Chapter 5
HARLOW
My mouth opens, with the words he wants from me sitting on the edge of my lips, but I can’t get my mouth to move.
I won’t beg.
“Hmm, trouble speaking, baby?”
My eyes track him as he moves to the foot of my bed, that heavy, beautiful cock in his fist, and every muscle in my body is fighting itself. Shame, want, fury and need. Every emotion plays across his handsome features in an endless loop.
He’s stroking himself slowly, gaze locked on me.
The sight is enough to scorch what’s left of my dignity to dust. Everything about him is too much for my senses.
That hard jaw, those wolfishly green eyes, the scars that map out all the wars he’s survived.
He’s not just the kind of man women fantasize about—he’s the kind that ruins you for anyone else.
And God help me, he knows it.
My wrists ache where the cuffs bite into the sensitive skin. My thighs are still shaking from the last round he wrung out of me, and all I want is for him to touch me again.
But he wants me to bed, and that is a huge fuck no.
I squeeze my eyes shut, desperate to get a grip, but it’s useless. He’s there when I blink back into the world, cock in hand, watching me like he’s got all night to wait for me to give in.
His voice is low and wicked. “All you have to do is beg, Harlow. Just once.”
Never. Not even if every cell in my body is screaming for it.
My tongue is thick in my mouth. I want to tell him to go to hell, to tell him I hate him, but the words die somewhere between my brain and my lips. Instead, I just glare. He must see the war I’m fighting because his lips curl upward.
Damn that cocky, villain’s grin of his. He climbs onto the bed and kneels between my legs, spreading me wider with the pressure of his hands on my knees.
It’s not like I can fight him with my ankles tied, but I’m not completely sure I want to resist what he has planned next.
Heat pulses low in my belly. I can’t stop it, can’t hide it, can’t pretend I don’t ache for him when he lowers himself and traces his tongue along my inner thigh, slow, hungry, like he’s got all the time in the world to take me apart and no intention of letting me put myself back together.
“Stop, dammit,” I gasp.
He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.
“Can’t you just get to the point of why you’re here so I can get back to my life?”
He grins, hungrily. “We have time.”
His mouth finds my clit, and all the air rushes out of me in one broken sound. My hips jerk against his mouth, my body desperate for more even as my brain is screaming danger, danger, you stupid woman, don’t let him win. But my body doesn’t listen.
His tongue circles, flicks, presses. The man is an arrogant, beautiful menace and the devil himself between my thighs.
I want to curse him. I want to push him away, but the second he sucks me deep and hard, my back arches and it’s only my restraints that keep me pinned to the bed.
“Cipher,” I gasp, the word a curse, a plea, and a damn confession all rolled into one man’s name.
He pulls back. His lips are wet with my juices and his green eyes burning. “What do you want, Harlow? Tell me.”
I shake my head, stubborn to the end. “Not a chance in hell.”
He grins, wicked as sin, and slides two fingers deep inside me. My whole body jolts.
I raise my hips and immediately counter my words. I can’t control my body.
His dark chuckle sends a wash of chills through me. He’s the devil I can’t refuse and the son-of-a-bitch knows it.
“Your body knows the truth, even if your pretty mouth can’t say it.
” He moves up my body and presses his weight over the top of me.
My eyes flutter closed and for a couple of seconds I let myself dream of this being real.
He leans in close and presses his lips to the shell of my ear.
“You’re mine, hellcat. Always were.” His breath is hot against my ear.
Tears sting my eyes. Not from pain, not even close. He’s not hurting me in the slightest. Not physically anyway. My heart is a totally different subject, though.
I fight against the tears, but the shame of wanting him so badly scares me and it’s hard to keep them from falling into the desire to give in to his demands. If I beg him now, it’ll be the end of every last defense I ever built to survive the hurt he left me with.
But he’s relentless. I pant, my skin tingling as the heat he stirs to life inside me swirls into life.
He moves back down my body and returns to torturing my pussy with his hungry mouth.
His tongue, his fingers, his words—all of him, everywhere. He murmurs sweet words to himself as he licks my seam.
He shoulders me open and sucks my clit between his warm lips, causing me to release a soul-deep scream into my dimly lit bedroom.
“Do you want to come for me, my beautiful cherry blossom?”
He spreads my folds and licks me deeper. He pushes a finger into my greedy channel and finger fucks me hard and fast.
“You’re fucking irresistible.”
I rock my hips and rub my pussy against his greedy lips.
He takes me to the edge and then eases off. And then takes me right back to the edge of my climax only to ease off. My heart is dangerously close to giving out.
He dives back in, licking and sucking me with so much hunger I’m right back at the cusp of giving him all of me…and then the rat bastard pulls back, leaving me writhing, desperate, helpless.
I’m panting, blood roaring through my body and my skin on fire. My head comes off the bed and I shoot daggers at the man when he moves off the bed. His veined length hangs heavy between his muscled thighs.
“No. No! Get back here, you bastard, you can’t—”
He wipes his mouth, leaving behind a smirk.
“I have all night to get what I want. By morning, I’ll have the truth.
And you? You can curse me or come for me, but you’re not leaving this bed until I say so.
” His hand wraps around his cock, stroking it.
Jerking slowly, causing precum to drip from the swollen head, trickling over his fingers.
I whimper to feel those fingers on me and for another taste of him. Rage and lust and humiliation all battle in my chest, tangled up so tight I can barely breathe.
“So you’re gonna walk off now, just like you did on our wedding day?” I spit the words out before I can stop myself, and I know I hit the mark by the way he freezes.
He goes utterly and painfully still. His jaw works and there’s a shadow in his eyes. I want to take the words back the second they tumble out of my mouth, and yet I wish I could say them all over again, only harder. He deserves to feel the same pain he left me with.
He whispers, “I deserved that.” For a second, he looks wrecked. “But say what you want, beautiful. I’m here now. I’m not leaving you again.”
“What do you want?” I breathe out in frustration.
“What do you know about the Vultures MC, Veles Antonov and Euphoria? I want to know everything.”
My brows pull together with worried curiosity. “Why?” I ask hesitantly.
His expression turns tight. Shadows play over his face. A dark stubble darkens his jawline giving him a dangerous aura.
“Answer and I’ll let you come. I’ll give you a minute to think about it.”
He walks away, and I watch the play of muscle down his back, the scars, the tattoo at the nape of his neck, the unfair flex of his ass. I want to hate him. I want to love him. I want, I want, I want.
Frankly, I want to hurt him and love him at the same time. And doesn’t that make me a mess of a human being.
I slam my eyes shut, fighting the tears burning at the corners, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me break. There’s a hole inside me that’s only ever had one shape, and every time he comes close it aches like a phantom limb.
But I can’t give him what he wants. Not even if I wanted to—especially if I wanted to.
Because the truth he’s after isn’t something I can just hand over.
I have a job to do. The only reason I have any hope of getting Veles and his monsters off the street, is because someone on the inside is risking everything to help me build my case.
It wasn’t easy and frankly I didn't find her. She found me. Veles’ chemist, the one cooking up the batches of Euphoria, is my only genuine connection in the dark underworld of drug running.
It’s a world full of snakes and I promised if she helps me, I can get her out.
If I give Cipher what he wants—if I break and tell him everything—I could get her killed. And I can’t. Not even for him.
He returns after a while, carrying a tray with soup and a glass of cold water. He moves with a strange sort of gentleness, undoing the bindings around my ankles and helping me sit up. The air smells like broth and herbs and him—smoke, leather, that dark, expensive cologne he’s always worn.
He carefully feeds the can of vegetable soup I had in the pantry, one spoonful at a time, as if we’re not both naked and ruined and on the edge of a fight that could destroy us.
I watch the new scars scattered across his chest among the older ones that have faded to thin silver lines. I trace one with my eyes, remembering the man he was, the man I loved, the choices that shattered us.
“Why did you leave?” I ask, voice low, raw. I hate showing my weakness, but the knots in the pit of my stomach had not gone away in the three years since I found the note he left on my vanity.
He looks away. “You really want to do this now, Harlow?”
I tug on the cuffs. “Yes. I’m not going anywhere and neither are you,” I insist. “You walked out, Cipher. I want to know why. I deserve that much.”
He scrapes a hand over his face. Guilt flows off him in waves. He seems like he doesn’t want to talk about it. He scrubs a hand down his face and props his elbows on his knees and peers off into a far corner of the room like there’s someone’s ghost standing in the room.
“We only knew each other three months before I asked you to marry me. I never expected you to say yes.”