So I lean over, using my core strength to hold me as I reach out. The clouds part and reveal his face, and my chest collapses. Because in the moonlight, in beautiful repose, is the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. He has ditched the beard in the photographs in favour of stubble, and his lashes fan shadows onto his cheekbones.
It’s… It can’t be. I never saw his face. This is just my overactive imagination taunting me with what I most want in the world.
He’s the man from the masquerade.
No.
Not possible. He was taller. I would have recognised him in the photo, wouldn’t I? But the beard…
I catch a scent that evokes the memory of being in that man’s arms, dancing. I lean closer, my knife hovering by his throat and breathe him in. Delicious. I’m not a fancy perfumer, so I don’t know what the component parts are, but he smells exactly as a man should. Warm, a hint of sweat, something earthy and intrinsically male.
He smells exactly like the man from the masquerade ball.
I close my eyes.
I inhale the scent of him again. It surrounds me and I imagine I can hear his heartbeat above the thud of mine.
I’m hesitating. I never hesitate.
But I can’t do this. I can’t kill the man who was everything to me that night. I’ll have to leave—
Pain shoots through my wrist and neck.
My eyes fly open to find Ian’s green gaze boring into me. His hands are clamps on my flesh.
“You’re here,” he hisses as his grip tightens further and I flail. I fall onto him, unable to hold myself up through the agony, and simultaneously reach for my gun.
I’ve screwed up. He’s going to choke me to death in the next few seconds unless I take his life first.
Before I do more than close my fingers over the cold metal of the pistol, I’m under him.
He releases my neck and I suck in air as best I can, given the intense weight of his body pressing me into the mattress. I realise, as he brings my hands together with ruthless efficiency, pinning them with one of his, that I’m going to die. When he reaches for his bedside cabinet, I thrash, and kick, and yank so hard at my arms I’m surprised I don’t dislocate something.
But it’s no use. Within seconds there is rope around my wrists and they’re forced above my head. My thighs are held down with his, and it’s the work of a moment before first one ankle then the other is captured and bound, each tugged out to the side, my legs spread.
Fuck.
When his weight lifts off, a sob escapes me.
I stare up at him.
His arm darts out and I try to shield myself from the blow, tugging at my bindings helplessly and turning my face away as I’m blinded.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
I don’t want to see what’s coming.
“Open your eyes.” His voice is deceptively calm, but he’s breathing hard.
I blink and blink against the light from the bedside lamp. Ian Abernathy is a dark shadow over me.
Gradually my pupils adjust and I see him, my eyes going right to his face, the line of his jaw that I examined that night. Then, my gaze slips lower.
He’s gloriously naked. The hair on his chest and arms that I saw a thousand years—a few minutes—ago, is echoed by a smattering of hair over his thighs and a thicket between his legs. And yeah, I look, because honestly I’m not going to survive this and if Ian Abernathy’s cock is the last thing I see, well, there’re worse views. It’s big, and chubby. Not erect, but not… Not erect either.
My mouth goes dry.
The most likely scenario here is that he shoots me point-blank. Maybe drags me outside by the hair first, to avoid making a mess of his bed. But there are obviously other things he could do with a girl tied up on his bed, and fear tingles down my limbs.
