Page 57 of Ruby Malice

“Stop it,” she hisses.

I stand up. Without even trying, I loom large over her, casting her in shadow. “Have you been thinking about it since the night I drove you home? The night you kissed me?”

“But we didn’t—I did not kiss you!” she splutters.

“But you wanted to,” I tell her as a point of fact. “You wish you had. You fell asleep thinking about it. About what it would have been like for me to touch you. How it would feel to be under me.”

Her chest rises and falls in heavy pants. I can practically see her pulse thrumming in her neck. Her body is whirring like a well-oiled machine about to burst. I just have to wait for the moment when all of this passion funnels into lust.

Suddenly, Rayne takes a step forward. We’re almost chest to chest. The rise and fall of her breath brings her within millimeters of making contact.

“The only thing I’ve been thinking about is what kind of man you are,” she breathes. “And what kind of nightmares you keep on the third floor.”

The question takes me by surprise. But everything about Rayne takes me by surprise.

“I bet that bothers the hell out of you,” I remark. “Not knowing everything.”

“It bothers me that I work for a man I hardly know,” she says. “It bothers me that you could be a criminal.”

I nod seriously. “That could be bothersome, indeed.”

Her hand flattens against my chest. Her fingers press into me. We both lean into the touch without thinking. “Don’t do that. Don’t dismiss me. Tell me the truth.”

I lower my chin. When I speak, my breath stirs her chestnut hair. “You want me to tell you what’s on the third floor?”

She nods. “Yes.”

“Okay. I will.”

She starts to lower her hand, but I press my palm against her skin and hold her there.

We can both feel my heart beating.

The steady drumming rhythm.

Ba-boom.

Ba-boom.

“Upstairs on the third floor,” I whisper, my voice getting softer with every syllable, “is myrealbedroom. The red and black room you described so accurately earlier. With chains on the walls and silk sheets and crates of toys and debauchery that make this box of lingerie look like child’s play.”

Her eyes are round, trained on me. She almost looks frozen.

“It’s my den,” I continue. “Where I act out all my darkest fantasies. Where I unleash my primal urges. The woman I’ve had chained up there is used up, spent from all the things I did to her. And I’m looking for a new toy. Would you care to take the role?”

Rayne lets my words wash over her. Then she blinks. And it’s like she’s coming out of a daze.

All of a sudden, she yanks her hand away and pulls back. “That is not funny.”

I keep my face blank. “Who said I was joking?”

Her eyes narrow. “Even if you were being serious—which I know you aren’t—I wouldn’t touch you or your den of debauchery with a forty-foot pole.”

I pout out my lower lip in an exaggerated facsimile of being offended. “I know I look big and strong, Rayne, but monsters have feelings, too.”

“Not you,” she retorts. “Everyone and everything is a game to you. You don’t take anything seriously. And I’m not a fucking game; I’m a person. I’m a human goddamn being.”

“You’re my employee.”

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