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Heart racing, pulse pounding, I immediately regret snapping at him. He’s dangerous.Unstable. Defying him could end up being a death sentence, and I don’t know what came over me.
Or him.
Burns moves. Quicker than I would’ve given him credit for, he crosses the space between us. Before I know it, he’s looming in front of me. There’s nowhere for me to go as his hand goes to my throat, a collar that forces my head back and my lips to part on a sudden gasp as he pulls me to my feet.
Swooping down, he kisses me fiercely while gently squeezing my neck. It’s a claiming kiss, possessive and invasive at the same time. He sucks my tongue into his mouth, before dipping his into mine, stroking my tongue, clashing our teeth together. I’m powerless to stop him, and I don’t even try.
When he’s finally done, he pulls back, dark blue eyes gleaming. His voice is a throaty rasp as he says, “Fuck me, angel, but your lies tastedelicious.”
I’m stunned for a moment before realization sets in. He’s still holding onto me with such a possessive grip that I don’t even think. I just act, shoving him in the chest.
My own is heaving. Panicked breaths fill my lungs again, coming out in shallow gasps. The fact that I can taste Burns in my mouth makes this so much worse. For all his threats, I never thought he’d just kiss me like that, and my only thought is putting space between us.
To my surprise, he steps away from me. I fool myself into thinking I saw a flash of concern skitter across his face as I use my cuffed hands to clutch my boob.
It hurts. I wince. It hits me just then that there’s been a mild ache coming from that spot since I got up. The woozy feeling in my head—drugs, I bet, or some kind of sedative—caused a disconnect. I didn’t realize that it stung so bad until his forearm hit my boob as he formed a collar with his hand.
“You okay, angel?”
Depends. The more I’m focusing on it, the more it feels like I’ve been burned.
He’s a persistent bastard. “What’s the matter? Something wrong?”
The way he says that… he did something. I don’t know what. I could guess why, but Burns… he did something.
“What did you do to me?”
“Gonna have to be a bit more specific there if you want me to answer that. Go on. Your screams are mine, but so is your curiosity. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
That’s the problem. Consider me an ostrich who prefers to stick her head in the sand, but I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear his answers, or make any sense of this madness. I just want to fall asleep, wake up, and be back in my apartment.
That’s not going to happen, though. So, instead, I pat my tit, squealing when the dull ache becomes a stinging sensation that I can’t ignore.
Raising my cuffed hands, I pull on my collar—and then shriek.
“Ah. You’re just noticing my little gift to you.”
Little gift. Little. Gift.
Little gift?
It’s a fucking tattoo. I went to bed without any, and now I have a tattoo at the height of my left boob.
I can’t really read what the black inks says. I think there are a few letters, maybe some numbers, but from my angle, they’re upside down. Plus there’s some kind of shiny ointment smeared over it, with a clear bandage covering that makes it hard to decipher.
I can’t peel off the bandage. Not without taking off my shirt, and definitely not while I have handcuffs on. Instead, I tug my sweater down enough that I can kinda see what it says.
My stomach goes tight. “‘Burns’?” I read. “It’s… it’s your name?”
“And my badge number. In case you had any doubt you’re mine, don’t. I put my mark on you. The first woman who earned it,” he adds, answering a question I never would’ve thought to ask, “and the only one.”
I have so many questions. My biggest one is ‘why’, of course, though I don’t think I’m in the right state of mind to hear his answer to that. Instead, I demand, “How?”
It’s high enough that I want to pretend he didn’t get a look at my boob while I was being branded with his name. As if I believe that. Whatever he did to put me to sleep, that made me so groggy when I woke up… I slept through a fucking tattoo. What else could I have slept through?
As my world is spiraling around me, Burns grins again.
It’s that charming grin of his I’ve seen countless times before, never thinking anything of it other than—damn it—it was so effortlessly sexy. So deceptively innocent, too, with just a hint of a dare lingering around the corner of his mouth.
