Page 692 of One More Kiss

Chapter9

My mind scrambles for words,for a vicious retort. He actually expects me to share a bed with him. While I collect a breath, he doesn’t wait to hear what I need to say. He casually strolls to the shower and drenches his head under the jets.

I’m left on the counter, frozen and confused. Bitterly angry and naively offended. He'd given me the night sky, painted it with a trillion stars and then stole them all away.

The voice inside my head warns me of danger. It whispers ideas of sneaking from his room while he’s uninterested in my whereabouts. Could I run the risk of bumping into Elias and his trigger-happy tendencies? Or do I spend the night with a man I can’t piece together?

I look around the suite, searching for an answer to my dilemma, looking anywhere that isn’t the water pouring over manly broad shoulders. His body is magnificent. Unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the flesh.

Staring at his drenched torso, my hate turns inwards. My indignation coils with need. “I won’t share a bed with you. Take me back to the barn.” I drop off the counter and place my feet wide to secure my bold stance.

With a controlled swipe, he drags both hands over his face, flips the lever to cut off the water and prowls from the cubicle. The unrighteousness of this unruly yearning plaits into a noose and slips around my neck. I’m drawn to his every move, spying his tight buttocks as he turns his back to me to fetch a towel. He shakes it out and circles his hips, ignoring me completely.

“I’ve never even kissed a guy before, so the idea of a psycho like you taking what’s not yours is…”

It happens in a blur, a sputter of time. From zero to sixty in a split second. That sublime body of his launches at me, ushering me backward until his palm slams to the tiles and my ass presses against the grout. Our touching skin burns with deadly lust.

“Firstly. Call me a psycho once more and it will be the last word you ever say.” I inhale, and so does he. “Secondly, in basic terms, you were given to my father. As you’ve so adamantly pointed out, you were sent here to fuck him. For your body to serve him. And guess what? He’d rather you were buried under a row of coffee plants.” His free hand swathes my throat, raising my chin a notch higher, connecting our gazes. “So from where I’m standing, Carina Ferreira, your life belongs to me, as does this…” His knee nudges into my groin, hard and unyielding. I say nothing, completely dumbstruck. “And for the record, I’m not your Prince Charming, or anyone’s, for that matter. If you stare at the sun long enough, you’ll go blind.” His mouth lingers before mine, teasing and unethical. “I will shoot you if I have to. No questions. No regret.”

My mouth snaps shut after his admission and my hand flies up to his wrist, wrestling for freedom. I want to slap him, to rip his hands away, and smother the tinder of lust cremating my soul to embers. Solemn dark eyes study me for a fraction of time. His harsh statement murdering my pride like cyanide.

“Now who’s the liar?” I strain my neck and thrust my hips, suddenly aware of his steely arousal. “If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already.”

I’ve never had expectations of how I’d eventually fuck a man, or be fucked. I’m not a romantic fool with fanciful notions or a wish for tender loving care. Yet, I didn’t expect the call of this man’s sadism to resonate so deeply with me.

So when he trails the tip of his tongue over the seam of my upper lip, deliberately tracing the old scar, a dark thread tugs at my core. It snakes around the code of conduct any normal girl would have and chokes it with lust. My skin blazes. His unreadable, wild eyes trap me in place.

“I don’t like complications.” He hollows my cheeks with the tips of his fingers.

“Are you serious?” I spit, a raging temper barreling from my chest to my voice. “You’re the one keeping me here against my will.”

Featherlight fingertips trace my collar bone, causing me to tremble. “That’s interesting.” His solid erection jabs my belly. “I know what you really want,” he says close to my lips. “I can sense your lust crawling out of every exquisite cell in your skin. You need me to fuck you, hard and unforgiving. You crave it, fear it, and can’t understand it.” His eyes darken, like the depths of a never-ending starless cavern. “But most of all, you think it will bond us. It won’t.” He licks his lips and I literally feel the moisture bloom between my thighs. “Sex is simply chemistry and endorphins. Nothing more, nothing less.”

I hate him.

“I don’t want anything from you.” I swallow the lie in a flustered gulp. “If you want a fight, I'll give you one.” My brave snarl is matched with my most hateful glare.

His low hum sizzles over my cheek as a dirty whisper. “Fight me?” He muses, a subtle dent dimpling his cheek. “We both know you’ll obey me like your life depends on it.”

“Is that so?” I tip into him and reenact the very performance he used to steal my sanity. I lick his pouty bottom lip until he retreats like a strike of lightning—quick and fierce.

I smirk up at him, curiously fascinated, noting his pupils dilate with a thick swirl of smoke.

An unabated growl rumbles in his chest, stimulating the hairs on my scalp. “Ready for your next challenge?”

My muscles tense. He removes his hand from my neck, skates his wicked fingertips over the contour of my breasts, nipples, and belly until they locate the apex of my thighs. A terrible shiver of seduction runs through me, hedonistic and intense with longing. My spine tingles when his mouth opens and he taps the slickness I’ve no way to hide from.

“I don't need to steal women to enjoy fucking.” His chin dips as his fingers glide between my folds. “But the reality of having a sexy little thing like you all to myself for the night, with no complications and no consequences, it’s painfully tempting.” His mouth moves to the shell of my ear. “Your cheeks are perfectly flushed, because this is turning you on. Isn’t it?”

“No…” I whisper, almost inaudibly, my buzzing senses a traitor to my mind.

“You sure about that?” he taunts, fingers roaming through the slickness I’m both thankful for and disgusted with myself for producing. “You're lying. Were you lying to me all this time?

“I’ve never lied to you.” I rush my denial; aware he could snap my neck easily if he thought I'm a traitor.

“Perhaps you really are a devious siren with a body worth dying inside of.” He laughs darkly and my stomach clenches. “It would take an exceptional woman to impress me enough to risk everything. But they don’t exist.”

Every natural born instinct for survival gets pushed to the side under the weight of the excruciating sexual snare he’s caught me in. Nonetheless, I swallow it back and force myself to pretend I’m not a freak lusting for his touch.

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