Chapter 16 Sloane #2
My stubborn exterior slips. There are times when I let myself bawl over the loss of Lex, sob until I’m sick, but I won’t break like that in front of him.
He will not see me that weak. Zeth huffs and does something unexpected: He carefully takes off his mask.
There’s a bed behind him. I can just about make it out as he tosses the mask onto it and his huge hands begin to work at the cufflinks at his wrists. “What… what are you doing?”
“You need to see,” he says curtly. The door’s still open behind me.
I should use it. Turn around and walk right back out of it.
But something about the caress of his dark gaze on my face roots me to the spot.
Since we met again forty-eight hours ago, our interactions have revolved around theft, threats, and dares, but now it feels like a barrier is coming down and something honest is about to happen.
That thought in itself is so confronting that I want to run and hide.
His suit jacket comes off, and he hangs it over the shadow of a high-backed chair beside him.
He then unbuttons his shirt, which strains against his shoulders, the material drawn tight over his arms as he bends them to free each fastener from the neck down.
Underneath his shirt, a black tank top hugs his torso, clinging to every ripped inch of him.
He looks like a goddamn UFC fighter. His skin is pale, ivory marked with splashes of black ink.
He looks up at me from under his drawn eyebrows and I feel the need to wipe my slick palms against my dress.
Hot damn. I hate him, but his larger-than-life presence, his magnetism, the way he looks at me like he’s already inside me… he slays me.
Moving swiftly, he rips the tank top from his body, tearing it over his head to reveal a wall of muscle that flexes, each individual part of him working together as he moves.
There are four or five small tattoos across his chest, aside from the ones marking his arms, but they’re tough to make out.
A huge fleur-de-lis rides just above his hip, though—that one is easy enough to make out, along with the eagle over his left pec, its wings outstretched.
Script writing chains his neck, elaborate wording I can’t quite discern.
He steps forward, and I step back, holding my breath.
I’m hovering in the doorway now, and Zeth’s movement has brought him into the light, but only halfway.
The front of his body—his chest, his defined stomach, the deeply cut V that slices over his hipbones and disappears down below his belt—is bathed in light from the hallway. The rest of him is cast in shadows.
“This,” he says, pointing to his abdomen, “is where I was stabbed the first time.” I see the bruised color of the scar he’s pointing to, and my body remembers.
It remembers his body. If I closed my eyes, I would know what that scar feels like.
I’ve relived touching it so many times when I’m on my own in the dark.
My fingers tingle with the echo of the memory, how it feels rigid and tight.
“These two were the second time,” he says, trailing his own hand down over his skin.
The scars aren’t neat and tidy like the first one; they’re jagged-edged and angry-looking, two inches long and almost purple.
They weren’t stitched properly. It’s typical that he shows me this and my inner monologue, ever the professional, critiques the handiwork of whoever saw to saving his life. I would have done a much better job.
“And this is where I got shot.” He angles himself so that his upper body moves farther into the light, and I see the red, swollen wound a couple of inches below his collarbone.
So close to puncturing his lung. Another inch and it would have caused some serious, maybe irreparable damage. The wound is damned fresh.
Call it professional curiosity. I have to know. “When did that happen? Why?”
Zeth takes my hand and draws me forward.
My feet try to stay glued to the spot, but the rest of my body sinks toward him like it’s been inevitable this whole time.
He places my hand over his bullet wound, staring me in the eye.
His skin is searing hot, so hot it feels like my hand is on fire.
“’Bout three weeks ago,” he says softly.
“And it happened because the guy I was sent to kill didn’t feel like going quietly. ”
Fuck. I try to pull my hand away, but he clasps hold of it tight, pinning it to his skin. I can’t go anywhere.
“This is my world. People get shanked and shot here on a regular basis. It’s dark. It’s scary. People die. If your sister has been sucked into this world, do you think she’s survived it?”
Tears well in my eyes. I want to hit him.
I want to smash my fist into his face so hard I feel bones break—his or mine, it doesn’t really matter.
I’m so enraged that I do lash out, but with my open palm.
I slap him as hard as I can, and his face snaps to the side.
My hand stings like a bitch. When Zeth’s head rolls back to face me, a slow and considered movement, I’ve started panicking.
A bead of blood pearls on his lower lip where I’ve split his skin.
My heart hiccups, already well aware that I’ve made a stupid move. A really, really stupid move.
“Thought you didn’t want to play, Sloane,” he growls.
Still holding on to my hand, he starts to back into the room, pulling me with him.
My heart rate soars. I tug back against him, but he doesn’t let go.
He moves, bending and picking me up so fast I don’t have time to scream.
In three long strides, he closes the distance between the door and the bed and dumps me onto it, still picking me over with those almost-black eyes.
“I swear to God, if you rape me, I’ll kill you,” I spit.
Zeth makes a feral snarl in the back of his throat, wild and dangerous. “I don’t force women, Sloane. If we have sex, it’ll be because you want to.”
“Is that why you’ve just thrown me onto this bed?”
“I threw you onto the bed because you hit me, and that was very bad of you. But I’ve decided to make you a deal.”
I eye the doorway. It’s only ten feet away, but I won’t make it without his tackling me. “What do you mean, a deal?”
He crouches down beside the bed, and I’m transported back to the hotel room again.
But this time I see the inquisitive, knowing look on his face.
His powerful jawline puts most men to shame.
Coupled with the other unique elements that make up his face—dark eyebrows, dimpled chin, pouting lips, a cheekbone structure most women would die for—he is the most beautiful human being I have ever seen.
It’s not his looks that freeze my limbs to stone, though.
It’s the way he looks at me, like for this split second I am the sole focus of his entire world.
“I’m going to ask you two questions,” he says carefully. “And then you can stay here and do what I tell you to do, or you can leave. You can go home and forget all about this, and me, and what you’ve seen here tonight. It’ll be your choice.”
Seems like a no-brainer. I don’t think he’s lying to me. He will let me walk right on out of here. I see it in his eyes. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he says. A thrill of nerves tingles through me when he rises and sits on the edge of the bed. He leans over and places his left hand beside my head, supporting his weight so that he hovers above me. “Have you fucked anyone since me?”
What the hell kind of question is that? He waits for my answer while I feign anger over the indignity of the question. He doesn’t seem to care that he’s pissed me off. He just waits. Fine. I have no reason to lie to him. “No. I haven’t had sex with anyone since you.”
Zeth’s only reaction to this is a crinkling at the corner of his eyes when he narrows them at me. “Good. Thank you. And now answer me this…”
I hold my breath. This is going to be messed up, I just know it.
“Back when we first met, I told you that you had to own me or I would own you. You’ve been thinking about what that would be like ever since then.”
“No. I haven’t.” My voice shakes so bad I sound like a terrified little girl. Zeth tuts.
“You did so well just now when you told me the truth. Don’t ruin it, Sloane.
And, anyway, that wasn’t my question. I already know that’s true.
” He lowers himself as he speaks, until his face is an inch away from mine.
He tips his head to the side and dips lower still, buzzing his nose along the side of my jaw, inhaling slowly and then exhaling.
His hot breath sends a shiver through my body so powerful that I have to lock my muscles to stop it.
“You haven’t been able to get me out of your head.
You think about me all the time, wondering who I am.
Where I am. What I’m doing. Who I’m fucking.
” He breathes that last word directly into my ear, and my legs clamp together.
“At night, when you’re alone, when you touch yourself, I’m the one you’re wet for.
And this whole time you’ve been wondering.
Wondering what it would have been like to have me own you that night.
What I would have done to you. How I would have made you mine.
So my last question for you, Sloane, is this: Are you strong enough to admit that this is what you want? Are you brave enough to find out?”
I am stripped to the bone. It’s like Zeth has somehow found a way inside my mind and read all of my most personal thoughts.
He has no way of knowing those things about me, but he says them with such an unequivocal certainty that I know he believes it’s true.
And it is. Fuck. I close my eyes, trying to breathe through the panic.
Panic due to Zeth hovering over me, pure sex and malice wrapped up in one blisteringly hot, tattooed package.
“I—I do not want that, Zeth.”
If he’s disappointed, he shows no sign. He sits back, giving me some space. “Fair enough. It’s been a very pleasant visit, then, Sloane. But if that’s the case, then I think it’s time you were going.”
I sit up, watching him. He’s serious. He’s going to let me go.
I slowly swing my legs from the bed, tensing, ready, just in case it’s some kind of trick.
He stands and picks up his dress shirt, slipping his arms back through the sleeves.
It hangs open as he collects his cuff links from a dark, anonymous piece of furniture.
The outline of him, the tattoos, the face, the open shirt…
he’s earned the animalistic and deeply sexual way that he moves.
It’s not an attitude. I can tell that already. It’s just who he is.
“Well?” he asks.
“What…” I can’t wrestle the words out. I hate that I’m even thinking them. “What will you do when I leave?”
Zeth walks back to the bed, comes to stand right in front of me.
My eyes are level with his belly button, which is just about goddamn perfect.
How the hell does a man have a perfect belly button?
He curls his index finger and tucks it under my chin, lifting my face so that our eyes meet across the length of his torso.
“I’m going to go out there and drink some champagne, and then I’m going to find someone who wants to play. ”
“Play?”
“Yeah. Not fucking chess, Sloane. Someone who wants me to fuck them until they can’t see straight.
Someone who’ll let me sink my tongue into their pussy.
Someone who’ll let me taste them. Someone who’ll let me restrain them and scare the living shit out of them.
Someone who likes that. I was hoping it was going to be you tonight, but… ”
I swallow.
I swallow again. My throat feels like I’ve inhaled the fucking Sahara Desert. I have to get out of here before I do something stupid. I stand up so quickly, Zeth has to step back to avoid injury. “I—I have work tomorrow. I—” I hurry to the door, fighting for… what? The strength to leave?
“Ahem.”
He’s washed in pale yellow light when I turn around.
“I think you’re forgetting something.” He bends and picks up my medical bag, holding it out in front of him.
He smirks when he sees the look on my face.
“Y’know… you can stay if you want to, Sloane.
You don’t need to say the words. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re strong.”
I walk back to him, staring him straight in the eye. I can’t… I can’t do this. This isn’t who I am. Is it? Do I even know who I am? He offers me the bag, arching an eyebrow at me. “What’s it gonna be, brave girl? You want the bag… or do you want me?”
He said I didn’t have to say the words. He said it didn’t make me weak.
But maybe… God, maybe, just for a second I want to be weak.
I’ve been strong for the past two years.
I was strong when Lexi was taken. I was strong when I gave up my virginity in order to find her.
I was strong when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to save her.
I am so fucking sick of being strong. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, already regretting what I’m about to do.
I shift around him and sink down onto the edge of the bed.
Zeth’s low voice breaks the silence—a rich, electrifying sound.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”