Page 28 of White Lies

“I don’t play with knives,” she says. “You inspired me.”

“Forgive me if I’m not flattered.”

“Do you have any particular fondness for that shirt?”

“Actually, I do. It’s one of my favorites.”

“Good. I felt the same about my dress. You owe me my revenge.”

“Revenge is not a word a man wants to hear from a woman with a knife in her hand.”

“Trust me and let go of me. I know that’s hard for a dominant like yourself, but fear isn’t a good shade for you, Tiger. And if it makes you feel any better, if I was going to kill you, I’d get that orgasm you’ve denied me not once, but twice, first.”

“The name is Nick,” I say, my gaze sweeping over the knife that just happens to be right in front of her beautiful breasts, before I refocus on her face and add, “unless you attempt to stab me. Then you meet Tiger.” And I think I’m losing my fucking mind, because I’ve decided that letting her have the knife is a good character test. I release her and press my hands on the island on either side of her.

“Now what?” I challenge, the current in the air electric, the push and pull of control between us damn near explosive.

Her eyes narrow, mischief in their depths, but again, I find no malice. More seduction and playful sexiness, which I rarely partake in. I like sex. I like fucking. I don’t like games that I don’t dictate, and my games are not playful. But this woman is not like the others; she does not affect me like anyone before her, and the jury is out on whether that is good or bad.

She grabs my shirt and pulls it from my pants, then takes the knife to the last button. It pops and flies into the air, hitting the ground with a magnified sound. Her gaze lifts to mine, and she says, “Still scared?”

“Don’t poke the tiger, sweetheart. You won’t like the results.”

“I’m not scared,” she promises, popping another button, then another, her free hand on my stomach, and if she wasn’t holding a knife, I’d move that hand to the damn throbbing in my cock. Instead, she just makes that throb worse, that hand following the path of the knife higher, farther away from where I want it and her. I endure the torture of not touching her, and patiently at that, until she is finally at my tie, a little too close to my neck for comfort. I grab her wrist again, taking the knife this time, and tangle my fingers in her hair. “Are you going to buy me a new shirt?”

“You can buy your own,” she says, her fingers tangling in the hair on my chest, and not gently—that bite of pain, adrenaline in my veins, her determination to challenge me proving relentless. “And we both know you wouldn’t have it any other way,” she adds.

I toss the knife into the sink to my left, and before it’s even landed, I’m kissing her, drinking her in, and this time, unlike the kiss by the refrigerator, I don’t hold back, and neither does she. Our tongues connect, stroke, battle…but it is one Iwillwin. I will demand everything she has to give me. I want her free will. I want her as exposed as I vowed to make her, and it’s not to prove she’s a killer. It’s for me. For the man in me who not only wants to own this woman but will. And when she tries to resist, when I sense her trying to withhold even a piece of herself, my hand covers one of her breasts. My fingers stroke her nipple with delicate, sensual touches that become rougher and rougher.

She pants into my mouth, and satisfied that wall she just tried to put up has fallen, I nip her lips, lapping at the offended area before I pull back, fingers still tangled in her hair. I yank at my tie and unbutton the last two buttons still intact, but I don’t move away. Not yet. I kiss her again, hard and fast, and while the resistance is gone, the taste of challenge remains on her lips, but it will soon be submission. She just doesn’t know it yet.

My hands go to her hips, and I lift her off the counter and pull her to me, molding every soft perfect female part of her to my harder body, one hand cupping her sweet little ass. My lips linger just above hers, and damn it, there is this deep ache in me for this woman that is unfamiliar, unwelcomed. The lies I’ve told her are a fist in my chest that I reject. I have to know the truth, and it’s not a truth someone just tells.

I squeeze her ass and then draw back and smack it, testing her, feeling out the depth of those nerves she showed me, her comfort level with where I might take her. Making a judgment on where I think she wants me to lead her. She doesn’t jolt with the impact. She doesn’t act shocked or angry. She leans into me, her body already submitting to me even if her mind has not, her hand covering my hand where it covers her breast. Her message is clear: She wants the kind of escape I’ve just offered. She wants me to push her to go to places that consume, to leave room for nothing else but the here and now. No fears. No nerves. No emotion, which I hope like hell does not include guilt.

Whatever particular sins she wishes to escape—and to me, emotions that control us are sins—she doesn’t just want someone to fuck. She wants that invisible something that she believes I can give her. After two years of trusting no one, she’s chosen to gamble on a man who’s here to expose more than her passion. If she is guilty of murder or blackmail, or both, I’m a master in every sense of the word. If she’s innocent, I’m a bastard in every sense of the word. I kiss her again, and this time there is anger on my tongue, accusation, my own lies, and maybe hers.

And when I pull back, my anger, my own torment over my actions, her trust, her possible sins and mine, have shifted the mood between us. Intensity that wasn’t there moments before pulses between us, a living thing, a band wrapping us, pulling us closer, but in a dark, volatile way. Her hands grip my arms, fingers flexing into my skin. Our breathing is ragged, heavy. I scoop her up, aware of how naked she is but for her thigh highs and her high heels, aware she is mine to own now, and mine to destroy if I so please. And she doesn’t know it. There is something powerful and arousing about this idea that I’m pretty sure makes me a sick fuck, and I’m accusing her of being no better—she just doesn’t know it. But I reject the guilt that pierces a tiny part of my black, steel heart for her and her alone. I’ll make being owned feel so good for her.

I carry her to the living room, but I don’t take her to the couch. I take her to the rug in front of the fireplace and lower her to her feet in front of me. She reaches for me, and damn, as much as I crave those hands on my skin, I resist and catch her wrists.

“You touch me when l say you can touch me from this point forward.”

Her eyes flash with defiance. “And if I don’t agree?”

“Then I don’t touch you.” I walk her to me, her elbows bending, arms resting between us. “We both know what you want from me.”

“Which is what?” she demands, a hint of vulnerability in her voice that I find sexy as hell.

“An adrenaline rush. The kind that pushes your limits but comes with a burn for more tomorrow, not with the regret your nerves fear I’ll give you. But your hard limit pushes for just that. It says, all or nothing tonight. It says, go there now or there is no chance to go there later. I won’t go there now just to live up to your hard limit.”

“I didn’t set sexual limits. I set a time limit.”

“If you didn’t have a sexual limit, you wouldn’t have gotten spooked earlier, and you wouldn’t have gone untouched for two years.”

“That two years has nothing to do with us tonight.”

“It does to me. You have limits. Someone broke them.”

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