Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 436

"Do we get to know where we are going?" I asked.

"My home."

"I thought we came from your home in the morning."

"That was my fortress. This is my home."

I turned to look at him. "You have a fortress and a home?"

"Most men have a house and a garage. I have a fortress and a home."

"That is the most terrifyingly wealthy sentence I have ever heard."

Tasha giggled from the front seat, and Sparrow's mouth twitched, and I decided he was almost tolerable when he was not being insufferable.

The house was a white mansion sitting back from the road in a neighborhood of white mansions, all of them so pristine they looked polished that morning. No gate, no guards, no razor wire. Just warm light in the windows and a lawn so perfect it seemed illegal.

"You have no security," I said.

"I do not need it here. No one knows I own this place."

"That is either very clever or very stupid."

"Those are the same thing when you are me."

He pressed his thumb to a panel beside the door and the lock clicked open, and he pushed the door wide and stepped aside.

"Welcome to my home."

The inside was all warm wood and soft light, nothing like the fortress, less a vault and more a place a person could actually live. Sparrow walked us through the ground floor, the living room, the kitchen, and stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

"There are four rooms upstairs," he said. "The master bedroom is mine. The other three are yours to choose from. Take whichever you want."

I nodded. "Thank you. For everything."

"Do not thank me yet. The year has just started."

Tasha was already halfway up the stairs. "Scarlett, come help me out of this dress. I cannot reach the back."

I took a step to follow, and Sparrow's hand closed around my wrist.

"Fine," I said. "Let me help Tasha, then freshen up, and I will meet you in your room. Ten minutes."

He groaned, low and animal. "I cannot wait ten minutes."

"You waited two days. Ten minutes will not kill you."

"It might."

Then he tore the dress anyway.

The green fabric ripped down the middle, a sharp, final sound, and I gasped and shoved at his chest, and he caught my wrists and pinned them behind my back, and I struggled for exactly one second before the fight went out of me, because his mouth was on my throat and his teeth were on my ear and my body remembered precisely what two days without him felt like.

"You said," I breathed.

"I lied."

He yanked the torn halves off my shoulders and they slid down my arms and pooled at my feet, and the cool air hit my skin and I shivered, and he made a sound low in his throat, hungry, and dragged his palms up my ribs, over my breasts, thumbs finding my nipples through the thin lace of my bra.

He unfastened my bra with one hand, a trick that made me want to hate him, and my breasts spilled into his palms, and he bent and took one nipple into his mouth, teeth grazing, tongue flat and hot, and my knees went weak. I grabbed the back of his head, fingers buried in his hair.