Page 70 of Villainous Intent

“It was research,” I corrected, unrepentant. “You don’t read about romance, Annie. You don’t look for stories about gentle lovers who ask permission. You look for the Villains. You look for me.”

I lifted my hand, letting my knuckles drag slowly down her cheek. She shivered, her thighs clenching together beneath the desk.

“You want the power exchange,” I murmured. “You want to be taken by someone who doesn’t give you a choice.”

“I—”

“And here’s the reality,” I continued. “I am tired of pretending. I spend every waking moment wearing a mask. Either the literal one or the mask of Thomas Smith. It’s exhausting. But you know what I am. With you, I wouldn’t have to hide. I wouldn’t have to hold back. You understand exactly what you’d be getting.”

She pressed herself back against the edge of the desk. “I don’t date Supers. It’s a hard line I don’t cross.”

I smiled. “Good. Because I don’t date at all.”

She furrowed her brow. “You don’t date?”

“No. I don’t do relationships. Too many distractions and too many expectations I won’t fulfill.”

The scent of her arousal, sweet and wet, hit me. It took every ounce of my willpower not to drop to my knees and taste her sweet cunt again.

She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth. Fuck, I wanted to bite that lip myself. I wanted to hear her gasp against my mouth just like she had at the Opener. I wanted to drink her sounds down until they all belonged to me.

“What exactly are you proposing then?” she asked.

“I want to fuck you, Annie. I want to use your body to get out of my own head. Hard. Rough. Whatever I need. Whatever you need.”

I watched her pupils dilate until the blue of her irises almost vanished. I leaned in, deliberately weaponizing the exhaustion I saw lining her eyes.

“You spend your entire life managing the egos of monsters,” I whispered, gripping her chin to force her gaze to mine. “You adhere to Alliance regulations, you babysit Havoc, you hold yourself to this impossible standard every single day. You carry the weight of the rules and pretend they don’t suffocate you. Don’t you want to just let go and stop being perfect? You could just be messy and human for a while and let someone else have control. And when we’re done, we put our clothes back on. We go back to our lives. No awkward conversations. No feelings to hurt. Just pure, unadulterated release.”

The rigid line of her shoulders relaxed just a little. I had found the pressure point. She carried the weight of the entire Alliance on her back, and I was offering to take it from her, to strip her down to nothing but raw nerves and instinct.

I knew she wanted this. She was absolutely desperate for the release. I had tasted that desperation at the Opener. I had drawn an orgasm out of her in a room full of monsters, and she hadn’t even questioned my hands on her body.

“I...” Annie trailed off, her chest rising and falling in shallow, jagged jerks. She stared at my mouth. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes, Annie. Give yourself to me.”

She coiled tighter, her muscles locking up in the futile instinct to protect herself from the inevitable. I closed the remaining distance, stopping only when my mouth hovered above hers. I let the friction of our shared breath do the work, utilizing the anticipation and refusing to touch her lips.

“Let go,” I commanded.

“No.”

The word was a breathless exhale that lacked any real conviction.

“No?” I murmured, brushing my nose against her cheek. I inhaled the scent of her skin, cataloging the spike in her pheromones.

She turned her head, breaking the proximity, though she couldn’t escape the cage of my arms. “I get the feeling you aren’t used to hearing the word no, Cipher.”

I let out a low, dark chuckle. “I get the feeling you aren’t used to saying it.”

Her eyes snapped back to mine. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I’ve seen your schedule. You double-book yourself constantly. You run oversight for volatile Alliance matches in the morning, then rush back to the Tower to manage a schedule an entire administrative team should handle. You bend over backward trying to please everyone. You never decline a request. You never say no.”

She shoved her hands against my chest but I didn’t yield.

“I just said no to you,” she snapped, her voice finally finding its bite.