Page 150 of Face Off

“She was looking at you.”

His hand stilled on my ass.

The answer had escaped before I decided whether I should admit it, but I refused to drag it back into hiding. I had spent our entire relationship pretending possessiveness made me weak while silently allowing every beautiful woman near him to convince me I could be replaced.

I wasn’t pretending now.

Ryan lifted his head. “Were you jealous?”

“No.”

His eyebrow rose.

“I was territorial.”

Something dark and heated moved through his eyes. “You don’t own this territory anymore.”

“I know.” I pulled my hands from his hold and caught the front of his ruined mint green shirt. “But she didn’t know that.”

“She knows, this whole fucking castle knows.”

A rough laugh escaped him. It disappeared when I kissed him again.

Ryan let me control the kiss for only a few seconds. Then his hand closed around my jaw and tilted my face where he wanted it, taking my mouth with the unrestrained hunger he had once translated into tenderness because he believed I needed every sharp edge softened before I could accept it.

This version of him gave me the edges and I wanted every one.

He walked me backward until my legs struck the bed. I expected him to push me onto it. Instead, he sat on the edge and looked up at me.

His shirt remained on.

The fabric clung to his chest where sweat and cooking oil had darkened it, concealing the tattoos I remembered tracing beneath my fingers. Keeping it between us was deliberate. A boundary he didn’t need to explain because the man who had once offered me every tattoo on his body no longer trusted me with the scar I had left there.

The understanding hurt.

I didn’t reach for the hem.

Ryan leaned back slightly, his knees spreading as he watched me stand between them.

“You wanted every advantage,” he said. “Use them.”

The challenge sent heat through me as I dropped to my knees.

His expression changed, desire cutting through the calculated control he had carried into the room. I unfastened his belt without looking away from him, slowly enough that he understood this wasn’t obedience.

It was strategy.

“You think this will get you through that door?” he asked.

“No.”

I opened his shorts. Ryan’s stomach tightened beneath his shirt as my fingers slipped beneath the waistband of his boxers.

“I think you’ll open it yourself and fail to notice.”

His hand caught in my hair. “Confident.”

“I learned from you.”