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My breath caught.
I couldn’t stop the clench inside me. The sinful little flush. The awful, awful acknowledgement that the girl I’d been before…the nice girl…the kind, normal girl who didn’t punch rapists in the nose and didn’t trade her body for a friend’s life hadn’t died back there in the storm.
Whoever stood in her place, I didn’t know her.
But I did know she wasn’t nice.
She was dangerous and dirty and…
Stop it.
You’re still you.
Just…changed.
He smiled tightly. “By the way, while we’re on the topic of being used…” With speed too fast to stop, his hand lashed out and grabbed at the knot in my towel. With a fierce yank, he tore it off me, leaving me naked and shivering. “You used me at dinner. You’re right about that. You used me as if I were some vibrator stored away in your nightstand.”
His chin tipped down, darkening his eyes even more. “I was prepared to treat you like my wife tonight. The thought of another hurting you? Watching someone else put their hands on you? Fuck.” His fists balled, and his entire body flinched as if he suffered honest-to-God pain. “I can’t get the pictures out of my head. Him on top of you. You blank-eyed.” He shivered. “I thought you’d broken. I feared you’d snapped and left me. But…I should’ve known you were so fucking strong. So unbelievably, deliciously strong, and so…I’m going to treat you exactly as you expect to be treated. I will do it because I know you’ll curse me and hate me, and if those are the only two emotions I can earn from you, then…fine. I’ll take them because fuck knows you won’t give me anything else.”
“What are you saying?” I cupped my breasts, my entire nervous system on high alert.
Scalding heat simmered in my belly, catching fire to all my other cells.
Ever since we met.
Every second since we noticed each other, I’d been at the mercy of this…this unwanted affliction. He was a virus overtaking my system. An insidious illness turning my very wants and needs against me.
If I didn’t find a cure soon, I would die—storm or no storm, island or no island.
“I’m saying that if you want to be my slave so badly…” He exhaled heavily. “If you want to keep that line drawn in the sand between us? So be it.” Striding to the wardrobe, he yanked it open and grabbed the tie he’d been wearing at the nightclub.
The faint whiff of his woodsy, citrusy cologne from that night drugged me instantly.
Memories of the way our eyes had locked.
The way the stars had sung.
And fate had laughed.
I’d meant what I said in the shower.
He’d given me butterflies and every other winged stupid thing.
My eyes locked on his hands as he snapped the tie tight and gave me a dark, devilish look. “Stand by the four-poster. Hands up.”
Another gush of need flowed through me.
I tried to stop it.
I hated that I couldn’t.
His voice. His words. His body. His threats.
It made me a sick, sick person that everything about him terrified me and turned me the hell on. A trickle of moisture. A betrayal of everything I believed in.
I shifted my hips.
I tried to hide.
Too late.
His gaze dropped between my legs, his nostrils flaring. “Shit, y-you’re wet.”
“No, I—”
“Lie to me about that again, and I’ll throw you onto the carpet, here and now.”
Oh God.
The image.
The need.
His entire body trembled as he slowly lowered the tie and cocked his head. “Jesus Christ, how did I not see it?”
“See what?” My nose wrinkled, common sense pouring icy water on the flames in my blood. I looked down at my body, cursing the traitorous shimmer coating the inside of my thighs.
The spark between us threatened to explode.
This was different to when he’d drawn my blood in Victor’s trophy slaughterhouse. Different to when he’d spanked me by the pond and different to all the other moments where we’d done things to survive—both of us knowing full well there’d always been something lurking beneath our acting.
I couldn’t get wet if I wasn’t drawn to him, and he couldn’t get hard unless he wanted me.
That was the truth right there.
The only truth.
The one thing that condemned us because as much as I didn’t want to play this twisted game, I couldn’t deny I was complicit in it.
Marching into me, he grabbed a handful of my hair and held me tight. His eyes lit up with blinding silver. He was starving…starving for the very thing he kept asking for that I couldn’t deliver.
“It’s true. Fuck…I…” His fingers scalded; his body heat seared.
I swallowed hard as electricity crackled between us. His eyes fell to my lips.
For a moment, I feared he’d kiss me.
The one thing he never did.
I had a horrible suspicion of why that was.
Why we both stopped at that line.
A kiss was intense and intimate.
