I stare at him. He really does want to hear my answer.
I lift my chin high putting my face inches from his. “Spider, there are no words to describe the kind of lowlife you are, or how much I loathe the ground you walk on.”
His teeth flash in a wide, sexy grin.
“There’s my Little Wildcat.” He leans down again, his mouth almost touching mine. He doesn’t kiss me, but the heat of his lips teases like a caress. “Say that again.”
I hate that his approval of my defiance makes my heart grow a size bigger. “Let me go.”
“Not yet.” He draws back, crossing his arms. “Why are you being punished?”
I roll my head back. Really?
Everything in me wants to spit in his face again, but I know I can’t. I can hear it in his voice; if I don’t respond properly, he’ll take it to mean I haven’t learned my lesson and dream up a new hell for me.
“Because I tried to escape,” I say simply without looking at him.
He fists the top of my hair, tugging my head back. “I know you want to kill me right about now, but like it or not, you needed this as much as me.”
I stare. “What?”
“You heard me. You needed this.”
That doesn’t make sense. In what world would a man think anyone needed to be humiliated like this?
And yet, there’s a strange sated feeling settling over me, blossoming like some poisonous flower in my belly.
“You’re insane.”
His eyes dance. He presses slowly against me again. “Did watching them fuck get you hot?” His lips barely brush mine, toying with them.
The question digs into my soul, gouging deep. Bringing forth a world of shame that I’ve tried to tamp down.
I try to twist my head away, but he grabs my jaw, trapping my gaze with his. His eyes demand an answer, while the heat in them tells me he already knows.
“Yes,” I hiss between my teeth.
He hums in satisfaction. He pushes my feet apart. Two of his fingers slide between my legs, cupping my dripping sex. The moisture there coats his fingers. The sound that rumbles from him makes my whole body tinkle.
“Fuck. You’re soaked. If I fucked you right now, I bet you’d come so hard the whole damned world would hear you screaming my name.”
He’s probably right.
With agonizing slowness, he glides his fingers through my folds. Down, then back up, they circle my clit, teasing the wet, swollen nub. I grit my teeth to keep from groaning. My arms strain with the effort not to rub myself against him, the tension reawakening the ache in my limbs.
“Greedy little thief.” His other hand tightens on my jaw. His head swoops in and his mouth rakes mine. I try to close my mouth, and he pries it open with his, his tongue lapping at mine.
At last, he lifts his head and releases me. I toss my head in anger, but my sex screams for more of his touch.
Spider goes in behind me and unties my wrists, gripping my arms and easing them down to my sides slowly. Minimizing the painful impact of sudden movement after so long. He rubs them down, then stands in front of me again, freeing me of the rope and dropping it to the ground.
Then he scoops me up effortlessly into his arms.
The relief of not having to stand on my aching legs anymore is indescribable.
“I can walk myself,” I lie even as my arms drop around his neck and my hands grip his vest.
“Take it easy, woman.” He adjusts his grip under my knees and around my back. “If I let you walk right now, you’ll end up falling on your face.”
He heads back to the clubhouse. Snake and Dee are gone. I was so focused on what Spider was doing, I’d forgotten all about them, and didn’t notice them leaving.
Most of the partiers have either left or are passed out in their chairs and on the ground, some of them right on top of the women they were doing.
Spider steps right over Whistler, who’s snoring loudly.
“Shouldn’t someone be treating that man’s wrist?” I ask dazedly.
Spider grunts a laugh. “Axe and Tequila both tried. If the little shit doesn’t want to be treated, we’re not gonna force him.”
But I notice the delighted sparkle in his eyes.
“What?” He gives a lopsided smile and pushes through the back door. “The asswipe tried to put his hands on what’s mine. He deserves what he gets.”
Okay, why do I find it kind of adorable that he’s so possessive? I shouldn’t. The man just left me tied to a tree buck naked in front of more than two dozen men for hours. And he probably didn’t break Whistler’s wrist to protect me, but out of some twisted territorial need to own me.
On the way down the hall to his bedroom, I ask him something that’s been nagging at me since he caught me making a break for it.
“Spider, how did you know?
“What?”
“I mean, how did you know I was going to escape when and how I did?”
His eyes twinkle. “My bathroom window was open.”
I scrunch my brows. I know I didn’t do anything as stupid as leaving the window open when I checked it earlier that day, or through the night.
“When you close that window, you have to push it all the way shut until it clicks. You didn’t, and I never open it. I came out of the meeting and went to take a piss, and found it wasn’t clicked shut.”
I roll my eyes. “So that’s why it was so hot in the bedroom.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dear God, how stupid could I be?
“But then how did you know I was going to run to the exact spot I went to? Behind that tree?”
“I guessed. I figured if you were going to have to run across that yard knowing anyone could look out at any second and see you, you’d want to be able to hide and check that no one was following you. That’s the only place to hide. Plus, there are cameras all over this place. Rat has one looking right out at that tree.”
“What if you’d been wrong, though?”
“Then I would have had to chase you. Trust me, I’ve been working out since I was twelve. I’d have caught you before you got far.”
I don’t doubt that. The elders of His Holy Peace were sticklers for making sure we kept fit and exercised every day, but I haven’t done that in months, and we didn’t work out the way Spider obviously does. His entire body is covered in powerful muscles. He’d have run me down in seconds.
A minute later, we reach his room. Spider kicks his bedroom door shut with his foot and settles me across his bed.
I sit up. “Can I sleep somewhere else?”
“Where else do you expect to sleep?” He takes off his gun and sets it in the drawer of his nightstand, locks the drawer, and pockets the key.
“Somewhere where you aren’t?”
He snorts. “No.” He pushes me back down until I’m lying with my head on his pillows.
I sigh, but can’t help relaxing into the bed. “I don’t want to be in this bed with you.”
“Tough.” He turns me around so that I’m lying across the bed width-ways, seizes my ankle and tugs me across the mattress toward him.
He’s got that heavy-lidded, sleepy look again. In spite of all that he’s put me through, the ache between my legs resumes once more, heating up under his hungry gaze.