The inside of Mitchell’s head buzzed like a swarm of bees that all wanted to zoom after the delicious sunflowers waving right in front of them. “What the hell are you doing?”
Arielle’s dark eyebrows pressed down while one side of her upper lip jerked upward in a dirty look. “Practicing.”
Mitchell stepped backward and clenched his hands behind his back. “Practicing for what?”
“Practicing. Practicing like it specifies in the contract.”
Mitchell waved one hand in front of his face while he looked away from where the parting buttons revealed her delicate skin and a hint of, goddammit, pink lace. “You’re not obligated, and neither am I.”
“Seriously?”
When Mitchell sneaked a peek, she’d stopped unbuttoning and had her arms spread wide from her sides.
Yep, pink lace peeked from the edges of her dress. Why did it have to be lace?
Arielle continued, “We agreed last week that we needed to practice intimate relations because people can tell when you haven’t really been knocking boots. I have been steeling myself all night to do this.”
That was damned insulting. “No woman has ever had to steel herself to go to bed with me, and that’s certainly not going to start now.”
Arielle rolled her eyes. “And I think those reporters could tell. That one who’s always wearing a black suit keeps asking us questions like she’s trying to trip us up. I keep expecting her to ask me whether you have freckles on your butt.”
“I don’t have freckles,” Mitchell said.
“Yeah, buddy. Sure. Never mind those spots on your nose.”
Maybe he needed a better golf hat. “Never mind that. We will not. I will leave this room if you continue to insist.”
Mitchell didn’t want to leave. He wanted to dump Arielle on that bed and have his way with her until she screamed his name and begged for mercy.
Her eyes narrowed, and she snarled, “What, are you backing out on the contract?”
Mitchell’s voice rose even though he’d had no intention of arguing with her. “I require enthusiastic consent, not begrudging acquiescence.”
“God, you sound so weirdly British sometimes, you and all your two-dollar words. You’re the one who wrote the contract, buddy, not me. Now, are you going to uphold your end of the contract or not?”
Mitchell should have said no.
He should have gone downstairs and slept in his rental car, which had been his backup plan if he felt he was likely to succumb to temptation.
He certainly shouldn’t have done what he did, which was to stride toward her, not stopping as he ducked to place his shoulder against her stomach and flip her over his back, carrying her into the bedroom caveman-style.
The little minx reached down from where her head dangled down his back and grabbed his ass with both hands.
A zing of desire shot through him, a Pavlovian response from many lovely feminine hands grasping his thighs and ass as he settled between their legs and teased them before pushing himself inside them. He’d told her that grabbing his ass was the magic button to push when she wanted to get laid, and he was more than happy to oblige.
A growl emerged from Mitchell’s throat before he could stifle it.
From behind his back, demented feminine giggles confirmed that Arielle thought she had bested him.
He’d soon quash that.
When he reached the bed, Mitchell flipped her over his shoulder and tossed her onto the mattress, and he kicked his shoes off and scrambled onto the bed before her second bounce. He was on top of her in that instant, straddling her hips with his knees.
The hotel staff had laid terrycloth robes on the foot of the bed, along with baskets of lotions and cookies. With one sweep of his arm, Mitchell sent the baskets tumbling to the floor because they were going to need the space.
“I take it this means yes, you asshole?” Arielle asked, a smile curving her lips as she settled her arms around his neck.
“You’re the one who said you needed practice,” Mitchell told her, bracing himself on his arms above her. “I assure you, I’m more than proficient.”
Arielle raised an eyebrow. “Big words from the guy who likes ruining my friends’ lives.”
He smiled, knowing the glitter in his eyes was wicked, and told her, “I’ll ruin you for all other men, my little vixen.”
He kissed her hard, his tongue tangling with hers to keep her from retorting. Mitchell would make sure every future man Arielle was with disappointed her for the rest of her life after what he would do to her that night.
She bit the side of his neck, a sting that shot fire through his veins. “I can’t believe you did that to the office. They hate you. I hate you.”
“I know.”
And he bit her back.
While he was mouthing her neck, his fingers began to work on those magnificent, infuriatingly tiny buttons.
Unlatching them all took an eternity, and Mitchell adored every minute. He made her wait, his breath brushing her skin as he took his time with each one, not letting her shrug the arms of the dress down her shoulders but teasing each fabric-covered gem through its buttonhole even though she squirmed under his hands, and it took an eternity in his mind.
“Jesus,” she muttered. “Just let me take it off.”
“Ah-ah-ah,” he admonished her. “Don’t struggle, my rose. You said you needed practice. Now you’ll have practice waiting.”
“Yeah, you’ll wait,” she griped.
Oh, yes. Mitchell could wait.
Mitchell was very good at delaying the gratification of selling a business or taking a woman until the time was right. He was absolutely deliberate and meticulous in everything he did, which in this case meant that his intent focused on driving Arielle out of her ever-loving mind.
And yet, desire pounded in his veins until it reached a fever pitch like a howl in his ears.
She was whimpering by the time he unbuttoned that tortuous line of buttons down to her waist, his breath and lips barely brushing her skin as he moved downward.
She threaded her fingers through his hair as he whispered against the skin of her tummy near her waist, gently running her fingernails over his scalp.
Damn, Mitchell liked it when she did that.
She writhed under him, grabbing at his back and his ass, a move surely calculated to make him lose control.
And it was working, dammit.
But two could play at that game.
Mitchell thumbed the lace of her bra aside and sucked the peak into his mouth.
Arielle gasped, her back rising off the bed.
He slipped his arm underneath the small of her back, holding her against his mouth as he laved her breast.
Her skin obsessed him. Her body was silk under his fingertips, floral in his nose, and heaven under his tongue.
Mitchell’s thoughts fuzzed, growing hazy as desire drew a veil over his mind and eyes.
She was tugging at his shirt and fumbling with his buttons down the front. Mitchell dragged it and his undershirt over his head, baring his chest, and tossed them aside.
Her dress was parted down the middle and shoved down to her waist now, and her lacy bra cups drawn under the swells of her breasts. She was a feast for him, a banquet of femininity.
Mitchell stood on his knees and backed off, finding the floor with one foot, and he grabbed Arielle’s waist and flipped her over onto her stomach.
That pretty little sundress hung around her waist, so he dragged it down her back and over her bottom, yanking it down her thighs and tossing it to the floor.
Her pink lace panties matched her bra, and Mitchell grinned.
In a boarding high school, conversations were ten times as intense as in a day school because they never went home, never left the company of their peers. Thus, Mitchell knew that matching lingerie on a woman meant that he wasn’t the one who’d decided they were going to have sex that night.
Which was more than fine with him. A woman who knew what she wanted and who wanted him was sexy as hell.
Mitchell was on her immediately, one of his arms wrapping her waist as she shoved herself up. He pinned her against his body, mouthing her neck as the softness of her ass rubbed his erection through his pants.
His body became a drumbeat. Mitchell was all momentum now, a relentless drive forward that would not be stopped until he found himself buried in her.
He toppled them over, shoving her toward the middle of the bed and then dragging her against his body. Her back and ass pressed against him as they spooned, and his hand roved over her breasts and belly, dipping near the apex of her legs.
“I’m only doing this because it’s specified in the contract,” Arielle said, stretching in his arms so that his fingers were closer to her folds even though he hadn’t moved his hand any lower.
Oh, did his fake little girlfriend have a forced-sex kink?
Interesting.
Mitchell would never force a woman, ever, but he’d indulge any little twist she wanted.
Maybe he didn’t have to go all the way to pretending to force her, though, which was far enough into dangerous territory that he’d want a conversation about it first.
But maybe she would be satisfied with dominance.
Mitchell didn’t have to pretend that at all. His nature supplied more than enough, such that tamping it down was his usual concern.
Indeed, cutting the restraints was far too easy, even freeing.
Mitchell whispered against her neck, “Yes, it’s in the contract you signed that I can have your body any time I want, I can do anything I want to you, and you can’t say no.”
Arielle moaned, stretching against him again, even though Mitchell’s lawyers who’d overseen the contract verbiage had surely explained the clauses differently and at length.
The terrycloth bathrobes were still lying on the foot of the bed.
Mitchell contorted himself, twisting from his waist and reaching until he grabbed the soft belt off one of them and shook it loose from the robe.
Arielle was watching him, her lips parted.
Mitchell grabbed her wrists and yanked her arms over her head, weaving the robe belt between and around her wrists to securely tie them together. That knot was specially designed so it wouldn’t tighten, no matter how the occupant struggled.
But that knot was also nearly impossible to get out of.
He bent over her, his legs still behind her, and whispered, “Are you sure you don’t want to break the contract?”
She shook her head no, though her dark eyes appeared dazed.
Mitchell reclined beside Arielle and began exploring her body, cupping her breasts, feeling the warmth under them, and slipping pinches off her nipples until they turned rosy.
She moaned, she gasped, she wiggled with her arms still tied above her head, but she didn’t say no.
He slid his hand lower, caressing between her folds, where she was already slick with wanting him.
Mitchell whispered, “You will submit to anything I want, and I want you, now.”
Her leg moved, parting, and his hand slipped lower.
Arielle’s head dropped back against his shoulder as he massaged between her legs, running his fingertip over the hard nub and making her shiver.
“Don’t move.” He rolled away, shucked his trousers and everything else off, grabbed a condom from where he’d tossed it on the nightstand earlier, and slapped it on his rock-hard erection. Damn, his skin was tight.
He cradled up to her back again and growled in her ear, “Open for me.”
Arielle’s leg moved, rising like a triangle as she opened her legs while lying on her side.
He teased her some more, slipping his fingers and then the head of his cock through her folds, which wasn’t teasing her nearly as much as it was tormenting himself before he angled himself and pushed inside her core.
Warm, wet tightness closed around him, and Mitchell paused, bracing his body as tension coiled in his muscles.
But he breathed through it, and then he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and hips, holding her in place and slowly stroking into her.
Her natural fragrance and ripples of her soft body in his arms with each stroke entranced him. He kept his movements slow and controlled, rubbing inside her until she was panting.
Mitchell shoved Arielle’s shoulder and rolled with her, then he lifted her hips so that she was ass-up with her face in the bed, her bound wrists stretched in front of her. He spread her thighs with his knees and the gorgeous globes of her ass cheeks with his hands as he pumped inside her. He slapped her ass with his hips, banging into her and digging his fingers in where he gripped her hips, making sure she’d remember every last thrust.
When his body was almost ready to turn mindless, Mitchell pulled himself out, flipped her over, and pushed back inside her with her on her back. “Keep those hands over your head.”
She nodded.
“And raise your knees.”
Mitchell knew that she should be raw and so sensitive now that he could make her scream.
He ground into her, taking her deeply. Her eyes rolled up from the first stroke. Within seconds, she was arching as he pressed, undulating his hips as he came in low and rubbed upward.
Her bound hands clutched the pillow above her head.
He kept taking her as her eyes squeezed shut, her face contorting, and then a jolt snapped through her, raising her off the bed as she gasped and keened, “Oh, God, Mitchell, yes!” Her body pulsed around his cock like she was sucking him, and that drove Mitchell beyond his precarious control.
The tension Mitchell had been restraining overwhelmed him, and his body jerked into her and then bowed in a release so powerful his spine crackled to the top of his skull and the world whited out, pure bliss drowning him.
His breath and heartbeat rushed in his ears, a cacophony of existence, and Arielle’s soft skin against the side of his face drew him back.
His head was spinning.
Mitchell released his knotted belt around her wrists, and then he grabbed the condom’s base, pulled out of her, got rid of it in the trash beside the bed, and wrapped her in his arms, planting a quick kiss on her forehead.
Arielle struggled away from him and threw her legs over the side of the bed.
Oh, shit. “Whoa, what’s wrong?”
She grabbed a bathrobe from the floor, stumbling but catching herself. She whipped the robe around her naked body, covering a love bite he’d left on the back of her shoulder, and spat at him, “I swear to God, Mitchell Saltonstall, if I hadn’t signed that damn contract, I’d throw you bodily out of this hotel room on your ear.”
“It’s my hotel room,” he reminded her.
“I don’t care whose room you think it is,” she said, knotting the bathrobe’s belt around her waist like she was yanking corset strings. “You are an asshole and a jerk who doesn’t care about people—”
He smirked. “And yet I think I took care of you pretty well.”
“That doesn’t matter. We’re not talking about your truly impressive,” she gasped a little and pressed her hand to the side of her head, “sexual skills.”
His smile widened. “Yeah, I thought so.”
“I’m talking about how you use people like pawns in your business schemes. I’m talking about people loving the place where they worked until you bought it and turned it into a toxic hellscape. It’s all just business to you, isn’t it, Mitchell? Even this,” gesturing to the bed, “was all just business to you.”
Oh, now that was getting under his skin a bit. “It wasn’t all business.”
“You’re such a jerk. I can’t believe you’re destroying Match Play just for a few measly dollars.”
That stung. He was saving Match Play, not destroying it. “I say, now—”
Arielle scowled. “I can’t believe I couldn’t keep my hands off you. But I will. I swear to God, Mitchell, that was the last time.”
She stomped away and slammed the bathroom door behind her.
The fact that she couldn’t keep her hands off him even though she obviously hated him, and for good reasons, was a compliment if one looked at it the right way. It seemed all of Mitchell’s watching and listening skills had paid off, and he was now such a stud that even women who hated his guts willingly fell into his bed.
Arielle yelled from the bathroom, “And I swear to God, we’d better have two separate hotel rooms next weekend.”
Mitchell hollered back, “I will make absolutely sure there are thick walls separating us next weekend.”
But walls had doors.