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“I don’t know what you’re fucking playing at, but you need to stop before you get yourself or someone else killed,” he growls.
“Before I get myself killed?” I raise my voice. “I’m dead in less than a week. You know it. I know it. My father isn’t coming for me. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m dead anyway!”
I turn and run through the field back toward the warden’s house, but I’m no match for Smoke’s long legs.
He connects with my back, tackling me. The air goes whooshing out from my lungs as I fall face first into a mud puddle. Mud fills my nose. My mouth. My eyes. My throat.
I’m pulled up by my hair. I spit and cough brown sludge until it’s no longer standing in the way of breathing. I wipe my eyes with my forearm since my hands are covered in mud.
Smoke stands and yanks me up with him. He bends at the waist, his arm at the back of my knees like he’s going to lift me into his arms.
I punch at his chest. “Don’t fucking touc
h me!” Desperation and terror along with frustration fill my raspy scream.
“What did I tell you?” Smoke digs his fingers into my skin. “You’re mine to do with as I please. If I want to touch you I’ll god damned touch you.”
He grunts, picks me up, and carries me into the house, not stopping until we’re through the bedroom and in the bathroom. He sets me on my feet and holds me with one arm while he turns on the shower. He doesn’t wait for the water to run warm, tugging me under the cold spray while still fully clothed.
I shriek. My teeth chatter.
“Take off your clothes,” he demands.
Freezing under the spray, it takes a few beats for me to gather my nerve again, but when I do, I look up at him with all the contempt I can muster.
“No,” I say, shivering under the cold water. It eventually turns warm, but my shivering doesn’t stop. Just because I’m oppositional doesn’t mean I’m not fearful, and there’s nothing about Smoke’s hard glare telling me otherwise.
“Why don’t you just fucking listen?” Smoke seethes.
I roll my eyes. “Haven’t you figured that out by now? That’s not who I am. Not now. Not. EVER.” I stare straight into his dark villainous eyes.
He growls and lunges for me. I leap back, but there’s nowhere to go. I’m trapped between him and the shower wall. He steps behind me, tearing my clothes from my body until I’m completely naked, wearing nothing but mud and my insolence.
“Stop! No! Don’t!” I scream.
The water’s now steaming hot. He holds my naked body against him. I struggle and flail until the stinging heat of the water is all I feel. Against my will my aching bones and muscles sag in relief. I moan without thinking.
I let my forehead fall to the tile on the wall in front of me, the steaming water washing away the mud and grime, soaking into my sore muscles and warming my bones. I dig my nails into the grout and wish I could claw my way through this shower and out of this hole I’ve dug myself into.
I’m naked in front of this strange man for the second time, but I see it as more than just exposed skin. I feel vulnerable. Shaken.
Exposed inside and out.
“These few days? The rest of this week?” I start, without looking over my shoulder. “According to you and this Griff person it’s all the time I have left on this earth. I won’t run away again. Just…just don’t keep me cuffed to the bed or locked in a room.” It was an honesty he didn’t deserve, but with few options left, I have no other choice. “I could have called for help today, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
Smoke releases me and I hear the slap of his wet clothes against the tile as he undresses. “I don’t think you’ll do this because you know her, but I have to say it. Just in case. Please don’t hurt Zelda. I swear she doesn’t know anything. I didn’t tell her anything. She doesn’t deserve to get hurt or die because of me.”
I wait for Smoke to answer. When he doesn’t and I no longer hear him rustling around, I assume he’s left until I feel him. His skin against mine.
His nakedskin.
“You are concerned that I’ll hurt Zelda? A complete stranger to you?” Smoke asks, sounding perplexed. He reaches over my head and I flinch, relaxing again slightly when I realize he’s only reaching for the soap. “Why would you care?”
I tell him the truth. “Because, I can’t NOT care.”
Smoke pulls the soap out of the dish slowly then rubs the bar down my back and thighs. I push my body against the tile to put as much distance between us as possible, but he grunts and pulls me off the wall. He drags the bar of soap back up, sliding it across my wet ass cheek. The shower begins to smell like him. Like Irish soap. Clean and fresh.
The opposite of how I feel.
Dirty. Used. Trapped.
I’m still shivering, even under the scorching heat of the water.
“I’m not going to hurt Zelda,” Smoke says, taking me by surprise. “I wouldn’t.”
“But you’d hurt me?” I ask.
“That’s different,” he argues.
“How—”
“Enough!” he barks.
Smoke leans forward again to place the soap back on the dish mounted to the wall. His nose at my neck, his chest against my back. His entire body pressed against mine. He’s hard.
Everywhere.
I gasp and shut my eyes like I can make this all go away if I concentrate hard enough.
“You WILL be punished for that shit you just pulled, hellion.” Smoke says, rocking his hips so that his erection slides against my soapy ass. He feels warm. Like soft silk wrapped around hard steel as he drags his erection over my skin again and again.
I can barely hold myself up.
“Fuck you,” I seethe. I’m talking half to Smoke and half to my body who’s betraying me. My nipples are hard pebbles. I’m achingly wet between my thighs. It only infuriates me more.
“Is that what you want for your punishment, hellion? For me to fuck you?”
“No…no,” I stutter, but his words send a new kind of chill sputtering through me.
My clit throbs. I can’t think straight while he’s so close.
I don’t want this. I don’t want him.
“Liar,” Smoke accuses, brushing my long hair off my back and pressing his lips to the back of my neck. “I can smell how turned on you are.” His hand snakes around my waist, trailing down my flat stomach until they’re splayed across the crest of my thighs. “Almost as well as I can smell your fear.” He squeezes my flesh between his fingers. Hard. “I can’t decide which turns me on more.”
I freeze, my blood turns to ice.
“I…I…” I stutter. “You said you didn’t want me,” I say, recalling his words from the first night we slept in the same bed.
“I said no fucking thing. But even if I did. Don’t you know by now?” He breathes. “I’m a liar. Just. Like. You.” He licks the skin at the back of my neck, traveling up to my ear.
Desire pools low in my stomach. Fighting the feeling is as impossible as fighting off Smoke and winning.
I open my mouth and close my eyes in a silent moan, suppressing the need to rock back into him with all that I have.
“Are you trying to scare me?” I grate.
“Why?” he asks, nipping at my earlobe, dragging his teeth along the edge. “Are you afraid, hellion? Afraid of what I might do to you? Or afraid you might love it? Scream my name? Beg me for more?”
Yes.
“No,” I lie, staring at the tile in front of me. “You’re just toying with me. Trying to scare me. You just said that you’re a liar. This is a lie. A trick to screw with my head.”
“Does this feel like a lie to you?” He presses against me again, letting me feel every inch of his thick rigidness as it
