by Pam Godwin
“Stabbed with a hot dog,” he deadpanned.
“His hot dog. It’s a fitting analogy, given your diet over the past month.”
“You’re a twisted bitch.” His nonchalant tone made her smile.
“I’m right about Rylee. Whatever her connection was to you and your friends, it was personal. You wouldn’t have returned to the states, otherwise.”
She wasn’t wrong, but he kept his face unexpressive.
“You haven’t been in the country for seven years.” She raised a brow.
Not true. He’d visited on three different occasions. Day trips, in and out. Evidently, they weren’t watching him closely enough.
Her thumb trailed along his bottom lip, her eyes locked on the movement. “Where have you been all this time?”
“Enjoying retirement.”
“You might’ve retired from a legitimate career, but I know you’re working with the Colombian cartel. You’ve made a name for yourself, Cole Hartman. How does it feel to be notorious in the criminal underworld?”
That was the intel she had on him? The gossip of crime lords and traffickers? He’d put most of those rumors out there himself. All smoke and mirrors to embellish the truth, incite fear, and mislead enemies away from what he was actually doing.
She had no idea he was part of a vigilante group or that his earlier career was in an organization that no one knew existed. That meant she didn’t have connections in the intelligence sectors. So how did she have access to those high-tech bugs?
“Who do you work for?” He nipped at her finger on his lip.
She yanked her hand back. “Tell me who bought—”
“No. I’m not going to tell you what you want to know, and you’re not going to let me go. We’re at an impasse, Lydia.” He flexed his thigh beneath her pert ass. “How long have I been here?”
“Thirty-one days.”
“How much time do you have left to complete the assignment?”
“Enough.”
“There’s always a deadline.” He made a tsking sound. “Something has to give.”
“You.” Her lashes lowered, fanning over porcelain cheekbones before lifting to expose the force of her magnetic glare. “You have to give.”
“When I don’t, you’ll take. Am I right?” He glanced at his restraints, his vulnerable position. “How much are you willing to take? How far down this dark hole are you willing to go?”
How evil are you, Lydia?
“All the way.” She slid off his lap and opened the button on his jeans. Then the zipper. Her eyes found his, and she yanked on the wet denim.
His stomach coiled. His skin grew hot, and his pulse took off at a sprint.
Enduring the soapy caress of her hands below his waist would be the absolute best and worst thing that could happen. It needed to happen. They needed to get personal and intimate and fucking filthy together, so he could break her open and fuck the stubbornness out of her.
At the same time, he had to remember that she was using the same strategy on him. She intended to ply him with her body, and all the while, he would let her believe she was the one in control.
Remaining aloof, he gave her no reaction as she wrestled with the heavy wet fabric. Her tits rose with shallow inhalations, the gorgeous swells testing the confines of her corset, testing him.
He didn’t move or lift his weight to help, but that didn’t stop her tenacious hands. Keeping a firm hold on his waistband, she wrenched the jeans down his legs and off, exposing the hardening evidence of his arousal.
Yeah, his fucking cock was excited.
Seven years of built-up excitement.
Physically, he was ready and raring to go.
Emotionally, he would never be up for it. He missed his girl. He just…
Christ, he deeply, unendurably missed her.
He shoved down all thoughts of Danni, concealing them behind a mask of indifference. But he couldn’t hide the erection. It jutted upward like a damn flagpole, begging for soft hands, a hot mouth, and a wet-ass pussy.
She didn’t spare him a glance and instead directed her attention to his largest and oldest tattoo. The black snake wrapped around his thigh from knee to hip, its head angled toward his foot with shimmering scales inked in meticulous detail.
“What’s the story on this?” She traced a finger along the curve of the serpent’s spine, making him harder, hotter.
“I’ll tell you about the snake if you tell me about the swallow.”
Her hand went to her chest and dropped just as quickly, her expression empty.
He was convinced now, more than ever, that she wasn’t a trained sex spy. While she excelled at putting on an act, she hadn’t mastered the unresponsive austerity of a swallow. She reacted emotionally on impulse. It was subtle, but he caught the little twitches and nuances before she blanked her face.
Maybe she was pretending to be a swallow? But for what reason? The same reason she left him in the dark to fantasize about her for a month?
Because she was fucking with him. Or trying to.
He relaxed against the pallet, curious to see what she would do next.
She washed him. Starting at his feet, she worked her way up his legs. When he halfheartedly tried to kick her, she gripped his knee to hold him down and slid her fingers along his inner thigh.
Heat swept through him as her hands roamed where Danni’s had gone before. In rigid silence, he watched her clean his cock and learn the shape of him, her fingers traveling the same path Danni’s mouth had been so many times, so long ago.
He fought down the noises that tried to crawl from his throat. Noises of objection. And consent. And reprehensible guilt.
His molars clenched tight, his breaths snapping past his teeth in choppy bursts. Pleasure fused with torment, his body warring with his mind. He wanted it. He didn’t want it.
He needed to focus before he fucking lost it.
The ends of her hair brushed his skin, tickling his legs as she lathered and laved. There was no seduction in her touch, the scrubbing efficient and impersonal. Coldly detached.
She wasn’t trying to tease him. This was a bath, nothing more. Yet, it was everything.
He throbbed, burning for her. He thought he might die if he didn’t get inside her. At the same time, he didn’t want her. She was the wrong woman. She wasn’t his girl.
Christ, he needed to man the fuck up and get over that. Right now.
Logic over emotion, his mind was in control.
He was going to survive. And to do that, he had to do her.
It was just sex.
If Cole remained in control, if he kept himself detached, he could use it as a weapon.
Not an easy undertaking with Lydia’s warmth bearing down upon him, so achingly close, shocking his system. Her sweet cherry scent drugged his inhales. Her beauty, even smothered in makeup, drew him in like a supernatural spell.
She washed every inch of his rigid cock, his balls, and farther back, into the recesses of his crack, her fingers like tiny knives slicing their way through his dignity.
Then she took away her touch, her intoxicating heat, and stepped back. With the hose in hand, she sprayed him off like an animal, her stance and expression matching the blast of the water. Cold, aggressive, merciless.
Something felt off about her. She was normally closed-off, but this was different. She suddenly looked way too wooden, her gaze too unfocused, as if she’d retreated into her head. Either she was trying to put herself in a zone, or she was having second thoughts about seducing him.
By the time she shut off the water, she’d completely killed his erection.
The hose dangled from her hand, her gaze fixed over his shoulder, staring at nothing.
“Lydia.”
She blinked. Her brow creased, and her eyes went to his mouth, then lower, taking a winding trip from his chest to his soft dick. “I don’t want to do this.”
Yes, she did. But not for the reason in which she’d been hired.
“Tell me what’s on it.”
“If I do, will you give me—?”
“No.”
She pulled in a breath, standing taller, her posture vibrating with indignation. Then she tossed the hose, turned on her heel, and strode toward the door.
She was leaving.
Dread slammed into him, exploding his pulse. He couldn’t spend another month in the dark. Goddammit, he couldn’t lose this opportunity with her.
“You’re scared,” he said to her retreating backside.
She stopped, her spine stiff as she cast a scowl over her shoulder. “Excuse me?”
“You scrubbed me clean because you intended to seduce me. Because you have it in your head that if you wrap that hot little cunt around my dick, my brain will fry, and I’ll tell you everything I know. The problem with that plan is you want me. Not just to milk me for information. You want to milk my cock because you’re wet for it. You’ve been wet for me since the day I tied the soaked crotch of your underwear around my hand.”
She slowly pivoted, facing him with flames in her eyes. “I am not—”
“It scares you, this reckless infatuation you have with me. It scares you so much you’re running.”
As expected, she gasped, mouth gaping and features twisted in fury. “You arrogant son of a—”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m going to fuck you. I’ll fuck you so completely that shit on your face will smear and drip off. You’ll lose the fake eyelashes like the piercing in your lip. I’m going to fuck you until there are holes in your stockings, tangles in your hair, and bite marks marring those creamy tits. I’m going to ravage you, ruin you, and I’ll do it all while my hands are still bound in rope.”
She sucked in sharply, nostrils flaring, and smoothed her palms down her short skirt.
Oh, yeah, she was pissed and trying so hard to keep it in check.
Hiding his smile, he waited for it, for her wrath, her passion, and the complete erosion of her composure.
She didn’t disappoint.
“You really think because you’re a strong, virile man…” She charged toward him, sauntering in her exquisite rage. “That I must surely be dripping down my legs? And that because I’m a woman, I must be quivering in fear of my sexual desires? That this is about me stifling my urges rather than taking matters into my own hands? That’s the conclusion you’re drawing?”
Blood surged to his cock, his balls tightening with every seething word, every assertive step she made in his direction. He held still, his chin tilted up. But he couldn’t school his breathing. His lungs danced, heaving enthusiastically in the hellfire of her unholy glare.
“And that because you’re a man…” She climbed onto his naked lap, straddling him with her weight on her knees. “It must be you who does the fucking?”
That word, rasped on her tongue, made him outrageously, painfully hard. He would have to tread with care if he were to last until the end of this.
“You think I should swallow my perceived fear and beg you to ravage me?” She reached between them, wrapped a hand around his cock, and viciously, angrily stroked him. “Do I look scared to you, Cole? Do I look infatuated with your superior manliness? Hmm?”
She yanked hard on his cock, wrenching a grunt from his throat. Her vicious tugging grew meaner, rougher, aggressively working him into a lather.
He pressed his lips together to trap his groans, unleashing ragged exhales through his nose. His muscles contracted, hardening and heating as he fought the onslaught of pleasure and pain.
Her eyes stayed with him, blazing with censure as she lowered herself, lower, closer, until the wet silk between her legs pushed against the crown of his erection, still held cruelly in her fist.
Trapped in the restraints, he couldn’t stop her. Not that he would. With a few taunting words, he’d deliberately goaded her into running back and finishing this.
But the position made him uncomfortable, his need for dominance burning violently through his body. He craved control and fought the compulsion to aim himself and quest about until he impaled her.
He had to let her do this, let her believe she held the reins. If she suspected otherwise, he would be back in that cell at once.
She regarded him as if searching for subterfuge. Of course, she knew it was there. But she would ignore it. She wanted this too badly.
Do it, he commanded with his eyes.
Her fingers drove under the barrier of her underwear, shoving the crotch aside. He couldn’t see beneath the skirt, but he felt her spreading the soft flesh of her cunt. While her hand was moving, she lifted a knee, squatting over him in a more dominant position, and met his eyes.
He held his breath. She seemed to be holding hers. Then she pounded down hard, plunging the full length of him into soaking wet paradise.
Scalding hot.
Inconceivably tight.
Blinding rapture.
Holy God in heaven, he was inside her, inside a woman for the first time in seven years. He didn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
He’d forgotten what it felt like. Over the years, he’d recalled the sensations, the incomparable ecstasy of a pussy sucking and gripping his cock. But his recollections paled by comparison. Nothing in memory had ever felt this goddamn magnificent.
Then she moved, ripping the air from his lungs. Her hips caught a diabolical rhythm, circling, grinding, and flattening him to the pallets. Her hands anchored against his palms, pressing his tethered arms to the wood slats on either side of his head.
He squeezed her clenched fists, and a scalding noise rose from her chest. He couldn’t help it. He groaned with her, throwing his head back while watching her from beneath heavy eyelids.
She was the most wickedly erotic creature he had ever encountered, her thick, spiral-curling red hair tangling around a voluptuous rack and clinging to a heart-shaped face dominated by the scornful eyes of a femme fatale.
Her cheeks flushed with the exertion of her thrusts, her complexion smooth and pale as cream. She was as petite and light as a flower, but there was nothing fragile about her. She slammed down on his shaft with venom, every ram of her hips meant to punish not reward, her fingers stabbing into his hands, her face streaked with contempt.
She used him like a piston, burying his shaft to the hilt, up and down, push and pull, her pace feral, shimmering with hostility. The heavy globes of her tits bounced with aggression until a nipple popped free, the little pink bead hard enough to cut glass.
Perspiration leaked black rivers from her eyes, her lip gloss faded from the swipes of her tongue. Sunlight poked through the smudges of the overhead windows, slanting across her face and rendering her almost immortal, like a dark Fae princess from another world and era. Ethereal. Deceitful. Tragic.
He’d never seen anything more beautiful.
His attraction defied reason. She was everything Danni wasn’t. Salty instead of sweet. Calculated instead of free-spirited. Her makeup and tattoos lent her a hard, artificial appearance, not the soft, natural look he preferred. And her heart was cold and closed-off. Not warm. Definitely not attainable.
Or maybe she just wanted him to think that.
Bowing into him, she rode his cock and huffed strangled gasps of air against his mouth. She was so close he wanted to kiss her. Almost as much as he wanted to bite her and make her bleed.
Instead, he lifted into her vigorous need, grunting, ramming his hips, and washing them both with brutal sensations. All else ceased to exist, everything but her body, her breaths, and the intensity of her livid gaze.
Her eyes were like pieces of kryptonite, deep green and luminescent, weakening him by the second. His dick wanted release. His mind wouldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t give in.
But as they moved together, their tempos syncing and gazes locked, he felt a sliding sensation. Dee
p in his chest, he felt a tilting, tumbling avalanche that had nothing to do with the earthquaking motion of their bodies.
Before his brain caught up, his mouth was on her, kissing her so thoroughly he damn near exploded inside her.
He didn’t pull away. He couldn’t. She kissed him back with the same desperation, and the feel of her tongue rubbing and tangling with his was all that mattered.
They melted together, holding each other hostage with their mouths, their thrusts, and harmonious tremors in their bodies. Her hands moved to his face, fingers clamping firmly around his jaw, her lips crashing against his with the force of her passion.
Lost in the throes of frenzied lust, she used him for her pleasure. It was the moment he’d been waiting for, watching her get worked up, feeling his cock sink past her defenses, and knowing her race to completion was no longer about the job and all about the demands of her body.
At that moment, he held the control. He’d mastered her with his hands tied.
Breaking the kiss, he leaned back and admired his handiwork.
She stopped moving, her cheeks flushed, and her snug little pussy clenched spasmodically around his buried cock. She released shallow, rapid-fire breaths and blinked slowly, with great effort, as if struggling to concentrate.
When she realized what she’d done, that she’d lost control of herself, her expression hardened.
Was she angry? Oh, fuck yeah. Ten strangling little expressions of her rage curled around his throat, her blunt nails pressing against his airway in a bid to choke him.
Just as quickly, she regained her composure, released his neck, and shoved his face away.
But she wasn’t finished.
Rising on her knees, she pulled off of his cock. He bobbed against her thigh, wanting back in as she reached under her skirt and swept her fingers along the flesh he still hadn’t seen.
Her free hand went to his shoulder, holding her upper body steady as she proceeded to rub her cunt. Her knuckles brushed against his unspent cock, teasing him as she chased her release. She shook with the effort, moaning, muscles straining, lashes fluttering, her eyes smoldering with animosity.
