

She looked at him as if he had just escaped an asylum for the criminally insane.

“Th-think about it?”

“C’mon.” He steered her back to the table to pick up her purse and wrap, then through the ballroom to the exit. People tried to stop him and talk, but he ignored them. He had their vote, and even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter.

“Eli, what are you doing?”

He didn’t answer, just kept an eye on the straight line to the door. There were probably a million places he could take her—a hotel suite, a conference room, a damn closet—but that’s not how it would go down. Not tonight.

Outside, he found Tom, who had signaled for the cars to be pulled around. Eli shucked his jacket, caped Alexandra’s shoulders, and steered her toward the town car.

She stared at him, astonished. Any other time, he’d be enjoying it, but he was too wound up.

He opened the back door. “The driver will take you anywhere you want.”

“That’s it?”

“I’m taking the SUV home with my security detail. The drive’s about twenty minutes and I’ll wait another half hour. If you arrive before that time is up, I won’t get drunk and I won’t try to manage my hard-on by myself.”

Her brow knitted. “What the hell are you playing at, Eli?”

“If I get in the back of that car with you now, I will fuck you, Alexandra. Have no doubt. I’ll kiss your breasts and suck your nipples and lick between your insanely gorgeous thighs. You’re so damn responsive that I’ll have you coming in seconds and begging me for more.”

“Now wait a—”

He brushed his mouth across hers, needing a little something to tide him over. Her indignation tasted so damn sweet and he prayed it wasn’t the last time he would have it on his lips. “I need you to sit in the car for a while. Inhale a breath. Call a friend. Take the time I’m giving you.”

“And if I’m not there?”

He could feel a pained smile shaping his lips. Lake swimming was lovely this time of year, but he doubted even those icy depths would have any impact on his raging boner.

“Then I’ll be hungover tomorrow and hoping to God my serious case of blue balls doesn’t make me murderous during whatever campaign shit I have to deal with.”

He stepped back in the knowledge that if he didn’t leave now, the town car would soon be a-rockin’. As he turned, his last image was of his furious hellcat toeing her sexy heel and looking like a swift kick to the groin was in his future.

“You are a grade-A dick in the highest order of dicks, Eli Cooper.”

He battled a smile and called out over his shoulder, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Some days the supply of curse words was insufficient for her needs.

Alex peeled off the heels she was crap at wearing and set them beside her in the seat well of the town car. Wiggle, wiggle. Exposing her feet to the heated interior provided not nearly enough of a distraction from her tumble of thoughts, especially as the jacket she wore smelled of Eli. Another one of his nefarious moves, that knuckle-dragging shyster.