“Are you wearing underwear, Scarlett?” I ask, not wanting to talk about her uncle.
Her eyes flash up to mine then away. “None of your business.”
I glance down to the exposed skin of her shoulder, the swell of one breast. My shirt is so big on her that it has slid down her shoulder. The way she’s got herself situated to avoid my dick, another inch and her pussy will be eye level.
I look at her eyes again. A deep caramel when she’s aroused. And she is aroused. I see it in the way her nipples poke against the shirt. Smell it in the musk between us. And see it in her eyes.
I pull her closer and I don’t care that when she resists, she leans her slight weight into my wound. I want her mouth more than I care about the pain.
“Don’t you want to know what my uncle told me?” she asks when her mouth is an inch from mine.
“Not really,” I say, pulling her to me, kissing her.
“I’ll bite,” she threatens, the words muffled when I don’t let her pull away.
I draw back a little just so she sees me. “I hope you’ll do more than that, Little Kitten.” I kiss her again, prying her lips open, and, true to her word, sharp little teeth pierce my lower lip. I taste the copper of blood and moan against her mouth. Squeezing her wrist and shifting our position, I topple her onto the bed and pin her down with my weight, trapping one of her arms to the side and taking the pain of her fingernails on the other as they dig into my shoulder.
“You’ll open the stitches,” she says, scratching her nails down my back.
I groan, pressing my dick against her. “And I just answered my own question. You’re not wearing underwear.”
She tries to shove at me. “When your men were flying me out of a war zone, we didn’t think to stop to pick up our shopping bags, so I didn’t have any. Don’t kiss me again. I’ll bite hard enough you’ll need stitches on your lips.”
“It’ll be worth it,” I say, pulling back when her teeth snap at me again. I watch her mouth open and close, watch her pupils dilate when I grind against her clit.
“Stop,” she tries.
“There’s something dark about you, Scarlett. Something reckless.”
She stares up at me, her hips moving a little. I wonder if it’s conscious.
“You make me want like no other woman has ever made me want.” I dip my head, kiss her neck, feeling her pulse against my lips. Her heart’s going a hundred miles a minute.
“Let me go,” she says, voice quavering.
“Kiss me and I’ll let you go.”
She shakes her head. “You already kissed me. Now let me go.”
“No. I want you to kiss me. I want to feel you want it.”
She blinks rapidly, looking beyond me momentarily before shifting her gaze back to mine.
“You want to, Little Kitten.” I lean close to her ear. “I smell your want.”
She flushes at that, but she doesn’t deny it.
“Kiss me once. Just once.”
“That’s all you want? Just a kiss?”
“With tongue.” I grin.
“No tongue.”
“Just the tip.”
She furrows her eyebrows but there’s a little lightness beneath all of this resistance. At least for a moment.
“Promise?”
The way she says it gives me pause. The way her eyes glisten. I remember what her uncle told me. “I promise I won’t take anything you don’t give.”
She studies me, considering. She licks her lips, raises her head and brings her mouth to mine. Then she surprises me again when she sweeps her tongue over my mouth before slipping it inside.
I touch it with mine, taste her and when I suck on her tongue, she lets out a little moan. I cup the back of her head then, taking over the kiss, an urgency building as I taste her. I can feel her yield, open. Feel her kiss me back.
I’m hard. Does she feel me?
Reaching one hand between us, I undo the top two buttons of the shirt she’s wearing.
She makes a sound, but I swallow it and she doesn’t resist when I push it open. Lifting my head slightly to look at her, I cup one breast before undoing the rest of the buttons.
“Cristiano,” she mutters when I open the shirt and kneel to look at her bare skin. She has small breasts, a flat belly and a mound of neatly trimmed dark hair between her legs.
I meet her eyes again, lean down to kiss her mouth, her neck, the hollow between her collarbones.
She cups the back of my head, fingers intertwining with hair as I kiss the space between her breasts, then taste her nipple with the flick of my tongue.
“Cristiano.” Her fingers curl in my hair pulling a little.
I stop. Like I promised. I rest my cheek on her belly and trace a pattern on it. “You make me want things I don’t remember wanting,” I say. The urgency fades, something else, something sadder creeping in. I can’t allow for that though. Not now.
I kneel again, close the shirt and do the buttons like she had them. I don’t want to. What I want is to hold her. To feel her skin against my skin. What I want is more.
She lays her head back on my bed and takes a ragged breath in, watching me. I wonder if she was unsure if I’d stop.
I slide off her, standing. I don’t want to, but she needs to learn she can trust me to keep my word. I get the feeling she hasn’t had many trustworthy men in her life.
“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” I ask, finishing with the last button.
“It was horrible.” She sits up.
I grin, close one hand around her thigh to stop her from standing. “Was it? Are you sure about that or are you a lying, Little Kitten?”
“I’m not lying.”
“So, if I were to spread your legs and look at your pussy, it wouldn’t be wet?”
She tries to pull my arm off, focusing all her attention on it.
“Tell me. Tell me again how horrible it was, and I’ll have a look.”
“Fine. It wasn’t horrible, okay?”
I smile. “Okay.” I look down at the stitched area at my side. The bleeding has stopped so I hand her a bandage. “Here.”
“You need more ointment.”
“Fuck no.”
“Fine.” She peels the paper off the sticky edges and lays the bandage on my side, then looks up at me. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?” I walk to the dresser and open a drawer to get a fresh T-shirt.
“My uncle said something just before the chaos began.”
I pull the shirt on and turn to her waiting for her to continue.
“Are you going to make me marry you so the cartel is forced to work with you and not Rinaldi?”
Asshole Jacob.
I study her, try to get a feel for where her head is. Although I can guess. She’s about to be told that yes, she will be forced to marry a man she hates. Or should hate.
“Better than Marcus Rinaldi forcing you to marry him, isn’t it?”
“They’ll still kill you if they can.”
“I have no doubt they’ll try.”
She slips off the bed and comes toward me, then stops, folds her arms across her chest.
“No.”
“No what?”
“I’m not doing it.”
“I’m hungry. Let’s go get some food.”