by Callie Hart
“What…what are you doing?”
“You need to see,” he says curtly. The door’s still open behind me, and I know I should use it, turn around and walk right back out of it, but something about the way he pins his dark gaze on me has me rooted to the spot. Our interaction since we met again forty-eight hours ago has been based on a system of theft, threats and dares, but now it feels like a barrier is coming down and something honest is about to happen. That thought in itself is so confronting that I want to run and hide. His suit jacket comes off, and he hangs it over the shadow of a high-backed chair beside him. He then unbuttons his shirt, which strains against his shoulders, the material drawn tight over his arms as he bends them to free each fastener from the neck down. Underneath the shirt he’s wearing a black singlet that hugs his torso, clinging to every ripped inch of him. He looks like a goddamn UFC fighter. His skin is pale, ivory marked with splashes of black—tattoos. He looks up at me from under his drawn eyebrows and I feel the need to wipe my slick palms against my dress. Hot damn. I kind of hate him, but his larger-than-life presence, his magnetism, the way he looks at me like he’s already inside me…he slays me.
In a swift and frankly mesmerising motion he rips the singlet from his body, tearing the thing over his head to reveal a wall of muscle that flexes, each individual part of him working together as he moves. There are four or five small tattoos across his chest, aside from the ones marking his arms, but they’re tough to make out. A huge fleur de lis rides just above his hip, though—that one is easy enough to make out, along with the eagle over his left pec, its wings outstretched. Script writing dips down around his neck, elaborate wording I can’t quite discern. He steps forward, and I step back, holding my breath. I’m hovering in the doorway now, and Zeth’s movement has brought him into the light, but only really halfway. The front of his body, his chest, his defined stomach, the deeply cut V that slices over his hipbones and disappears down below his belt, is bathed in light from the hallway. The rest of him is cast in shadows.
“This,” he says, pointing to his abdomen, “is where I was stabbed the first time.” I can see the bruised color of the scar he’s pointing to, and my body remembers. It remembers his body. If I closed my eyes, I would know what that scar feels like. I’ve relived touching it so many times when I’m on my own in the dark. My fingers tingle with the echo of the memory, how it feels rigid and tight. “These two were the second time,” he says, trailing his own hand down over his skin. The scars aren’t neat and tidy like the first one; they’re jagged edged and angry-looking, two inches long and almost purple. They definitely weren’t stitched properly. It’s typical that he’s showing me this and my inner monologue, ever the professional, is critiquing the handiwork of whoever saw to saving his life. I could have done a much better job.
“And this is where I got shot.” He angles himself so that his upper body moves a little farther into the light, and I immediately see the red, swollen wound a couple of inches below his collar bone. So close to puncturing his lung. Another inch and it would have caused some serious, maybe irreparable damage. The wound is obviously still damned fresh. I can’t help but gasp.
“When did that happen? Why?”
Zeth carefully takes my hand and draws me to him. My feet are trying to stay glued to the spot, but the rest of my body sinks toward him like it’s been inevitable this whole time. He places my hand over his bullet wound, staring me in the eye. His skin is searing hot, so hot it feels like my hand is on fire. “’Bout three weeks ago,” he says softly. “And it happened because the guy I was sent to kill didn’t feel like going quietly.”
Fuck! I try to pull my hand away, but he clasps hold of it so tight, pinning it to his skin, that I can’t go anywhere.
“This is my world. It’s a world where people get shanked and shot on a regular basis. It’s dark. It’s scary. People die. If your sister has been sucked into this world, do you think she’s survived it?”
Tears well in my eyes. I want to hit him. I want to smash my fist into his face so hard I feel bones break—his or mine, it doesn’t really matter. I’m so enraged that I actually do lash out, but with my open palm. I slap him so hard his face snaps to the side and my hand stings like a bitch. When Zeth’s head rolls back to face me, a slow and considered movement, I’ve already started panicking. There’s a tiny stain of blood on his lower lip where I split his skin. My heart hiccups, already well aware that I made a really stupid move. A really, really stupid move.
“I thought you didn’t want to play, Sloane,” he growls. Still holding onto my hand, he starts to back into the room, pulling me with him. This is the most afraid I’ve ever been in my life. I tug back against him but he doesn’t let go. He moves quickly, bending and picking me up so fast I don’t have time to scream. In three long strides he closes the distance between the door and the bed and dumps me onto it, still picking me over with those almost black eyes.
“I swear to God, if you rape me I’ll kill you,” I spit.
Zeth makes a feral snarl in the back of his throat, wild and dangerous. “I don’t force women, Sloane. If we have sex, it’ll be because you want to.”
“Is that why you’ve just thrown me onto this bed?”
“I threw you onto the bed because you hit me and that was very bad of you, but I’ve decided to make you a deal.”
I eye the doorway. It’s only ten feet away, but I doubt I could make it without him tackling me. “What do you mean, a deal?”
He crouches down besides the bed and I’m transported back to the hotel room again, but this time I can see the inquisitive, knowing look on his face. His powerful jawline puts most men to shame, and coupled with the other unique elements that make up his face—dark eyebrows, dimpled chin, pouting lips, a cheekbone structure more women would die for—he is probably the most savagely beautiful human being I have ever seen. It’s not his looks that freeze my limbs to stone, though. It’s the way he looks at me, like for this split second I am the sole focus of his entire world.
“I want to ask you two questions,” he says carefully. “And then you can stay here and do what I tell you to do, or you can leave. You can go home and forget all about this and me and what you’ve seen here tonight. It will be your choice.”
Seems like a no brainer. I don’t think he’s lying to me—I believe without a doubt that he’ll let me walk right on out of here. I can see it in his eyes. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he says. A thrill of nerves tingles through me when he rises and sits on the very edge of the bed; he leans over and places his left hand beside my head, supporting his weight so that he hovers above me. “Have you had sex with anyone since me?”
What the hell kind of question is that? He waits patiently for me to answer while I feign anger over the indignity of the question. He doesn’t seem to care that he’s pissed me off. He’s just waiting for my answer, and the sooner I tell him then the sooner I can go. Fine. I have no reason to lie to him, so I tell him the truth. “No. I haven’t had sex with anyone since you.”
Zeth’s only reaction to this is a crinkling at the corner of his eyes when he narrows them at me. “Good. Thank you for telling me the truth. And now answer me this and if you still want to go, you can…”
I suck in a breath and hold it. This is going to be messed up, I just know it.
“Back when we first met, I told you that you had to own me or I would own you. You’ve been thinking about what that would be like ever since then.”
“No, I haven’t.” My voice shakes so bad I sound like a terrified little girl. Zeth tuts.
“You did so well just now when you told me the truth. Don’t ruin it now, Sloane. And that wasn’t my question. I was telling you that because I know it’s true.” He lowers himself down so slowly as he speaks, until his face is a mere inch away from mine. He tips his head to the side and dips lower, buzzing his nose along the side of my jaw, inhaling slowly and then exhaling, so that his hot breath sends a shiver through my body so power
ful that I have to lock my muscles to stop it. “You haven’t been able to get me out of your head. You think about me all the time, wondering who I am, where I am, what I’m doing, who I’m fucking.” He breathes that last word directly into my ear, and my legs clamp together. “At night, when you’re alone, when you touch yourself, I’m the one you’re wet for. And this whole time you’ve been wondering…wondering what it would have been like to have me own you that night. What I would have done to you. How I would have made you mine. So my last question for you, Sloane, is this: are you strong enough to admit that this is what you want? Are you brave enough to find out?”
I feel stripped bare. It’s like Zeth has somehow found a way inside my mind and read all of my most personal thoughts. He has no way of knowing those things about me, but he says them with such an unequivocal certainty that I know he knows it’s true. And it is. Fuck. I close my eyes, trying to breath through the panic. Panic due to Zeth hovering over me, pure sex and malice wrapped up in one blisteringly hot, tattooed package.
“I—I don’t want that, Zeth.”
If he’s disappointed, he shows no sign. He sits back, giving me some space. “Fair enough. It’s been a very pleasant visit, then, Sloane, but it’s time you were going.”
I sit up, watching him. He’s serious. He really is going to let me go. I slowly swing my legs from the bed, tensing, ready, just in case this is all some kind of trick. He stands and picks up his dress shirt, slipping his arms through the sleeves. It hangs open as he collects his cuff links from a dark, anonymous piece of furniture. The outline of him, the tattoos, the face, the open shirt…he has every right to the animalistic and deeply sexual way that he moves. It’s not an attitude. I can tell that already. It’s just who he is.
“Well?” he asks.
“What…” I can’t wrestle the words out. I hate that I’m even thinking them. “What are you going to do after I leave?”
Zeth walks back to the bed, comes to stand right in front of me. My eyes are level with his belly button, which is just about goddamn perfect (how the hell does a man have a perfect belly button?). He curls his index finger and tucks it under my chin, lifting my face so that our eyes meet across the length of his torso.
“I’m going to go out there and drink some champagne and then I’m going to find someone who wants to play.”
“Play?”
“Yeah. Not fucking chess, Sloane. Someone who wants me to fuck them until they can’t see straight. Someone who’ll let me sink my tongue into their pussy. Someone who’ll let me taste them. Someone who’ll let me restrain them and scare the living shit out of them. Someone who likes that. I was hoping it was going to be you tonight, but…”
I swallow.
I swallow again. My throat feels like I’ve inhaled the fucking Sahara Desert. I have to get out of here before I do something stupid. I stand up so quickly, Zeth has to step back to avoid injury. “I—I have work tomorrow. I—” I hurry to the door, fighting for…what? The strength to leave?
“Ahem.”
He’s washed in pale yellow light when I turn around. “I think you’re forgetting something.” He bends and picks up my medical bag, lifting it in front of him. He smirks when he sees the look on my face. “Y’know…you can stay if you want to, Sloane. You don’t need to actually say the words. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re strong.”
I walk back to him, staring him straight in the eye. I can’t…I can’t do this. I’m not this type of person. Am I? Do I even know who I am? He offers me the handle of my bag, arching an eyebrow at me. “What’s it gonna be, brave girl? You want the bag, or you want me?”
He said I didn’t have to say the words. He said it didn’t make me weak. But maybe…God, maybe, just for a second I want to be weak. I’ve been strong for the past two years. I was strong when Lexi was taken. I was strong when I gave up my virginity in order to find her. I was strong when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to save her. I am so sick of being strong. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, already regretting what I’m about to do.
I shift around him and sink down onto the edge of the bed.
Zeth’s low voice breaks the silence, a rich, electrifying sound.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
This girl’s a ticking fucking time bomb, and she’s about to go off in this bed. I’m gonna make sure of it, if only to reward her for not pissing her pants when I told her I killed someone less than a month ago. Most girls would have reacted, but not her. I’m not blind—I know that I scare her. That just means she’s not a fucking moron, though. There are a small percentage of women out there who wouldn’t care that I take people’s lives when the occasion calls for it; they’re the ones I like to term fucking mental. Why would I want to screw an unhinged person?
Sloane has a healthy fear or me, and that suits me just fine. She doesn’t know what she’s just signed herself up for, though, not really, which positively fucking thrills me. I’m still sticking to my scare the living shit out her plan, but the greedy side of me wants her to enjoy it a little first. I might just enjoy it a little, too.
I smile like the cat that got the fucking cream when she tells me yes. I knew she would; there is no reality in which she was ever going to say no. I stand up, leaving her rigid on the bed, and walk over to the doorway.
“Stand up,” I tell her. She moves slowly, watching me, like she’s waiting for me to morph into some kind of monster or something. Poor pet. She should already know this is what a monster looks like. Once she’s standing, I lean against the doorframe and fold my arms across my chest.
“Strip.”
She wants to say no. I can see it on her face, but she’s trying hard not to upset me, too. She takes a hold of the hem of the tiny, skin-tight black dress she’s wearing and hikes it up enough to show me that she’s wearing proper stockings and a garter belt. I’m fucking crowing on the inside. No girl wears that shit unless she knows she’s getting fucked. Sloane can deny it all she wants to, but she knew this was happening tonight. Her fingers move carefully over the catches on the suspenders and then she props her foot up onto the bed, gently sliding the stockings first down her right leg and then her left. Her measured movements aren’t because she’s a master of strip tease—they’re because she’s shitting her pretty little lace panties—but she’s having the same effect on me regardless. My dick is throbbing in my pants as I watch her, but I don’t touch it. I won’t touch it for a while yet.
“Now the dress.”
She wriggles out of the dress, easing it up over her body, and my hands twitch as I imagine her fingers are mine. I would have removed the dress differently, though. I’d have torn that shit right off her. Her hair tumbles around her shoulders like a goddamn waterfall when the dress comes over her head. I was right about the underwear: she is wearing black lace panties, and a matching lace bra, too. That’s just too fucking good. Eli, the disgusting shit, had told her to wear black lace when I’d come to her before, told her that’s what would make me happy, and here she is standing right in front of me in black lace. That speaks volumes.
“Pull your bra down,” I command. She looks startled, like she’s finally realizing what she’s doing and she wants to get the hell out of here. I wouldn’t stop her if she tried but then again I don’t want to advertise the fact. Now that we find ourselves in this position, I need satisfaction. “Do it, Sloane. If you don’t, you’ll be punished.”
Her hazel eyes, just visible in the light spilling in from behind me, grow extra round. She doesn’t say anything, though. On the inside I’m clapping her courage as she slips the straps of her bra from her shoulders and pushes the whole thing down to reveal her breasts. They are big, natural and perfect, just how I remember them from our night together. I may have given her shit for it, but she’s not the only one who’s coveted our experience in the dark. I’ve licked and sucked at those tits, but I’ve always been sore that I never got to see them. Until now.
Her ni
pples pucker as I stare at them, trying to keep my thoughts from my face. It’s not a hard job, really—I’m a master of intimidation, and this shit is child’s play. Her body is incredible, perfect in every way, but I don’t let her see that. My role here is to remain as clinical as possible.
“Now lie back onto the bed.”
She teeters backward, still in her low heels, and sits stiffly back onto the bed. Oh, dear…she’s still a little uncomfortable. Time to fix that. Time to strip every ounce of self-consciousness from her until she’s putty in my hands. There’s only one way to accomplish such a feat, and that’s to make her body mine, so she doesn’t even think of it as her own anymore. There will only be one thought, one desire in her world, and that will be to please me.
I reach out and drag her body toward me, pulling her legs back to the edge of the bed so I can position myself in between them. I sit on my heels, grinning when I see she thinks I’m going to go down on her. No such luck, sweetheart.
“Touch yourself, Sloane.”
“Wh—what?”
The little mouse is scared. I pinch the inside of her thigh hard enough for her to flinch. “Touch yourself.”
I’m astonished when she does as she’s told. Her small hand darts between her legs and she begins to rub herself over her panties. That’s good, but not good enough. I growl, pressing my thumb into the skin where I pinched her a second ago. She pauses, and I can see her close her eyes. The hand goes underneath the panties this time, and she stifles a whimper.
“Good girl.” I pull her panties to one side so I can see what she’s doing, and I’m momentarily glad she has her eyes closed, because I slip. For the first time in forever, I slip. The sight of her middle finger working the slick flesh between her legs, teasing over her clit, is enough to make me groan. I have to ball up my fist and bite down on my knuckles to stop the sound from escaping me. A shadow falls across the doorway, blocking out the light, and Sloane’s hand immediately freezes. Her eyes snap open and we both turn—two of my guests have come exploring, a guy in a tiger mask and a tall, leggy blonde with a short, sparkly black dress. The girl is still wearing her simple golden mask, but the bottom half of her face is uncovered. Her mouth parts into a seductive smile when she sees what’s going on inside our little room.
