Turning to Stone (Heart of Stone: Book 2)

Chapter 7: Ego

Chapter 7: Ego

My hand jerked away from his belt as my head snapped up to look at him. Dark passion swirled in his deep blue eyes. Despite the unexpected change in conversation, my heart rate began to race, my pulse fluttering between my legs.

There was every chance he was compensating for showing me such a vulnerable side last night, but I didn't care. He could compensate all he wanted if that meant glaring at me like he wanted to tear my clothes off and bend me over the sofa. 

I'd worried he'd be hurt about Aaron, but if he was simply jealous, then maybe I was in the clear after all.

"I wouldn't know," I said, shuffling back into the cushions to put some safe distance between us. "I haven't seen his body in person. Just magazines. Websites. We all know how much airbrushing goes into those photos."

I tipped my chin towards his own naked torso, and my attempt to distract from the Aaron situation by goading him into protecting his ego worked.

Leaning closer to me, his hands curled around the back of the sofa on either side of my head, caging me between his corded biceps as he closed the distance between our faces.

"I seem to remember you saying the opposite, actually." Toothpaste-fresh breath floated over my lips as his scorching eyes burned into me. "About how you couldn't believe a body like mine existed outside a magazine?"

One arm briefly left the sofa back to drop to my lap. His long fingers curled around my wrist and lifted it until my hand collided with his belt again.

An invitation if I ever saw one, and I happily accepted.

His jaw clenched as I deliberately took my time pulling the leather strap free from the buckle, and when I grazed my knuckles over the growing bulge in the front of his jeans, the biceps bracketing my head tensed.

"Do you need me to stroke your ego?" I tilted my face upwards so our lips brushed. "Or are you going to believe me when I say I've not slept with him?"

As I slid my hand inside his jeans and cupped his solid erection through his boxers, he released an aggravated growl, his forehead coming to rest against mine.

"I might have been drunk last night," he said, hissing when I squeezed, "but I know what I heard."

"And what did you hear?"

I waited for him to reply as I eased his jeans and boxers down his thighs, knowing full well that he was only half-focused on this conversation. And served him right: if he wanted to try to disarm me with sex, I would do the damn same thing to him.

"I heard how you answered the phone to him. And I heard him bragging about tasting you. Something about how you've been ignoring his calls. How you've—fuck!"

He threw back his head and pinched his eyes shut as I began to glide my hand up and down his cock. It had been too long since I'd felt the silky, warm virility of him against my fingers, and while I wasn't the one being pleasured, it almost felt like I was.

Maybe that explained why he got off on teasing me so much—because it really did give your ego a huge boost when you could take someone from hostile to begging in mere seconds.

"You were saying?" I peered up at him and twisted my lips into a smug smile that I knew would drive him mad.

Darkness flashed through his eyes again as his lust-filled gaze met mine. A credit to his self-control, though, he removed one hand from the sofa to fix around my wrist, pulling my touch away but not letting go.