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I shrug, then lie. “My funeral.”
His brows shoot up, tugging at his eyebrow piercing. “Morbid, love.”
“When you’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of men who want to chop you into little pieces in hopes of restarting your father’s dead heart,” I challenge, “you start to get pragmatic.”
“We’re most definitely not chopping you up into pieces,” he murmurs. Setting the bottle down, he reaches for me, grasping my shoulder. “Turn round, darling.”
I do, but mostly because it’s easier for me not to look at him as I hear him pull the sprayer from beside the faucet. He turns the water on, and I can feel it misting beside me as he tests the temperature.
“I might be a bit clumsy at this,” he says after a beat. “I’ve only been missing an arm for six years.”
That surprises me for some reason. Maybe because he’s so adept, but then I think back to his shark bite joke, and I realize maybe that was his way of protecting himself.
“How did it happen?”
“You don’t want to know,” he says immediately.
I turn my head just before he tugs the elastic band out of my hair, and he gives it a sharp tug to order me in place. I suck in a breath, not hating the prickles along my scalp, and I obey immediately as he eases my head back.
“Good girl.”
My pussy clenches. The fantasy of Ariel’s violence already had me turned on, and now James’ orders? I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me—maybe some sort of genetic poison from my father’s blood—but there’s no point in trying to deny it now. If there are morals in this house, they’re none that I recognize.
“Close your eyes,” he murmurs, and then water cascades over my scalp.
He’s not wrong—he is clumsy. He uses too much soap, and it runs in my face when it collects water from my soaked hair, but his fingers along my scalp are heaven. I can’t help a groan as he drags his nails along my crown, then under my mass of hair.
The water is probably filthy now, but I can’t bring myself to care. It’s still hot and bubbly, and I never, ever want James to stop touching me. I feel him shifting closer, and he brings his slick, soapy hands over my shoulders and to the front of my neck, where he holds me there.
“Darling?” he murmurs.
I hum quietly.
His thumb grazes over my pulse, and then I feel a heavy weight on my shoulder and realize he’s laid his other arm there. “Tell me to stop,” he says as his hand moves closer toward my naked breast. My nipples are peaked, and I feel an ache of desire for him to touch them—to do something that has never been done.
I don’t know how much he knows about me, but I can’t imagine he thinks I’m a virgin. I doubt he’d be toeing this line with me if he did. He doesn’t seem like the sort of man who’d enjoy that level of inexperience.
Never mind how much dark, depraved porn I’ve watched over the years and the erotic books I’ve read. Never mind the things I’ve done to myself when all the lights were out and no one was around to listen.
It’s not the same.
His fingers brush the top of my breast. “You’d better tell me to stop,” he warns. “You’re a bit too tempting for my own good. But I won’t do anything to you that you don’t beg for.”
“Are you even allowed?” I ask. I feel breathless, but my voice is almost piercingly loud in the bathroom.
That startles a laugh out of James, and he leans forward, pressing his nose against the back of my neck. “Trust me when I say that if I wasn’t allowed, I wouldn’t be here right now. We’re absolutely being watched.”
That should freak me out just as much as my captor putting hands on me, but instead, I just feel a little more needy. “By who?”
“Ariel, most definitely. He’s furious that I made him leave. And likely Phoenix—watching in his own way.”
I don’t know what that means, and it does bother me a little that I haven’t met Phoenix yet. But I still don’t want him to stop. It’s just one more thing I’d like to check off my bucket list before they decide they’re done toying with me and my father and decide to end it all.
“James…”
He groans, and his hand moves lower—fingers just barely brushing my areola. “Beg me, darling,” he orders.
I crack almost immediately. “Touch me. Please, please, touch me.” The words are a concession—not quite begging, not quite asking, but not a demand, either. They’re a thread snapping, giving in to the reality of my situation and no longer denying that I want to have control over something before I die. And he might promise that’s not happening now, but he hasn’t said a word about the future.
