Chapter Thirty-One
Phoenix
I fucking snapped.
Leaning forward, inhaling the little trespasser like a man possessed, I let loose with a low growl. “Say his name again.”
The reaction was instant.
Her shoulders dropped, her legs stiffened, and her head fell.
Curling in on herself, dipping her chin, she spoke so softly, I barely heard her over the storm. “Helios.”
Anger and hunger slammed into me harder than the swells hitting the hull, and I silently cursed. My intent was to assault her bravado and waylay her insolence, not ambush my self-control any further.
Dangling her little show of submission like an affront to my dominance, I watched the woman for three full beats. Then I played into the hand I’d dealt.
“You like saying his name?” Every woman looking to get fucked went for Helios.
The little trespasser bit her bottom lip but didn’t answer.
“Don’t make me ask again,” I warned.
Her tongue darted out, then she gave me a small, quiet voice that said she’d had plenty of experience relinquishing control.
“I think you want me to make you ask again.” Playing with fire, she shifted onto her knees.
“I think you like competition.” She braced her hands on the floor.
“I think you want me to say Helios over and over again until you make me stop.”
The visual of shoving my cock down her throat to do exactly that was beneath the man and SEAL I’d been raised and trained to be. But it sure as fuck wasn’t beneath the warfighter I’d become.
No longer an operator, never fully Ground Branch, I’d embraced Teria Optio only when it’d fit my needs.
Now I was here.
On a retrofitted mega yacht with enough firepower to take out a small country, my past on my six, the most crucial mission of my life in my sights, and all I wanted to do was fuck a woman who’d already fucked me.
I wanted to fuck her hard and thoroughly.
Then make damn sure she never said Helios’s name or cooked for the son of a bitch again.
“You like to be stopped?” The little trespasser had no idea who she was playing with.
“I like a lot of things.”
I bet she did. None of which she’d earned—financially or by ingratiating herself with me. The latter I needed to remember.
Abruptly standing, keeping my gaze locked on her, I fed her a taste of mercy she’d never appreciate. “Learn how to earn it, woman.” I stepped around her.
A hand landed on my shin.
Halting, my jaw went rigid and I issued the order. “Remove your hand.”
“Phoenix.” Her fingers pressed into me.
Resentment-fed anger seeded next to my waning control and for once, I wanted to hear a name that was dead to me. “Uncage a beast, and there’ll be even less of you than there is now.”
Voice soft, asking for something she couldn’t comprehend, she begged. “Don’t go.”
Two words. No attachment.
The little trespasser wasn’t asking a SEAL not to leave her, she wasn’t asking a phoenix to stay, and she sure as hell wasn’t asking for the caged beast I’d become.
This woman didn’t want to be alone in a storm.
I was the fucking storm.
“Drop your hand, Isla,” I warned, low and lethal.
“Or you’ll what?”
She didn’t want to find out. “Last warning.”
Her hand skimmed up my leg.
I caught her wrist.
Then I unleashed.