Chapter 1 #2
When she turned back to me, the female’s fingertips rested against the skin of her throat, and my sharp gaze focused on the flutter of her pulse beneath that delicate layer.
She wasn’t wearing anything too sexy—a pair of jeans and that shirt, emblazoned with the name of a band I recognized—but fuck me, she made that outfit look fine.
I wanted her.
I wanted my prize.
I wanted to pull her into my home, to push her against the bed or the couch and rip those jeans off her with my tusks and taste her.
Which was ridiculous because I didn’t even know her real name.
“I thought it was obvious, Mr. Garrak.” She cocked her hip, and this time, dragged her fingertips down across her chest, lingering on her left tit. “I’m here to pay Hendricks’ debt.”
The wood of the doorway creaked as I tightened my hold on it. “No,” I rasped.
She blinked. “No?”
“Hendricks owes me fifty thousand.” I’d tried to collect before I’d left Colorado, but the bastard had been slippery, full of lies. “That’s what I want.”
The female bit down on her lower lip, a move I was certain was supposed to appear arousing. It worked.
“Are you sure?” She peeked up at me from under lowered lashes. “I think you and I could find something else that’s worth fifty thousand.”
“Oh yeah?” I growled, angry at myself for the way my cock was hardening, despite knowing this was all a ploy on her part. I leaned forward, hoping to intimidate her with my size. “And what’s that?”
Something like dread flashed in her dark eyes for a moment before she lifted her hands to her breasts, cupping them both. She lifted her chin but kept her gaze locked on my chest when she hefted them as if offering herself to me.
Standing there in the hallway of my condo building, offering herself to me.
Take claim taste now fuck taste.
Gods below, my Kteer could be fucking annoying.
I wanted her.
But I wasn’t going to have her.
With a sigh, I straightened, reaching for the door and stepping backward, ready to close it in her face.
“Sorry, Ms. Smith. You’re good at what you do, but not that good.
” I could tell all her attempts at seduction weren’t real.
“Run back to Hendricks and tell him I want the fifty thousand, not some pity fuck from a female who doesn’t want it. ”
As I began to close the door, I saw genuine fear in her face, and she gave up all pretense. “Wait!” she cried, lunging forward and slapping a palm against the door to keep it from closing.
This meant she was half inside my home, her heavy chest too close to mine as she tipped her head back to stare up into my face. I could see the panic on her face.
“Wait,” she repeated. “Please don’t shut me out.”
“Why?” With my arm on the jamb, she was more or less standing in my embrace. I had to dig my claws into the wood to keep from reaching my arm around her. “Your seduction isn’t going to work on me. I want Hendricks’ money, not his whore.”
Distaste flickered across her features before she dropped her gaze to my chin. “I’m not his whore,” she whispered.
And I remembered the threat in that letter.
Hendricks had basically said I could do what I wanted with her—and she and I both knew what that meant—and she’d go along with it because…
There’d been the threat to tell someone about something that had happened in New Orleans, and although I didn’t understand it, I understood the outcome.
Hendricks had basically announced that she would do whatever I wanted, and she was agreeing with it out of fear.
There were some males out there who would have accepted this offer, maybe gratefully.
The chance to bed such a female, and the primitive urgings of their survival-focused Kteers, would override their good sense.
But I’d smelled her terror, not at me—when I’d opened the door initially she’d smelled of curiosity—but at what she’d been expected to do.
And I wasn’t going to fuck a female who was terrified of me.
That wasn’t worth a dollar, much less fifty thousand.
“Look, Stevie,” I sighed, wondering if even that name was false. “You can’t deny Hendricks sent you here to whore for him.”
Her lips pressed together stubbornly, and she didn’t lift her gaze from my chest.
I had some sexual experiences with humans, but most of them had been tiny compared to me.
This female was tall enough I wouldn’t have to hurt my back if I claimed her lips—if I wanted to do such a thing.
She was pretty, in a hard sort of way, and I found myself wondering what it would feel like to press my lips to those intriguing stones in her earlobes…
But I could smell her uncertainty.
No matter that the primitive part of me was howling to take what she was offering, she didn’t want me.
She didn’t want this.
So I sighed again and turned away. “Hendricks is an idiot if he thinks I’m going to erase his debt just because he gave me a virgin to fuck.”
Her voice was tiny—too quiet—when she announced without meeting my eyes, “I’m not a virgin,” with a stubborn tilt to her chin.
One of my brows twitched. “Have you ever fucked an orc?”
Mutely, she shook her head, her gaze still locked on my chest. I felt my lips curling ruefully.
“Then, sweetheart…You might as well be a virgin.”
Her gaze snapped up to mine just as I stepped back and began to close the door again.
“Wait!” she cried again, pushing forward. This time, her palm landed on my chest. “Wait,” she repeated in a whisper. “I need you…”
Fuck me with a tractor.
There were plenty of things I could ignore or overcome. But hearing a tempting female whisper that she needed me? Even when I knew she didn’t mean it in the way I wanted it to mean?
It took every ounce of self-control to reach for her wrist, to wrap my fingers gently around it, to pull her away from me.
I wanted her, but I wasn’t going to have her.
“Ms. Smith, you need—” to leave.
Except, the words never left my mouth. Because when I lifted her wrist away from me, I saw the bruises.
The bruises that ran up the inside of her upper arm. The bruises that matched a large male’s grip. In disbelief, my gaze snapped to hers, and I saw her flush and look away, scented her shame.
Shame.
And the anger that hit me then threatened my control. My Kteer howled, not in need, not in desperation, but in pure, unadulterated rage. Someone had hurt this female, my female, and I would be damned if I was going to send her off to be hurt again.
I understood her fear now, and it fed my fury when I hissed, “Who did this to you?”