Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ANNA
Iwoke up to a haze of confusion and a distinct heat brushing the side of my body. What on earth am I lying on?
My breath stalled as the heat moved. Up and down. Hard muscles cloaked in soft cotton.
I was naked. Wrapped around him while he was fully dressed. The side of my cheek on his chest heated with shame. His palm on my ass burned like hot coal. Memories from the night before did nothing to cool them.
He was a master of his game. He’d ensnared me in a strange bubble where only he and I seemed to exist. Fear, confusion, and agony ripped me apart in three ways. Somewhere in the middle, I was stretched beyond my limit. I was one tick away from shattering into pieces.
Was that the reason he’d offered that loco deal? He’d known my resistance would wear off? My stomach twisted into tight little knots. I had to create distance between us. But my hand curled over his shirt. Popped two buttons and sought the star behind it.
His breathing was calm. Soft. He was still sleeping. I popped another button but didn’t get to the fourth before his hand captured mine. Pressed it down to his chest.
What was he hiding? Hesitantly, I lifted my face, but his eyes remained closed.
I stared at him, trying to figure out what was going on behind what he was showing me.
Sitting up, I straddled him. His hand followed my ass as if it were metal to my magnet.
I wiggled, trying to get my hand released.
His grip might as well have been a handcuff.
I stilled and settled my gaze on him. Why did it feel like he saw right through me, even with his eyes closed?
“Are you scarred?”
It was like talking to a concrete wall.
“Burned?”
He wasn’t fooling me. I knew he was awake. The growing erection below me was proof enough of it.
“How about weapons?” His eyes flickered open. So lazily that it flushed my skin with heat.
His gaze was half-lidded as he licked his lips. It settled in every part of my body. When he spoke, his voice was rough, like fresh sandpaper out of the box. “What weapons?”
I trailed my free hand down his chest. Hard. Warm. A heat pressed between my legs. “Maybe you’re hiding some kind of weapon.” I bit my lip. “Under your clothes.”
“I am.”
I blinked.
“You’re sitting on it.”
His erection poked as evidence. My hips rolled on instinct. When a tortured groan climbed from his chest, it sent electric heat to my core. ?Dios mío! His cum was still on my thighs.
“I like waking up with you.” His admission settled into an uncomfortable itch.
I wanted to tell him he should do it more.
But I didn’t. Instead, I glared at my captured wrist. His fingers were probably catching on to the rhythm of my insane pulse beat.
The night before, he’d told me he was going to fuck me slow.
But it had felt like something more. Something that made my heart clench.
Made me want to look away because I was terrified of drowning in his games.
Why was he doing this to me? Why was he making me feel?
His grip relaxed for a second, and I yanked my hand away.
A button ripped off his shirt, spiraling mid-air before falling innocently onto the black silk sheets.
My throat went dry. Unshed tears collected at the edges of my eyes.
Something was malfunctioning inside me. I was beginning to want him.
When he was the last man I should have wanted.
While I hovered between animosity and craving, my hips made a decision and rocked.
“I hate you.” At least that should be said.
“I know.”
I couldn’t read his tone. But he looked both elated and depressed.
They warred with each other, and my breath halted.
But he shut me off from his thoughts, and his eyes were again the color of the ocean.
It didn’t matter what he was thinking. It didn’t matter why a man like him would agree to a deal with his end date.
I wasn’t his therapist. Yet somehow it felt like someone put out my favorite dish and yanked it under my nose before I could taste it.
I distracted myself by taking his erection out of his pants.
It disturbed me that he was always fully dressed while I wasn’t wearing a stitch.
Idiota. His erection was so hot and heavy in my hands that it felt as if he’d already thrust in.
I squeezed him between my hands. Pumped him up and down.
“Anna,” my name was a muffled groan falling from his lips.
It was half despair and half a command. Satisfaction pooled inside me.
I liked that I could test his control. I liked that I worked him up just like he did to me.
If I were falling, I wanted him to fall with me.
I circled his head with my thumb. Collecting pre-cum, spreading it over the tip, rubbing it in agonizingly slowly.
“Fuck.” His other hand whipped from underneath his pillow and grasped my thigh. “It’s not a fucking toy to play with. Now put your pussy to it before I shoot it into your mouth.”
I glared. He moved. Sat up in one go. I panicked.
Lifted my hips and sank into him, inch by thick inch.
It still felt like he was splitting my insides open.
His head dropped onto my shoulder. He buried his groan in the curve of my neck.
Goosebumps spread through my skin, collecting into heat right between my thighs.
I rocked my hips. Testing and trying out the ride.
His hand gripped my thigh. Haltering me. “Give me a minute.”
For what? He took a shaky breath and exhaled slowly. The heat of his breath coated down my neck, sending goosebumps trailing from my crown to my toes.
I resented what he did to my body. I wanted him out of control.
I wanted him to feel what I felt with just one look thrown my way.
I started to rock. He reached for my hips with a groan.
But I was too wild. He was too far gone.
I spread my thighs wide. With my hands flat on the mattress, back arched and ass spread, I gave it my all.
Chaotic words fell from him. Italian. None of it made any sense.
His hand twisted in my hair. Coiling and yanking it, burning my scalp with the sting of it.
I needed him to lose control. I needed him to come before me.
He fought hard. Lifted his head off my shoulder and tried to hold back.
But he miscalculated the sight of my breasts bouncing before him.
With a feral moan, he dipped his head and bit into one.
The sharp snap of pleasure that slid to my core made me almost lose the battle.
But he was falling. I rode him faster. Hands reaching further to brace myself.
The edge of my fingers grazed something hard.
For a split second, I went stone-cold. The shape was familiar.
Last time I’d panicked. This time, I was prepared.
I traced the outline. The hard metal. The coldness of it.
Did he always sleep with a gun tucked under his pillow, or was this a one-time thing?
My hand curled around it. Testing it. Something cracked in my chest. Even in sleep, he was armed.
There was something so broken about it that it came for the air in my lungs.
A low moan worked from his throat. His hands wrapped around my ass as he bucked hard against me.
He was at his weakest. With a violent gasp, he surrendered his control, jerking and shooting his cum inside me while I held a weapon next to him.
My hand slipped off it. I sought his skin to bury the coldness I’d found underneath his pillow.
He fell back onto the pillow with a groan. I stared at that cryptic man. I followed the beat of his rapidly moving chest with my trembling palms. He could have easily offed me a thousand times. Instead, he was training me to end him.
He gripped my waist and pulled me off him.
I whimpered. Too sensitive and too turned on.
And so confused. He pulled me forward and yanked me up onto his face.
He didn’t give me time to recover or to refuse him.
The denial of the night before washed away into a gasp as he sucked my swollen clit into his mouth.
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. He took away the ability of both when he tongue-fucked me, hands gripping my hips, pressing me down onto his lips.
I succumbed far too soon, convulsing and soaking him with my pleasure.
He sucked all my energy out and I fell boneless to the headboard.
He took pity on me and rolled me over to my back.
There was something about the way he looked at me.
Like he knew me better than I knew myself.
It unsettled me. Set me on edge and made me shy at the same time.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead. That burned hotter than sex.
He shifted reluctantly to the edge of the bed.
Head bent low, arms on his knees, he sat in quiet silence with his back to me.
We sat like that for a long time. He breathed a sigh of melancholy that I felt in my chest. Then he got to his feet and walked away.
I stared at his disappearing back, ruffled white shirt hiding something he refused to reveal. “Is it a map?”
He stiffened.
My heart raced. I sat up in a rush. “Is it a roadmap?” He didn’t answer, but he didn’t move away either.
“To what, then? What’s so precious to hide from me?
” I crawled closer to him. Staring through his white shirt.
My fingers snapped as a realization dropped.
“A treasure map? That’s it, isn’t it? To your precious assets? ”
“Asset,” he corrected.
I knew it. Of course, he’d have his bank account or something tattooed to his skin.
The oak-framed mirror had a dent in it. Like everything else in the house, it had to have been sourced from Spain.
From homes with stories, rather than a designer's paradise with glitz. I wondered if that was Daria’s style in general.
If every interior she did was Spanish. But the little I’d seen of her home the last time had told a different story.
Leaning closer, I focused on my eye, mascara in hand. It trembled when I caught the figure standing in the reflection. My throat went dry as if he’d pushed a button to command my body. Every breath, every shudder, every moan. They all folded for this man so effortlessly.
He was back to disappearing. Two nights and three days had passed. I’d not seen him for all of it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” His tone sent a sizzle down my spine.
The man was the kind of beautiful that hurt.
So exquisite, but oh so unreachable because even as he stood just a few feet away from me, there was an invisible barrier.
He might as well have put up bricks and mortar because it felt like it.
His disinterested stare, the cold eyes. The dry tone in his voice.
My hand shook under the weight of his attention. I put the offending brush down on the dresser. Stared at it and commanded it to work. Then, with a slow inhale and a steady hand, I picked it up and spoke dangerous words, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Would you like a set of limbs added to that ripped-out heart?”
I gulped. Stared at him. “Dios mío.” He wasn’t joking. “I can’t wait to kill you,” I muttered, half under my breath.
“Stop it.”
I glared at him. “Qué? It’s not funny when someone wants you dead?”
“Quite the contrary,” he drawled. “I might get off at the thought of it.”
His game worked. Of course it did. My gaze dropped like lead to his crotch. What he’d done to me… what I’d done to him… the sudden rush of heat in my cheeks put my powder blush to shame.
I yanked my gaze away from his bulging pants. He looked bored. I wasn’t fooled. “At least you’ll die with a hard-on.”
A reluctant smile pulled at his lips. My heart skipped a beat.
“Besides…” I gave up on the mascara and dropped it onto the tray. No mascara today. “I’m a patient girl. I can wait.”
His amusement dropped in a second. I had wanted a reaction.
I got it. The very air in the room stilled.
Something ugly stole its place. His gaze dropped to the floor, hands curling into his pockets.
He inhaled slowly, but so deeply that his chest moved with it.
There was something so vulnerable about him that it was almost a tangible ache.
I wanted to snatch those hurtful words back into my vile mouth. The last thing on my mind was Joel. But because I knew he was out of his reach and my doubts brought up a resentment I couldn’t control, I wanted to abolish it by pushing him. To reach for a victory that was tasting bitter.
I stared at the floor where my feet drew circle after circle. I wanted to tell him I hadn’t meant any of it. Joel was the last man on my mind. The only man on my mind… was him.
His voice came my way, and something in it cracked my chest. “Do what makes you happy.”
I rose to my feet and turned around. But the doorway was empty of him.
I’d wanted to win. So why did it feel like we’d both lost?