“Show me.”

He flinched, and she saw his jaw tighten as his throat worked. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Test me. Show me how you’d punish me. How you’d make me apologize for all those lonely hard-ons I’ve left you with. All those times you had to get yourself off because you just couldn’t help it. Show me.”

She wanted, craved, needed to know what it felt like to have him powering into her, making her come.

“Never.” His whisper was jagged, broken. And it sliced her into ribbons.

“Then I guess you’re never gonna know what you’d find if you forgot about your dumbass rules long enough to slide that hand between my legs.”

His growl was a warning that she was pushing him too far. There was nothing she wanted more than to push him even harder.

“If you wanted me like that, nothing would stand in your way. Nothing would stop you from taking me and giving me what I want. So don’t stand there and act so conflicted when you’re more concerned with what other people would think if you got off your high horse and fucked me.”

She shoved at his big, broad chest. Soft flannel over hard muscle. He didn’t move an inch. Dear God, that turned her on. She was well on the road to humiliating herself and needed to take a hard detour before she threw herself at his feet and begged him to take her hard and mean. Just this once.

“Back the fuck up, Brick. You’ve said your piece. I’ve said mine. I’ll just go back to pretending you don’t exist. And you can go back to wondering just how wet I get. Just how hard you’d have to work to get all the way inside me. How tight I’d squeeze you when I come.”

He pulled her hair hard and snarled something unintelligible, but she wasn’t about to be intimidated.

“For the rest of your life, you can comfort yourself that you’ll never know. Congratulations on your sky-high morals, Brick Callan.”

“Fuck.”

In one swift move, he swung her around and bent her over the desk. One hand gripped the back of her neck. The other rested on the curve of her ass, fingers flexing into her flesh.

Her thighs quaked with anticipation.

She wanted this. Wanted what he was fighting his instincts to do. She wanted to be the one to push him too far and to take everything he had to give.

The hand on her bottom vanished, and in her mind’s eye, she could see him hauling back, ready to strike. But the slap didn’t come. Tears, hot and suffocating, blurred her vision. If Brick couldn’t give this to her, she’d never have it.

What was so wrong with her that he couldn’t give her what they both wanted?

He was breathing like a stallion behind her. She wished for his chest at her back, belt buckle digging into her skin above the waistband of her jeans. But he made no move to touch her. To take her.