“Forty-eight hours.You need to make up your mind fully in that time.”
She’d just come against his mouth.If that didn’t say she’d made up her mind and was ready to fuck, what did?
“Because when my dick gets in you, I am not going to give you up.I will be possessive.I will be jealous.I will be a total bastard when it comes to you because you will bemine.” He reached out.Caught her hand.The engagement ring flashed.“I think you already are mine.I feel it in my bones.”But he let her go.
She sat up.Pulled the blouse down to cover the V between her legs.“You didn’t come.”
“No, I didn’t, though it was a damn near thing.Not like I want to come in my pants at this age.”Those incredible eyes of his shot blue fire at her.“I’ll come in you.The clock is ticking down on that.”
She reached out the hand that he’d just released.Her fingers pressed right over the top of his belt.“I could taste you.”He was clearly skilled at oral sex, and she’d never tried it.She should probably be up front about that lack of experience.“I’ve never gone down on a man, so you’ll have to show me what you like.”
A deep, hardsnarl.
Her eyes widened.
“Lily, I am trying not to fuck you into oblivion.But you seem determined to push…My control will only last so long.”An inhale.“Why no one else?You let them fuck your pussy but not your mouth?”
She flinched.Her hand dropped.
His hands curled around her shoulders.“I am a jealous bastard.Be warned on that.Why didn’t you put your mouth?—”
“Because the fucks were fast and in the dark.Because I didn’t show them my scars.”
He frowned.Glanced down at her.“You…kept your shirt on.When I was tasting you…you kept your shirt on.”
She had.She pulled the blouse lower.
“You stripped for me before.”
Yes, she was aware of what she’d done.“You think I don’t know that I’ve got issues?”
The faint lines near his eyes deepened.“You have me.Know that.Fuck the issues.”His hand flew out to curl around hers as she held the shirt as a cover.“You don’t want to be vulnerable.You don’t want to be weak.You don’t want to?—”
“I don’t want to explain to a lover that a murderer tried to cut me open, and in return, I nearly killed him.I was slitting his throat, in the process of cutting him from ear to ear with that stupid shiv, when thethreeguards finally hauled me off him.”There.Dark.Bitter.Twisted truth.
And Atlas smiled at her.Those perfect dimples.He took her hand, and he brought it back to him.He raised his shirt, and he put her fingers against the scars that marked him.
“Landon Russell was far more dangerous than most people believed.I found him in the fucking woods shortly after the car wreck where he killed that mom and her kid, but that sonofabitch was ready for me.Furious that I’d let him go from his job, said it was my fault that everything was falling apart in his life.He drove a needle into me when I told him that he should turn himself over to the police.Fucking drugged me with some damn BS sedative and then he was driving a knife into me.Again and again.”
Horror rolled through her.
“He should have given me a stronger drug.”Casual.“Because it wore off as he was hacking at me.I took the knife.I slit his throat.I stabbed him in the heart.Then I left him for the animals.Figured they would take care of the sonofabitch’s dead body.And they did.By the time the bastard was found, he was little more than bones.”
“Atlas…”
“I really don’t like needles.See, I had a run-in with another prick long ago who liked needles.Really turned me off them.Call me crazy, but I don’t like it when sonsofbitches drive needles into my skin and try to pump me full of drugs.”
She felt frozen.“Who—who was the other attacker?”
“Don’t you know?”
She had a suspicion, yes.Because there was someone in his past who’ddiedof a drug overdose.“Bryan Mathers.”
“Ding, ding.Right answer.My stupid prick of a college roommate.”Anger hardened his face.“He was a total asshole, just so you know.Rumors had circulated about him, about him getting rough with girls, hurting them.He always denied the stories.Somehow, the accusations vanished.Power has a way of doing that, making trouble vanish.”
“You have a great deal of power now.”Something that was obvious.
“Yeah, I do.Once I was nothing.I’ll never go back to that.”
