The feminist in me wants to spit in his face for assuming that I’d want to be a “pet” to any man. Him, most especially. But the rest of me . . . the rest of me trembles, and the shaking isn’t rooted in fear. Heat blooms between my legs and, beneath the confines of my wet shirt, my nipples bead into hard, little points. If I give this man even a sliver of what he’s asking of me, I’ll surely drown.
But like when he ordered me to get in the car, or the confessional, or this blasted, run-down building, I succumb to the ice in his veins and the blistering heat that tethers us together.
“Tell me why,” I echo.
It’s not a question.
It’s not me falling to his feet and worshipping the very ground he walks on.
But it’s enough, because his jaw locks and his grasp on my hand tightens and his pale green eyes sear me on the spot. “Because I would take everything that you are and make it mine. Your beauty, your humanity, your fire. I’d fill every broken and misshapen part of me with you until there’s nothing left.” He laughs, a dark, gritty sound that tangles my fear and desire into a web that has no exit point, or understanding, but just is. “A man like me steals what he wants, Isla, and with every piece of you that I took, I would still demand more, until you begged me for freedom.”
The word DANGER might as well be dancing around us in neon lights. I close my eyes, breathing sharply to override the aching need in my core, and I see it: the danger. I open them, and meet green and yellow, and there, in his tempestuous gaze, resides danger at its most visceral.
If I were smart, I’d nail him in the balls and run for safety.
If I were smart, I would do anything but what I do next, which is lick my lips and whisper, “Tell me what you’d steal—from me. Tell me everything.”
His nostrils flare and then I feel it—him.
Oh, God.
Behind the prison of his wet trousers, Saxon’s hard-on is huge. He leans into me, giving me his whole weight, as well as the delicious outline of his cock against my stomach. Sweat coalesces on my back. Bloody hell, the devil has come out to play and I’m burning. I nearly whimper as I struggle, one-handed, to rid myself of my coat. Saxon rips it from me, and, to the chorus of this shouldn’t be happening singing in my brain, he repositions me against the wall, keeping me restrained.
“Your taste,” he growls, rolling his hips against me in a sensual glide that promises orgasms and good times for all, “right off the wet lips of your pussy.” I do whimper, then, and he takes my captive hand and splays it over my right breast, so that I’m cupping myself through my shirt. Beneath my fingers, my nipple pebbles. “Your cries,” he rasps, turning his gaze down to our hands. “I’d own them, each and every one. When you scream at the top of your lungs; when you’re rendered silent because my cock is stroking the back of your throat and it’s either scream or choke.”
Fuck.
Arching my back, I shove my breast into my palm, urging him to let me squeeze, to pinch my nipple. Something. Anything. Desperation rips a moan from my throat. “Saxon.”
His eyes darken.
A tick leaps to life in his square jaw.
In any other man, those small tells wouldn’t be enough to imply how much he wants this, wants me. But in this man—this cold, stoic man who breathes ice and detachment—those ticks reveal everything and more.
“What else?” I ask, shamelessly. “Saxon, what else?”
As one, he moves our joined hands south. We trace my stomach and detour left, to my hip, which Saxon makes me squeeze, as though, through my touch, he’s memorizing every line and contour of my body. Seemingly satisfied, he continues our downward path, over the waistband and metal tab of my trousers, past where I’m throbbing and needy, to my thigh.
“Squeeze,” he commands roughly, and I do. I clutch my inner thigh, letting his fingers slip between mine to graze the denim. It’s wet, painted to my skin from all the rain we trudged through. I can’t find it in myself to care, not when I’m hanging on by a thread, following Saxon’s every move.
I’ve lost my damn mind, is what this is.
And, as if he’s actually read my mind, he drags our hands up, centimeter by painstaking centimeter, until we’re covering the triangle between my legs and I’m shaking so hard that I might combust. He curls my hand, allowing me to cup myself. The slight pressure is everything and somehow not enough, all at once, and I throw my head back, ignoring the bite of the brick wall colliding with my skull because I need more. Right now, right here. I need more.
“Your will.”
Saliva gathers in my mouth. “What?”
He molds my hand within his, guiding me into a rocking motion that aligns the seam of my trousers with my clit. He’s manipulating my body, putting me exactly where he wants me, and the pleasure is so sharp, so acute, that all words take a hike and I simply exist. Here, with him, for as long as it’ll last.
“Just like that,” he grits out, “just like this. I’d make you want me, Isla. I’d make you beg. I’d make you so hard up to come that you’d do anything I demanded. And you would, no questions asked, because you’d get this in return.”
Pleasure slices through me, the orgasm so close that I ride my hand—Saxon’s hand—hard, fast, needy.
Please, please, please.
His hot breath fans over my temple. “I’d grab your hair, like sunshine captured in my fist, and fold you over my lap. Spread your legs, wide, to make room for my cock, your pussy so wet you’d take me in one thrust. And I would fuck you, Isla. I’d fuck you so hard that you’d always remember that it was me who did this to you, me who made you come undone. The man with no heart. The man you vowed that you would never, ever fuck. But you did, with my name on your lips—a prayer, penance—and—”
I come, as promised.
With his name on my tongue and our hands sandwiched between my legs, in a building that was meant to be a safe haven from the police but has become something else entirely. Something that I fear will be the death of me as I know myself.
“Tell me, Isla.”
My chest heaves raggedly. “You want me to beg.”
He removes our hands, keeping them clasped as he shifts them back to the wall. “I want to fuck you.”
“I thought you’d never sleep with a woman like me.”
“Ruthless. Broken.” His voice turns darker, grittier. “It’s what I see whenever I look in the mirror—today, I saw it in you.”
Is that how he sees himself? Misshapen? Broken? Ruthless? A lump grows in my throat. “Saxon, you can’t—”
“Let me steal that too.” His gaze drops to my mouth, lingering there. “I’m not gentle. I break everything I touch, but maybe—with you—I’d piece all the fractures back together. And, if not, then at least we’d be ruined together.”
Everything in me shouts to walk away.
He made me come, yes, but we could go back to our version of normal if we stop now. Right?
Except that I don’t want to stop.
I want to feel the ice chip away from his emotional armor. I want to feel his cock slam into me. I want him to take me, his soulless eyes locked on my face when he crashes his scarred mouth down on mine. I want all of him—the savior, the devil, and everything in between.