19. The Drive Home
1508 Words
Scarlett
We’re near the house when Riordan speaks again. “Friday.”
“What?”
He kills the engine by the gates and turns to me. “There are five days left in this month. I’ll have the last three. Clear your schedule.”
I stare at him, baffled. “You can’t just spring things like that on me. I have important meetings on—”
“You agreed to our bargain—”
“Right,” I snap. “Your wards couldn’t even stop Lorcan. How the hell am I sure it’ll keep other things out? You’ve done nothing on your end and you can’t hold me up to mine.”
His jaw ticks and I have barely enough time to respond when he palms my waist and lifts me out of my seat effortlessy. He places me in his lap and keeps me there with unbelievably strong hands, forcing me to straddle him. “I presume that means I don’t have to keep to my own end of the agreement when it comes to not touching you.”
“Rior—”
He clasps his fingers on the nape of my neck harshly and tugs me forward. His lips meet mine with a crash and he angles my head so thoroughly, I can’t move. I clamp my lips shut, refusing to participate in a kiss that’s already boiling my ovaries.
Riordan grunts in displeasure and his fingers tighten on my neck. His tongue teases the seam of my lips and he bites me when I refuse to let him in. I yelp—at least, I think I do—but it rips from my mouth as a throaty moan because his tongue plunges in immediately, taking advantage.
He kisses like what he is—a monster covered in beautiful, tan skin. Fire. Teeth. Tongue. Blood. His tongue tastes every corner of my mouth, leaving no inch uncovered. His lips leave mine, and he kisses my neck savagely, making my legs shake with need. A growl rattles deep in his throat, utterly deranged and inhuman, and his free hand grasps a thigh, pulling me right atop his groin. It sounds like anger and frustration. It sounds like lust, so dark, it consumes me whole.
“Riordan,” I rasp, fingers that should push him away curling against his broad chest. God, it’s hot in here.
I’m shocked out of my mind when he lifts me yet again so that my back hits his chest and I’m staring at rearview mirror, where our gazes collide, the steering wheel biting into my stomach. His eyes are blacker than tar as a hand wraps around my neck, pulling back so that my head rests on his shoulder.
The sound of my harsh breaths fill up the car, the fire in my stomach spreading all the way to my breasts, tightening my n*****s. My thighs snap together and the friction steals another moan from me. My fingers dig in through his pants and he grunts, snatching my wrist and placing it on my bare thigh instead. He watches me lazily through the mirror as he twines our fingers together, slowly.
Riordan slides my hand up my thigh, pushing my gown until it is bunched around my hip. “Tell me to stop.” It’s an order, but…
“Oh God,” I breathe as a finger hooks on my panty and shoves it to the side, and then he’s guiding me to feel just how wet he’s made me just by kissing me. From my entrance to my clit, he drags our fingers, cupping my s*x and caressing lazily. “Did Lorcan touch you?”
I move against his—our—fingers, my hips undulating, and he pulls back when I don’t answer. A gentle protest leaving my lips before I can stop it. I catch his gaze through the mirror and swallow. “A little.”
A displeased, pissed off growl. “Where?”
“My neck—” I hiss when he parts my folds and flicks my thumb over my clit. It’s unnervingly hot, and my hips roll, pressing my ass up against his erection. “He kissed my neck.”
“Like this?” His grip on my neck tightens, those fingers pushing against my fluttering pulse as he brings his lips down my neck with ravaging force. I cry out as he nips, sucks and worships my skin with his hot mouth, his fangs hovering too close to where my blood rushes. The thrill and danger sings too me, and I’m not entirely reluctant when he nudges my thigh apart—his fingers still interlocked with mine.
“No,” I moan. “Not like that.”
A rumble of pure masculine satisfaction erupts behind me. “Where else?”
I bite my lip from responding, but he cuts off my airflow completely, forcing the words out of my mind. “Here,” I gush, guiding his finger to my clit. “It wasn’t…he didn’t…It was a tease.”
He releases me enough to let me gulp down breaths greedily, but I feel his shoulders roll with tension and his next words are thick with annoyance and something darker, cunning, unhinged. “Did you like it?”
“No,” I say, because I’m unsure what he’ll do if I said yes. Because it was Lorcan, and his touch singes me in a different way that Riordan’s does. I hate it, him, all of them. But I hate Riordan a little less.
His fingers brush against my entrance, twice, and “Dirty little liar,” is all the warning I get before he lifts me off his lap and deposits me in my seat. “I’ll pick you up by five,” he adds, as if all of that was just to prove a point.
Panting and wiping the sweat off my neck, I stare at him. He doesn’t look at me, but I can see the conflict in the way his fingers twitch on the wheel, the way the whites of his eyes bleed black and then white again, the way his nostrils flare and his jaw clenches. He shakes his head, as if shaking off the cloud of lust bearing down on both of us, and hisses a painful breath.
My lips tingle—Dieu, my entire being is tingling at this point, and the insides of my thighs are so wet, I can feel me all over my dress down there. I clutch the chair, forcing a hot breath out before that lazy rush of desire pools in my lower stomach and forces me to ask him to repeat everything…and maybe f**k me in the back seat. God, I need to get laid. I ache so bad, I can’t think straight.
The door clicks and before he gets out, he reaches across, gripping my ponytail in his fist. He brings the strands to his nose, sniffing in deeply. “Never wear that f*****g dress again, or I’ll burn it.”
I shudder, keeping my gaze fixed on his dark ones. “You don’t tell me what to do, Riordan.”
His lips pull up in a faint smile that’s absolutely nefarious. “No, not yet, I suppose.” He tugs me forward by my hair and presses a kiss to my neck, in the same exact spot Lorcan kissed me. “Be grateful, Scarlett, that I’m a gentleman. The things I yearn to do to you are utterly ungentlemanly. I…” He breathes out sharply, running one hand down my back and snapping the band that holds my ponytail in place with the other. The massive mane tumbles down my shoulders and back as his next words cut through the air, “I’ve never wanted to ruin anyone else as much as I do you.”
And then, he’s gone. It takes me getting out of the car fifteen minutes later to realize my zipper is ruined, several cuts designing the back of my dress. I couldn’t fix it even if I wanted to.
The crown is hovering by the door when I return, torn dress, disheveled hair, swollen lips, hickey-ed neck and all. It turns left and right, the emerald moving like a narrowed eye. “Great night?”
My cheeks flush. “Shut your damn mouth.”
It—she—chuckles. “I would, if I had one.” It darts towards the TV, beckoning me over. “This should interest you.”
I follow, stopping by my prized, white leather couch, just as the news reaches my ears. Somewhere within the last one hour, Chase Enterprises HQ burned to the ground, leaving several casualties, one of which happens to be Alexander and guess who the hell is crying in front of the hospital, gathered by the press, saying, “Scarlett did this. She’s been trying to ruin the company for months now! Her statements at the funeral are proof enough!”
Fucking Isabel.
- Writer
