Chapter 2 #2
“Tell me what you think I look like,” he says, his voice a resonating growl. He lets go of my hand, and I have to lean forward to reach him properly. I shimmy closer, tucking my legs under my butt so I can balance properly, and then I raise my other hand to his face, too.
His hair is short, a little stiff from his styling product.
His facial features are strong. Pronounced.
Jaw’s a little square, nose mostly straight, apart from a slightly flattened part near the ridge of his brow.
His eyelashes are surprisingly long, and his lips…
I was right. His lips are full and way softer than any guy’s lips have a right to be.
Especially a guy with a voice like his. From the tingling pads of my fingers, I can sense this guy has the face of an angel.
A barbaric one—maybe like one of those guys who did a lot of smiting back in Babylon.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“You’re probably very attractive,” I admit.
He grunts. “And what about the rest of me?”
He applies a little pressure to my forearms so that they travel down to his chest, where my fingers meet with smooth skin and hard-packed, rippling muscle.
His pecs twitch as my hands brush lightly over them, and then downward.
I come across three horizontal ridges in his skin that shouldn’t be there, to the right of his abs spaced a couple of inches apart, and my fingers draw circles over them, trying to tease their story from them, trying to figure out where they came from.
There’s an untold history of violence here, written in the planes of his formidable body.
He twitches a little as I explore him, probing with a featherlight touch until I’ve traced my way across his washboard stomach and up over his obliques.
He sucks in a sharp breath and tenses when I do that, and I smile a little.
I actually smile. This guy’s ticklish. He doesn’t laugh or tell me not to touch him there, but his body tightens further still when I go over the area one more time to test the theory.
I move up to his shoulders, which are powerful and strong, and I lace my arms around the back of his neck, feeling over his shoulder blades.
He’s huge, but I’m not really afraid of him.
Of course I should be, yes, but I’m not.
The Valium has flattened out my fear, and besides, the way I’d imagined this, the guy was going to come in here and want to lay his hands on me.
He’d poke and prod and examine every inch of me, and he’d most definitely want to see what he was paying for.
So far, this guy has touched me sparingly, and that was on the hand.
“Well?” he asks.
“Where did the scars come from?”
“I was stabbed.” He just comes right out and says it. Wow.
“Did you nearly die?”
“Yes.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
I let my hands fall from his shoulders and find the scars again, one, two, three of them.
They feel jagged and terrible under my fingers.
“What happened to the person who did this to you?” I almost don’t want to ask.
Mystery Man’s been unnervingly candid since we began this interaction five minutes ago, and I’m afraid his answer will finally put the fear of God into me.
“He got what was coming to him,” he says softly. The bedsheets rustle when he moves, his stomach muscles contracting under my hands. When he touches my hair, tangling his fingers into it, I’m still trying to decide whether he means he killed whoever did that to him.
“I’m very particular about what I want. Do what I ask without question and this will go nicely for both of us, okay?” he breathes.
A shot of adrenaline finally lights up my nerve endings—an appropriate reaction to my situation.
What the hell have I gotten myself into here?
Valium or no Valium, I know that sounded like a threat.
I’m in way over my head, but there’s little I can do about it.
Besides. Alexis. Always Alexis. “I can do that,” I whisper.
“Good. Lie on your back.”
I let go of him, and suddenly I feel like I’m afloat in the middle of an ocean, drowning, with no way of saving myself.
The smart part of my brain—the part still focused on self-preservation—screams that I should get the hell out of here, and for the first time the wrath of Eli almost isn’t enough to keep me pinned to the bed.
But the thought of finding Alexis is. My muscles are jumping, ready to explode into action, when the guy gently takes hold of my right ankle.
“Did you touch yourself today?”
“Do… do you mean—” I’m no fool. I know what he means.
“Have you made yourself come today? Have you played with your pussy?”
Heat flares in my cheeks. No one has ever asked me that before. “No. No, I—I haven’t,” I stammer.
“Good. Then you’ll taste so much sweeter.
” Rather than hooking his fingers under the waistband of my panties and pulling them down, he draws them to one side.
My legs lock up when his hot breath skims over my exposed flesh.
What am I supposed to be doing with my hands?
This is untrodden ground for me in a very big way.
When a guy gives you head, it’s usually because he’s done something very, very bad and needs to make up for it. At least, that’s what Pippa says.
“Do you want me to lick you?” His voice is even deeper now, laden with the promise of sex.
“I want whatever you want,” I gasp. That’s what he’s paying for, after all. That’s what’s going to help me get Lex back. He grips me hard around the top of my leg, squeezing until I cry out.
“We’re not playing that game. Own me, or I’ll own you. And trust me… you don’t want that.”
Shit. “Yes! I want you to lick me.”
He makes a satisfied grunt and moves, pushing his way between my legs.
When his tongue darts out and laps at me, my leg muscles tense up.
It feels hot and… and good. What the holy hell?
I shouldn’t be reacting like this. Embarrassment prickles at my cheeks.
What sort of person am I, enjoying a complete stranger giving me head?
And under these circumstances? I can’t help it, though.
From head to toe, my body feels like it’s being caressed.
His tongue moves expertly, applying a subtle pressure to my clit, stroking up and down in a rhythmic pattern that sends waves of heat crashing through me. I’m on the precipice of letting go, the tension in my arms and legs relaxing, when he stops lapping and sucks.
“Fuck!”
He doesn’t stop. He growls when I push back against him, rocking into his mouth shamelessly.
I’ve never felt anything like this before.
It feels… incredible. I’m panting and moaning like an animal when he pulls away, running his hands from the very tops of my knees, down the insides of my thighs to my panties. He rips them off in one swift motion.
“How badly do you want me to fuck you?”
I’m not here because I want to fuck him. It’s my job to make him think I do, yet the lines between acting and the truth are so blurred when I murmur, “Really badly. I want you really bad.”
“Spread your legs,” he commands. I spread them, wondering what’s coming next.
The room is like a black void, so dark I can’t even make out the shadow of him as he moves around the bed.
I hear a zip being undone and then the rattle of metal, like a buckle being unfastened.
Sucking my bottom lip into my mouth, I wait for him to do whatever he’s about to do, piqued with worrying curiosity.
He restrains my left leg first, strapping something wide and tight around it and then affixing it to the bed.
My right leg is next, and then he carefully does the same to my wrists.
I’m star-fished on the bed and completely vulnerable.
His restraints aren’t the kind for show.
They’re the kind made to stop people from getting away, and I’m sure as hell not going anywhere.
Six months ago, I might have said a prayer.
Now, I whimper, half from fear, half from anticipation.
He climbs up onto the bed, kneeling at my side, his breath playing across me again. I tense when something cold and hard presses against my stomach. “Are you still a brave girl?”
“Yes,” I exhale.
He doesn’t tell me what he’s going to do. The cool, sharp object pressing into my skin travels slowly upward until it’s poised directly under my breasts. I gasp like a fish out of water, trying to keep still, because I know what he’s holding now: It’s a knife. A really fucking sharp one to boot.
He lifts my bra by the underwire in the middle, and then in a single, clean sweep, it springs apart, freeing my breasts.
He cut through my bra? Exposed. Terrified.
Exhilarated. Confused. I can’t fucking think straight.
My Mystery Man straddles me, and the material of his pants, rough, slides against my sides.
He lays the flat, cool edge of his knife against my right nipple, sending a bolt of panic through me.
“Don’t move,” he whispers. I don’t. I am the stillest still thing ever.
He leans down and touches me, his hand finally finding my breast. “You’re so fucking perfect,” he breathes.
“So well behaved.” And then his mouth is on my nipple, licking and sucking, hotter than anything I’ve ever felt before.
My back arches up off the bed, and he chuckles. “You want me inside you?”
“Yes.”
“You sure? Be careful what you wish for.”
I wish for death on a daily basis. I wish for pain and suffering and blood and misery upon the heads of those who took my sister.
Wishing for this feels just as dangerous but somehow safer than all that at the same time.
He wanted me to own him, and despite the fact that he’s tied me up now, I still think that’s what he wants.
I brace, hoping this is the right thing, and I demand, “Do it. Fuck me now. Don’t make me wait. ”