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No one who had dimples like that could be truly bad, right?
No one who looked at me with such soft eyes...
“Just, ok?” One dark eyebrow arched up, and the dimple popped even more. It made him look younger. Like any normal guy who was happy that the woman he wanted had agreed to be with him. But honestly, the truth was far more dangerous, and I knew it. Yes, he was a man who wanted me, but that angelic face hid a multitude of sins, and all of them were dark and bloody. The hands that had run up my body and made me feel alive were the same hands that had snuffed someone's life out.
It was a sobering thought.
But the really scary thought was that I had agreed. As scared as I was, I hadn't really hesitated. That was what confused me the most. Had one amazing night with him really scrambled my brain enough for me to be able to forget who and what he was?
It wasn't even that we had come together by chance. He had orchestrated the whole thing. I knew from his own lips that he had been watching me for a while before that. The whole thing should have freaked me out. I should have been screaming and trying to throw myself overboard. Instead, I was laying half under him.
And I liked it.
I liked the feel of his hard body pressing me down. I liked it enough that I had said yes.
“What is going on in that pretty head of yours?” Sensing the sudden shift in my thoughts, The Judge tilted my face back up to his, my chin pinched between his thumb and finger. “The truth.”
Not able to move, I blinked slowly.
He narrowed his eyes. “Use your words, Taylor," he growled. “One second you are saying you will be mine and the next…” He shrugged.
“I didn’t say I would be yours,” I squeaked because I hadn't. All I had done was agree to spend some time with him. A few days, he said. I had never once agreed that I would be his any longer than that.
Now in the books I devoured, the women in these situations were always offered money. It was something I had never really understood, but it was hot anyway. On paper. If The Judge offered me money to spend a week with him, I would have found some way of hurting him.
Something must have shown on my face, because his grip on me loosened. “And now it's changed again. I want to know what you are thinking about.”
Laughing, I wiggled from under him. “That in the books you would have offered me a huge amount of money for spending the week with you.”
“I see.” Coldness seeped into his voice. It became icy and as sharp as stones. But his face was worse. Turning to me, he stared unblinking into my face. The mask had slipped. I had glimpsed it before, but this was the real deal. It was more than dead eyes and an emotionless voice. This was ten times worse and a thousand times more frightening.
“I didn’t mean–” I began to say, and he threw up a hand to stop me.
“Is that what you are looking for, Taylor?” One hand came down on my leg, fingers pinching it cruelly. “Do you want me to reimburse you for your time?” One tug on my leg and I was back laying down. He hovered over me, his entire weight on one elbow. “Do you want me to pay you for every time I touch your body?” His hand came up, cupping my breast through the softness of the t-shirt I wore.
His touch was painful, but I moaned anyway. A small, needy sound that escaped my lips before I could bite it back.
“Taylor?”
“No.” I shook my head, desperately trying and failing to concentrate on his words and not on what his hands were doing. I shook it again with more vigour this time. “No, I didn't mean it like that.”
“Good.” With one fluid bound, he was on his feet, and I felt the loss of the heat and weight of his body like something of mine had just been amputated. Confused, I looked up at him as he made his way to the cabin door. “I am not looking for a whore. If I thought even for a second that you were for sale–” He froze, and it was his time to shake his head.
The blood in my veins ran cold. It was there in his voice. If I had been for sale, then this wouldn’t be happening. He would have found other, less pleasant ways of dealing with me.
“Shower and come up on deck for breakfast. Don’t take too long.” Swinging open the door, he had taken a step through it before I found my voice again.
“Judge?” Not waiting for him to answer, I carried on. “If you had offered to pay me, if you had–” I struggled to find the right words, “–insinuated I was a whore, I would have found a way to hurt you.”
Laughing, he walked away.
I had just threatened a mob assassin, a killer, with violence. No wonder he laughed. My threat was empty, and we both knew it. He held all the power here. I was totally and utterly at his mercy.
And it turned me on.
* * *
“Come and join me, Taylor.” Without turning, The Judge called out to me as I hovered at the bottom of the stairs that would lead me up to the deck.
