Page 55 of Black Sheep

I glance frantically around me. We’re alone, with no other signs of life. “Why have we stopped? Where are we?”

Narrowed gray eyes shift from my face long enough to stab a finger in the middle of the car’s satellite navigation. The pin on the map zooms in. We’re on the edge of a park near New Rochelle.

“Cleo?”

I shake my head, my hand clenched tight around my phone. “Nothing’s wrong. Can we…can we go please?”

Growling, he pries the phone from my hand and tosses it in the back. “Not until I get some answers.”

“I told you, there’s nothing wrong—”

“What the fuck does he give you that no other man can, Cleo?” The question jerks from him like a missile, straight into my chest. “What’s so damn special about him that he would do this to you,” he grabs the hem of the T-shirt and flings it up to bare my ribs, “and you still stay?”

He doesn’t you know your mother survived. As far as he’s concerned, he finished the job that night. If you have any brains in that head of yours, keep that to yourself.

Finnan’s words tear across my mind.

“Something you can never give me.”

Scalpel-sharp eyes rip into me, his whole body once again lashed with lethal tension. “And what is that?” he asks. There’s a strange note in his voice that, from any other man, I would attribute to vulnerability.

Axel Rutherford is incapable of that state of being. All the same, I have the upper hand here. For once, I have something he seems to want. Something I don’t intend to give him.

I allow a slow, mysterious smile to curve my lips. “Why should I tell you? You seem to think you have all the power here. This one is my secret to keep. But take my word for it. You can never give me what he can.”

The muted growl of a charging predator fills the dark space a second before he pounces. My seatbelt is whipped from my body and he yanks me from my seat. The moment I’m sprawled across his lap, his fingers grip my hair.

He brings my face up to his. Holds me there, nose to nose, as his harsh breaths wash over my face. As he shows me the rampant madness churning through his eyes. “Maybe not, baby. But I will give you a whole fucking lot more.”

Hot, firm lips slant across mine. Anger. Hunger. Nuclear-grade lust feeds into the kiss long before his tongue demands entry. Once he gets it, he rams deeper, rocketing the volatile dalliance to a whole new level.

It takes a minute to realize the rock I’m clinging to in this insane storm is his shoulders, that my very refuge is also my destruction.

I try to scramble free. His grip tightens until my scalp tingles. “Stay. The fuck. Still.” The words are smashed against our meshed lips, little more than a rumble from his chest.

I should heed the warning. But my mind is in free fall, the darkness both inside and out bloating my fears to uncontainable dimensions. Using his shoulders as leverage, I pull back. Our mouths part with a loud, rude suction that, absurdly, drives carnal need straight between my thighs.

“No,” I manage, even as my body screams yes.

My crazed monster merely grins. “You don’t get to say no to me, sweetheart. Not when I can already smell how badly you want me.”

His mouth recaptures mine, tongue and teeth delivering pleasure so concentrated that my fear begins to melt. Other thoughts encroach.

He’s so good at this.

How?

Who?

Where?

When?

A vicious volt of discomfort rams through me even as his pheromones bombard me. What the hell…

Recalling the crazy little move that set him alight in his apartment, I nip at his mouth. He jerks beneath me, breaking the kiss to stare deeply into my eyes.

“There’s my little cherry bomb. Again,” he growls.

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