“Okay,” I breathed.
Before I could say anything else, he reached behind his back, grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt, and pulled it over his head, revealing the sculpture of his chest and powerful arms. Thoughts vaporized from my brain at the sight. Subtly notched muscles ran down his stomach and disappeared beneath the waistband of his underwear, which rode a half inch higher than his suit pants.
I was irritated with myself. I wasn’t supposed to be one of those girls who fell apart around Royce, but it happened anyway. My gaze traced every inch of him, from the silver watch on one wrist to the pronounced line his collarbones drew across his defined chest.
“I should warn you,” he said as he turned and walked away, wordlessly encouraging me to follow him. “I don’t know how that’s going to go.”
His socked feet carried him into the bathroom and deeper still into his enormous walk-in closet, the suits organized by color on one side, his casual clothes on the other, and the back was a wall of shoes and accessories. I stood at the entryway, leaning against the doorframe as he peeled off his socks and tossed them into a hamper.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
His intense eyes didn’t give me a clue of what was going on behind them. “I’ve never had a girl in my bed.”
Surprise coasted down through me. “Like, for sleeping?”
“For anything.” He worked to unlatch the belt at his waist, but his gaze remained on me. I was captured prey he didn’t want to escape, but that was silly. Didn’t he know I wasn’t going anywhere? His face contorted with an emotion I wasn’t used to seeing from him. Was he . . . shy? “I didn’t bring anyone back to my room. This is supposed to be my space, where I can be me.”
My pulse sped. “You brought me here after we went out the first time.”
A smile hinted in his eyes. “You’d already agreed to be my wife.”
A thrill shot through me. He’d been my first in so many things. I was excited to be his too, at least in some way. I swallowed thickly as his fly was undone and his pants fell around his ankles, leaving him clad only in a pair of underwear. The tight gray trunks hugged him and left little to the imagination.
My thighs tightened. “So, what you’re saying is . . . I’ll get to see this show you’re putting on right now every night.”
My statement caught him off-guard, and Royce’s smile went wide. He stepped out of his pants, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and strode toward me. “Oh, you like this?”
I wanted to be as confident as he was, standing in front of me with barely anything on. I lifted my chin and puffed up my chest. “I do.”
It was shocking to me how much power he held over me even now, when he was nearly naked and I was fully clothed. He threaded a hand through my hair, his goal of getting dressed forgotten. His lips slanted across mine in a scorching kiss that made my toes curl inside my Stuart Weitzman heels.
I sank into his kiss, both figuratively and literally, because as he deepened it, I was bent backward over his arm. His mouth roved against my mouth, licking and tasting, and my knees softened. God, would I ever get used to the way he possessed me? It all still felt so new and surreal. I’d spent years hating him, not to mention thinking he was going to marry my sister. I couldn’t believe I’d ended up in Royce’s closet, in love with him and letting him kiss the hell out of me.
But his kiss came abruptly to an end, like a thought had just occurred to him. “You’re distracting me. We have shit to talk about.”
“We do.” I skimmed my palms along his back, sliding them over his warm, smooth skin. “Tell me about Ascension.”
He extracted himself from my hold, bent, and retrieved the suit pants from the floor, talking as he hung them up. “Their growth in brokerage and credit accounts is incredible. A shareholder’s wet dream.”
“That’s why you want to buy them?”
“No.”
He let that cryptic answer settle on me as he grabbed a pair of jeans off a shelf and pulled them on, one leg at a time.
“But you’ve been buying stock in Ascension for years. You own almost five percent.”
“Yup.”
Was he purposefully trying to be a vague asshole? “That company’s not as big as HBHC, but they’re a competitor. Why do that? You buy Ascension, and then use them to try to take over HBHC?”
Because Royce on his own didn’t have enough money to buy out the shareholders of his family’s bank. But if he owned Ascension, he could gain interest from others to partner with on a takeover attempt. I only got a flash of his sly look before he tugged on a t-shirt, disappointingly covering his bare chest. His expression said one thing—that I hadn’t guessed right.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “That’s the only reason that makes sense to me.”
“That I’m planning a takeover?”
I nodded.
Royce put his hands on his waist and stared at me with unflinching eyes. “And that’s exactly what I want him to think.”
Maybe the hospital stay had made me slow, because I couldn’t connect the dots. “You . . . don’t want to buy Ascension?”
“No. He needs to do it.”
“Why?” What did he have to gain from his father buying it? In my confusion, I hadn’t noticed his advance, and I let out a squeak of surprise as he scooped me up into his arms. “What are you doing?”
“I want to see what you look like in my bed.”
As he carried me through the bathroom and out into the bedroom, I wondered if this was calculated distraction. Perhaps he didn’t want to tell me his master plan after all, or he wanted to do it in stages.
“You want to have sex? Fine.” I gave him a determined look. “But you’re going to keep talking, Royce.”
He set me down on the bed, but as he backed up, his expression was odd. “That’s not what I meant. We can’t have sex.”
My back went straight as I sat up, tucking my legs beneath me. “What? Why not?”
“I don’t know, Marist.” He tossed up a hand. “Maybe because you just got out of the hospital? Or because you barely made it down the hall to my room without needing to stop for a rest?”
It was true, I wasn’t recovered, but like last time he’d done it, when he took away the option of sex . . . I instantly began to crave it.
“I’m fine,” I said with exasperation. “If it helps, I’ll let you do the majority of the work. I’ll just lay there and take it.”
He chuckled. “Sounds awesome, can’t wait.” He sat beside me on the bed, the mattress dipping and causing me to fall into him. “As much fun as it would be to say I fucked you so hard, it sent you to the hospital, you know that’s the last thing I want, right?” He sobered. “It’s one night. Neither of us is a stranger to waiting.”
Because we’d both waited a year for each other after he’d cornered me in the library and demanded he be my first. But—fuck—we’d gotten engaged months ago, and yet we’d only had sex three times.
Irritation simmered in my core. “I’m tired of waiting. I almost died, and . . .” I knew it was a ridiculous thing to say, but I was greedy and wild. Desperate to reconnect with him in the way that felt honest and true. “I’ve never even given a blowjob.”