Page 71 of Freed
His eyes lift to mine in the glass. “Please what?”
A tear slips free before I can stop it. I hate that he sees it. Hate that he sees everything. “You know what.”
“Say it.”
The command lands low and hot, and my breath catches hard enough to hurt. My fingers clutch at the edge of the mirror, searching for something steady while his body crowds close behind mine, all heat and danger and terrible, familiar temptation.
“Please,” I say again, softer this time, more broken. “Please don’t make me ask twice.”
That smile curves over his mouth then—slow, male, merciless—and I know I’m lost.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. “Shaking for me.”
I am.
Worse, he knows it.
His hands find the fabric of my dress and begin to ease it upward with agonizing patience, as if he has all the time in the world to enjoy what he’s doing to me. The movement bares more skin, more vulnerability, more proof of how defenseless I am under his gaze, and the sight of it in the mirror makes a helpless sound catch in my throat.
I should stop this.
I should turn around, yank my dress down, run.
Instead, I part for him.
Just a little.
Enough to make his eyes flash.
The faint sounds beyond the fitting room door—the music, the footsteps, the rustle of hangers—only make this feel more forbidden. Ordinary life is still happening a few feet away, and here I am, trembling in front of a mirror while the man I should never have let near me again undoes me piece by piece.
His knuckles skim my thigh, light enough to make me shiver, deliberate enough to tell me exactly what he’s noticing.
“Lorenzo…” His name leaves me like a plea.
“No,” he says softly, his gaze locked on mine in the reflection. “I want to hear you ask for it.”
Heat crashes through me, swift and humiliating and impossible to hide. My face burns. My pulse pounds. My whole body feels too tight for my skin, strung between hunger and panic, want and the terrible fear that if he looks too closely, if he touches me too slowly, if he lets himself really see me?—
He’ll know.
That thought should cool me. It doesn’t. If anything, it makes the moment wilder. Because I am standing on the edge of discovery, and still I want him.
“Don’t make me say it. You know what I want.”
His expression changes at that, like my desperation gets under his skin.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he says.
The words hit so hard I nearly break.
My lips tremble. “Then stop asking questions you already know the answer to.”
For one charged second, neither of us moves.
Then his hand slides higher, enough to make me gasp as herubs between my legs, and the sound seems to tear something loose in him.
“You beg so prettily,” he says, voice low and dangerous. “How am I supposed to deny you anything?”
