Page 113 of There Are No Saints

Me whose voice comes out in harsh rasp as I say, “Are you willing to bet your life on that?”

Mara climbs up on the table, laying down beneath the light. She gazes upward, her tender body exposed and vulnerable.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” she says.

The closer I get to her, the more I can smell her scent rising off that bare skin. It makes my heart race. My mouth water. Under the stark light, I see the veins running beneath her skin. All that warm, hot blood pumping fast with every beat of her heart.

I stoop and lift the restraints attached to the table legs.

Perhaps there is some mercy in me, because I hold up the manacle, giving her one last chance.

“Are you sure?”

She looks into my eyes, believing that she sees something there.

Then she holds out her wrist to me.

“I want you,” she says. “And you want me.”

I close the manacle around her wrist, hearing it lock in place.

“Now I have you,” I say.

* * *

30

Mara

The terror that surges through me as that manacle closes around my wrist is like nothing I’ve ever known. I’m Mia Wallace now—stabbed in the heart with pure adrenaline.

Every nerve fires up, my senses higher than they’ve ever been. I feel Cole’s breath flowing across my skin. I feel the heat of his hands long before they touch me.

He clamps my wrists down to the table, and then my ankles. Then, slowly, he turns a crank, winching my legs apart.

I gasp as the cool air hits my bare pussy. I want to shriek, I want to squirm, but I refuse do it. Cole is a predator. If I show the slightest hint of fear, it will ignite his instinct to hunt.

Cole looks down at me. He’s never looked more beautiful than in this dazzling light. He really is a dark angel, biblical in power and in wrath.

His gaze is locked on me and me alone. Those black eyes crawl over every inch of me, searing my skin. His upper lip tightens, baring his teeth.

“You know I watched the video of you fucking that guy,” he says, softly.

I hold his stare, unembarrassed. “That’s why I brought him to the studio. So you’d have to watch.”

“How many times do you think I watched that tape?”

I swallow hard. I hadn’t considered that he’d view it more than once.

“I don’t know.”

“Over a hundred, Mara. Over and over and over again.”

My skin goes cold, then flaming hot.

He strokes the hair back from my forehead with disturbing gentleness. “Why do you think I watched it so many times?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

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