“Shhhh.”
My heart stopped along with every other muscle in my body. I even forgot how to breathe. I knew this shhhh by heart even though I’d heard it only once before.
“I’m gonna take my hand off your mouth now. You gonna scream?”
I managed to shake my head once.
He did as he promised, and so did I, still not breathing, my head dizzy with shock and lack of oxygen.
“Good girl,” he whispered, his breath and beard pricking my skin. “Go ahead. You can breathe now.”
As if I had been waiting for his permission, I gasped for air. “You’re back.”
“I’ve never left, my sweet Angel.”
“Yes, you have.” I shook with tears.
“No. I’ve always been here.” His voice took a harsh turn. “And I’ve seen what you’ve done.”
“What-t?”
“The boy.” His hand crept on my collarbone, and another gasp escaped me. He’d been watching all long? He’d seen me with Leo? Was that why he was here? To tell me he knew? To warn me? To scare me?
Was he jealous?
His fingers glided up to my neck and suddenly tightened around my throat. “Naughty girl. Don’t you know you’re mine?”
The pressure on my neck was too much. My ears rang as I took a big breath through my nose, inhaling his scent that confused the hell out of me. The cologne I’d associated with desire and fear together. The fragrance I’d been missing for months.
“Yours?” I gurgled.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Only mine.”
My tears streamed down my face, and he eased off my throat, his thumb drawing a line up to my chin, and then brushing over my lower lip. I sucked in successive short breaths, heat squirming through my body.
“I’ve been waiting for so long…” He did it more than once, brushing my lip back and forth with the roughness of his thumb, as if he had to know the texture of my lips, as if he couldn’t wait anymore, and with every time, I trembled harder.
“P-please, let me go.”
“Why? So you can go back to him?”
“No. I was never with him. I was never with anyone.” Panic gripped at my heart as I put as much sincerity in my voice as I could to convince him. If he was jealous, if he got the wrong idea, he’d hurt Leo; he was a brutal killer. He’d punished my father, and he’d punish Leo for something he didn’t do. Leo might have stalked me, but he didn’t deserve to die for it.
“And it stays that way.”
“Okay,” I sobbed. “Just…please…let me go.”
His nose dipped into my hair, inhaling it, and then he kissed the tip of my ear. “Never.”
My skin should have crawled, but it tingled with comforting warmth. My mind should have feared his dark promise, but it only soothed it. As if it was the assurance I’d been waiting to have for months. For years. As if I wanted his hand on me. As if I wanted him to never let go.
Abruptly, both his hands were on my waist, the touch confident and strong, curving around my body as if he’d studied it for a while. For years. Then he swiveled me, my back now to the wall.
His breathing grew heavier, hotter on my face. I wished I could have seen him. I wished we hadn’t always met in the dark.
My quivering hands traced his breath and found his face in the blackness, but even that he wouldn’t let me have. He captured my wrists and crossed them up over my head in his tight grip.
Then his breath fell on my mouth.
His lips pressed to mine, and my heart careened. All the air left my lungs again, my body turning into goo. As wrong as it was, I’d imagined our kiss countless times before, but I’d never expected it to feel like this.
Like I no longer needed oxygen, only his breath.
Like all the pain I’d seen in my life wasn’t enough, and I needed the pain only he’d prepared for me.
Like my life had meant, would mean, absolutely nothing if it weren’t for this moment.
I cried while his lips explored and nipped before claiming my mouth. He savored me slowly and then passionately. His tongue peeked out, parting my lips for him to devour. I let him, as if I had any other choice, moaning into his lips helplessly.
He groaned, his tongue dancing around mine. Giddy, I was desperate to kiss him back. I shouldn’t, believe me, I knew that. I should want anything but. He was stealing my first kiss, but I wanted no one else to have it.
I moaned into his kiss again, this time licking his lips and the corners of his mouth, moving my tongue with his, drawing from his evident expertise that showed my embarrassing lack of it. His raw power and dark sensuality sparked flames of desire inside my guts and between my legs.
“I had to be your first.” Fingers slid up the side of my thigh, rocking my body with frightened need, sending more heat and shudders as they inched up my skirt. “I have to be your first everything.”
He resumed our kiss, his hand fondling my thigh, and then his fingertips touched the fabric of my panties on my hipbone.
No.
Not like this.
I tore my lips from his and writhed against him. His ironclad grip wouldn’t free my wrists. His fingers reached the inside of my thigh, tracing little circles ever so lightly. “You’re mine, Angel. You’ve always been. I shouldn’t have waited all this time to take what’s mine.”
I swayed and jerked my body to spare myself the confusion his touch always gave me. I needed to fight. I couldn’t give up. “Not like this. Not like this!” I repeated hysterically. “Please, not like this!”
He spun me again so that my back would be facing him, his hand tight around my wrists. Then he hiked my skirt up to my waist and grabbed at the side of my panties, his fingers scratching my skin.
“No! No! Please, NO!”
The ripping sound of the fabric when he snatched it ripped my own heart with it. He tore my panties, leaving me exposed and naked for the taking. His taking. The man who saved me from the monster who wanted to rape me was going to do it himself.
He was going to rape me.
I sobbed, an unbearable burn inside me. “You can’t do this to me. How could you do this to me? How could you ruin everything?”
Ignoring me for the millionth time, he inhaled deeply and groaned. “Your smell is heaven.”
Oh my God. It wasn’t my hair he sniffed now. He’d smelled the evidence of my shame. He realized how much he aroused me. How turned on I was for him. How wet he made me.
Now, he’d think I wanted it, too. Now, he’d never stop.
More tears squeezed from my eyes. “I hate you. I hate you!”
His fingernails stabbed my butt cheek before a loud smack seared my skin. I moaned, and he followed with two more. “My sweet Angel, I didn’t know you could be such a naughty girl. You deserve to be punished.”
Two more swats, making that a total of five searing spanks. Then he did the same with the other cheek, my moans—of pain and arousal—louder with every swat, the uncontrollable and inexplicable wetness between my legs slicker, heavier.
His beard returned to tickle my face. “I don’t like to be lied to.”
“I never lied to you.”
“When you tell me to let you go while all you want is for me to stay isn’t lying? When you ask me not to touch you while you’re dripping wet for me isn’t lying? When you say you hate me while you clearly don’t isn’t lying?”