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He balled his fists up, the gunshot wound in his arm throbbing when he did so.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ he ground out. ‘I’ve seen girls like you. I’ve seen them sold. I’ve seen them killed. Sold and fucking slaughtered, like they were cattle. I knew what they’d do to you. And I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try and stop it.’
‘Oh,’ she said. She seemed surprised by his sudden admission. And so was he.
‘I gotta go,’ he said abruptly.
She scowled and stepped back, looking at the floor.
‘Great,’ she mumbled. ‘See you in two weeks.’
‘Jesus, Ana,’ he said. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. Shaking her head, she snatched up the vodka bottle and stepped inside, making her way up the hallway towards the bedroom that sat just off the front door.
Women. They were impossible to decipher. And this one was driving him insane. He followed her, grabbing her elbow and pushing her against the wall beside the bedroom door.
They stared off for a moment. Dornan reached down and tried to take the vodka bottle, but Ana’s fingers were wrapped around it tightly. In the end, he had to use his other hand to prise each finger off and take the bottle from her that way.
‘Go to bed,’ he barked, pointing into the bedroom.
He turned to walk away, stopped by the lightest of touches on his hand.
She gazed up at him, a peculiar look in her eyes skipping across the space between them. His eyes dipped down to her chest. She was breathing quickly, and as he watched the rise and fall of her breasts under that thin cotton top, he realised he was breathing faster, too.
He took in the swell of her chest, imagined the light brown nipples underneath pebbling between his fingers. The heat that was pouring off her was a sweet, seductive scent that threatened to overpower everything inside him, every last bit of thinly coiled resolve.
She licked her lips, but this time he didn’t think she was nervous. No, this time she licked her lips with hunger as she stared at his mouth.
He placed his hands on either side of her head, the vodka bottle still hanging from his right hand.
‘Go to bed,’ he said.
Her mouth twitched, the ghost of a smile appearing and then disappearing, replaced by wanton need.
‘I’m not tired,’ she whispered.
Goddamn this girl.
Her cheeks flushed, her chest still moving rapidly, she reached up with one tentative hand. When he didn’t stop her, she ran it through his short, dark brown hair, taking hold of his head.
Explosive.
That was the only word that came to him as her lips crashed into his, a fiery embrace that both thrilled and deeply unsettled him.
He was completely surprised by the aggression in her kiss, the way she threatened to devour him if he let her. Her delicate fists closed around tufts of his hair and gripped him with an urgency that was almost violent. Almost. Together, they skated the thin line between pleasure and pain, between necessity and madness.
Finally, when he couldn’t take much more before he ground her into the wall and fucked her until she screamed, he pulled away. Finger by finger, he unfurled her grip from his hair, pressing her arms to her sides. When she went to reach for him again he shook his head, reaching down and wrapping one hand around her pretty throat. The vodka bottle rested by his side in his spare hand.
His grip on her throat wasn’t hard enough to be painful. Just a gesture. Stay still.
She seemed to understand. She pressed her palms to the wall behind her, watching him, waiting.
Restraint, Dornan. Restraint.
With great reluctance, he stepped away until he was backed up on the opposite wall of the hallway. He needed to create space between them. He needed her to understand that she didn’t have to do anything like this, at least not yet. He wasn’t an animal.
Well, okay, he was. His straining cock confirmed it. But still. He had a conscience.
