by Hettie Ivers
He shook his head, a smile playing on his lips. “You make it sound so sordid, baby.”
It was sordid!
“Can I help it if I’m used to getting my way all the time?” he reasoned outlandishly. “Is it my fault I’ve been so efficient at getting people to do whatever I’ve wanted throughout my lifetime?”
I couldn’t begin to tackle that one without a higher degree in abnormal psychology.
“Milena, keep in mind I have the power to compel you to do anything I want. I don’t have to ask for your cooperation, much less go to the trouble of holding Raul’s life over your head in order to extort it.”
Wow. Was that meant to reassure me somehow?
“It would be far easier to erase Raul from your memory,” he said with an insouciant shrug. “I could simply vanquish every feeling you’ve ever held in your heart for him throughout your lifetime, and command you to do as I please.”
I stopped breathing. Panic engulfed me and an icy chill seized my heart. I was at the mercy of a supernatural sociopath.
His features contorted into an indignant scowl as he observed my reaction. “Milena, I said could,” he mollified, angling my chin to allow his black eyes to capture and hold my watery blue ones. “I was trying to explain—fuck … I’m not entirely soulless.” He appeared genuinely offended that I should think so little of him.
Seriously?
“My point was simply that there are far easier, faster methods at my disposal for gaining what I want.”
I clenched my jaw and chose to nod in stoic resignation rather than argue the point that I’d sooner let my brain implode fighting his mind invasion before I’d allow him to vanquish Raul’s memory from my heart.
“But I don’t want it to be like that with you,” he continued, his eyes seeking some kind of understanding as they assessed me. “I want you willing. I want you … happy,” he admitted after a strained pause where he seemed embarrassed or confused himself by this revelation.
My eyes rolled in exasperation before I could stop them, regardless of the evident sincerity behind his declaration.
“How can you claim such a thing? When you’ve taken away my choice?”
He had the grace to chuckle in recognition of this very obvious contradiction. “It’s complicated. Just because I want to do the honorable thing by you, doesn’t mean I’m entirely willing or capable of it as yet.”
I willed myself not to pull a disgusted face.
“This is new for me. And I’m trying. But I need you to be a little patient,” he said, as if he weren’t asking me for much. “I’m used to women clamoring to please me,” he expounded without so much as a shred of modesty. “Believe it or not, most females tend to find me rather charming and will eagerly give me anything and everything I want before I even ask.”
I didn’t even attempt to suppress my next exaggerated eye-roll at his arrogance and self-delusion. The man had zero shame.
“Uh … yeah—because I’m pretty sure they’re afraid you’re going to kill them … or Cujo-attack them … or blow their brains up … err … whatever”—I exhaled, shaking my head in revulsion—“if they don’t do what you want!”
His eyes widened at my reprehension, and then he erupted into a fit of unexpectedly boisterous mirth that shook the whole bed as he rolled off of me onto his back.
“Possibly!” he conceded with a beaming, irritatingly mesmerizing grin. “Possibly you’re onto something with that theory, princess.”
He leaned back up onto his elbow on his side. “But possibly in time you’ll learn to crave me as others have, and then you might never be able to get enough.”
Cue gag reflex.
“I’m immune to the charms of your pathological narcissism, Alex,” I informed him with a tight smile as I rolled onto my side, facing him. I took a restorative breath and mustered up all the courage I possessed.
“But I will agree to be patient and give you a chance,” I lied. “And I’ll promise not to hurt myself again, if,” I stipulated, my eyes locking bravely with his, “you agree to feed me this instant.”
He grinned. “Done.”
“And … you agree to bring Raul here within the next forty-eight hours.”
His smile faltered, but he nodded slowly in accord after a stressful pause.
“And one last thing …”—I swallowed my nerves—“I need your promise that you’ll honor Felix’s trade and spare his son Celio’s life.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
His features shuttered. “No.” It was cold. Final.
“But—”
“No.” He’d said it calmly enough, but his eyes spoke to the treacherous territory I was attempting to traverse, silently warning me off my present course.
“But why?” I pushed regardless. “It’s not fair!”
“No.”
“But if you’re going to keep me, you should honor Felix’s trade!”
He leaned closer, his dark eyes alight with foreboding. “Ask me one more time and you won’t see Raul for months.”
It took superhuman effort to bite my tongue and check the words I so desperately wanted to hurl at him.
He was impossible! With a loud groan of exasperation, I flipped 180 degrees onto my opposite side, facing away from him to stew in my own outrage.
He gave me about a minute to sulk before I felt the mattress dip and sensed his heat along my spine as he edged closer. His fingers smoothed over my hair, idly brushing it from my shoulder. “Let it go. We can talk more while you eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I grumbled into the pillow.
“Milena, do not presume to understand circumstances of which you have severely limited knowledge,” he lectured.
Supercilious prick!
“What do you even know about Felix or his son?” he challenged.
I knew enough to know that Felix was dead and that his eighteen-year-old son would soon be, too, if I didn’t convince Alex otherwise.
“I’m not hungry! Unnecessary executions have a way of turning my stomach.”
His hand snaked around my waist, slipping underneath my pajama shirt to span my bare stomach. I startled and froze as his fingers spread out across the expanse of my flesh. His thumb rubbed back and forth over my belly button in a stirring caress.
“You are hungry.” He stated it as fact. “And I want to cook for you,” he added, to my astonishment. “Let me show you around a little. You’ve been inside too long. You’ll feel better after you get some fresh air.”
I was hungry. And more than desperate to leave the confines of Alex’s rooms as well as escape this awkwardly close embrace that was proving more so by the second. His words were gentle and persuasive, but I didn’t miss the underlying cautionary tone that said he wasn’t about to take no for an answer. I held no delusions he wouldn’t drag me out of bed by my hair and force-feed me if necessary.
And yet, I couldn’t stop myself. I remained too angry to panic over possible repercussions.
“I said I’m not hungry anymore,” I sassed over my shoulder.
“Milena, you’re an absurdly lousy liar. And the lying and the tantrums need to stop now,” he counseled as if reprimanding a child.
Oh, my God, was he serious? Me? All he ever did was throw temper tantrums!
“Why don’t we eat something and talk this out like adults?” he suggested, sounding every bit the patronizing asshole he was.
I decided to ignore him altogether in favor of contemplating the odds of pulling off a hunger strike while under the watchful eyes of mind-manipulating, mood-compelling psychopaths. It could work …
When I didn’t respond, he sidled closer until he was spooning me from behind, his hard chest pressed over my back, his chin at my crown. His hand on my stomach pulled me back into him until my ass was nestled up against his groin. My breath caught. Instinct told me I might’ve pushed him too far.
He sighed. “It doesn’t have to be a constant battle between us.” The tips of his pinky and ring finger surr
eptitiously dipped beneath the stretchy waistband at the front of my pajama pants as his thumb continued it’s languid, yet inciting caress. “But if that’s what you prefer, I assure you I can induce swift capitulation without use of force or magic.” It was time to panic.
His fingers slipped lower, all four stealing just beneath the waistband of my pajama pants. My heart hammered out of control, even as I felt my confused, wayward sex organ flutter in response. He wouldn’t …
“I don’t have to be inside your mind to know what your body wants,” he said with a disarmingly chaste kiss to my crown. “I told you, I intend to provide what you need. So either we go downstairs, and I satisfy the hunger in your belly, or we stay here, and my fingers slake that salivating arousal between your thighs.”
My eyes bugged wide in horror. He would!
“Whoa!” I shook my head vigorously, my hand flying faster than I was sure it had ever moved to clutch his wrist in a death grip before it could slide any farther south. “You’re wrong! I’m not aroused. I don’t want—don’t need—”
“Milena, Milena,” he chanted ominously, interrupting my babbled objections before I even got going, “I dare you to lie to me just one more time. Please, by all means, continue on and tell me that my fingers won’t find you slick with need,” he whispered, “ … wet and ready for me,” he challenged to my escalating distress and mortification.
My face felt hot enough to melt into the pillow. I should’ve just cut my losses before and opted to eat. “Not true!” I protested. “Only I can say what I want—”
“Princess, I’m willing to make you a deal,” he announced with smug satisfaction. “If I find you are telling the truth and that you are in fact physically un-aroused at this very moment, I promise to apologize, let Celio live, release you and your brother, and never bother you again.”
“That’s not a fair deal,” I squawked. “It’s not the same as consent!”
“Shall I check now or do you want to deny it some more first?” I heard the twisted amusement in his voice. I would stab him before this was all over.
“No!” I shouted as his fingers inched lower. My other hand shot down to support the first where it was clamped in a viselike grip around his wrist, my nails digging in hard enough to draw blood from a normal human in their effort to halt him.
“No? No, you want to lie to me more before I check?” he mocked. “Or no, you were lying to me in the first place, and you’re ready to admit it now rather than have me prove you a liar?”
The entire basis for his cruel argument was flawed and archaic! And yet I was the one somehow on trial? Another painful reminder of the breadth of mad egotism and chauvinism I was dealing with.
“Alex, please don’t? Don’t do it!” I knew I couldn’t physically stop him, but I was still exerting every ounce of effort I possessed as I pulled on his immobile wrist.
“Are you admitting that you lied to me?”
“You said you wouldn’t hurt me like this!” I threw at him in desperation, remembering his words from the first night in the foyer. “Are you saying that you lied?”
“No. And I’m not going to hurt you, princess,” he answered in such a calm, superior manner I felt my eyes burn with unshed tears. “I’m proving a point about your body’s reaction to mine. You can end this lesson at any time and admit that you lied to me.”
I gritted my teeth and nodded, my face on fire with fury.
“I couldn’t hear you?” he pressed, bending forward over me in order to better see the shame on my face that I was trying to hide into the pillow.
“Yess!” I hissed, yanking in vain on his hand that wouldn’t budge.
“Ah, so you are wet and aroused, then?” he persisted in tormenting me through unnecessary elucidation.
I didn’t respond. I would not say it. Because it didn’t count!
“I will accept a nod.”
I took the small concession he was offering and nodded in the affirmative. To my blessed relief, he removed his hand from the ultimate of terrifying danger zones that had proven to be the top of my pajama pants, quietly advising it was safe to let go of his wrist a moment later when I still hadn’t done so.
“Shall we go downstairs and eat?” he inquired after a pause.
I nodded, forcing my fingers to relinquish his wrist as I tried to find the wherewithal to let my body do the same with the terror I was still holding onto. In truth, I really was sick to my stomach now, my nerves shot and my emotions strained beyond the breaking point as I was left feeling exposed and humiliated—bewildered as to how on earth that degrading exchange had escalated to the point it had so rapidly.
Strangely, Alex somehow sensed my level of distress before I even registered how severe it was, because with a few choice curse words he tossed the remaining blankets off me, scooped me into his arms, and cradled me against his chest just as the first sob wrenched through me, shocking the hell out of me both in its unexpectedness and its degree of violence.
At first he held me and rocked me back and forth, crooning words meant to comfort, but after a while he lifted me from the bed and began pacing back and forth with me in his arms when it seemed I wasn’t going to calm down anytime soon.
Finally, after more frustrated swearing, he carried me over to a chair across the room. Sitting back down and arranging me upright in his lap, he urged me to just let it all out at him—repeatedly reassuring me I could say anything I wanted about how I was feeling as long as it was honest.
I burst. “I hate you so fucking much,” I sobbed into his warm, tear-dampened shoulder.
“I know,” he consoled, his hands running over my back. “It’s okay. Go on. Please just get it out. You’re fucking killing me.”
“You’re evil!” I declared on a hiccup.
“Mm-hmm, I am a bit,” he agreed, kissing the top of my head. “What else?”
“You’re impossible!” I harangued, smacking my fist against his obnoxiously defined pectorals. “The worst sort of pretentious, manipulative asshole I’ve ever met.”
“All true. Keep going. Please, please get it out of your system what an asshole I am,” he beseeched as his fingers stroked through my hair.
I choked on a sob and hesitated for the briefest moment, grappling with the insanity of our present discourse. But then it occurred to me that our entire relationship thus far had been built upon one preposterous interaction after another, so I went with it and forged ahead in indulging his bizarre, obsequious request for flagellation.
“You abuse your power and prey on those weaker than you,” I charged, sniffling loudly as I straightened up to better face him, “when you should be protecting them.”
“Mm-hmm,” he granted, his features assembled into a perfect portrait of contrition. “I can see how it would look that way. And?”
“And … and you hurt people … you intimidate people … and you never properly say you’re sorry or make amends for anything,” I pointed out as he began to wipe at my tears, by all accounts appearing to be listening attentively. “It’s like you think you’re above apologizing for any of your actions … no matter how horrible or inhumane they are.”
“Yup, I do do that. But how about the ways I hurt you, specifically? Tell me how I make you feel.”
“You make me feel stupid and weak and insignificant,” I blathered. “You mess with my head, and you hold all the cards, and you won’t even tell me the game we’re playing … leaving me no chance whatsoever of defending myself.”
“Aw, baby, sounds so terrible,” he commiserated, kissing my wet eyelids, “but plausible,” he muttered under his breath. “What else?”
“And I just want my brother and my life back, but you’re holding me hostage even though you don’t like me … because your wolf likes me,” I rambled in stream-of-consciousness fashion, “… except now he’s somehow convinced you that you do want me, too … maybe because you need to keep me alive or something … or because I’m the vessel … or … or fuck if I know! It’s al
l weird and creepy, and I’m terrified you’re going to hurt me … do things to me … that I … I won’t like—”
“What sort of things?”
His question stumped me. There were so many I wasn’t sure where to begin.
“Let’s narrow it down. Are you terrified I’m going to physically hurt you?”
Duh! “Yes.”
“Have I physically hurt you yet?”
“Yes!”
He frowned. “When?”
I rolled my eyes. “The first night, when you were in my head, looking through my memories.”
“Okay, that’s fair. Though let me assure you again, it’s not my intention to cause you any harm whatsoever.”
He’d taken my face in his hands, and his fingers had begun caressing the pressure points just behind my ears. It felt heavenly. Bastard.
“From my perspective,” he defended, “I feel like I’ve spent all my time since you arrived either healing your injuries or worrying over what injuries you might incur next. How else do you fear I might hurt you? Emotionally?”
I answered with another eye-roll and a withering look that I hoped clearly said I thought he was a moron. If I lived through this experience, I suspected I’d wind up in a padded cell somewhere, even after years of intensive psychotherapy.
His lips twitched. “Okay, okay, you have every right to feel emotionally distraught at this point,” he allowed. “What else?”
I shrugged and shook my head.
“What about just now when you freaked out?” he questioned. “When my hand was barely inside your pants?”
I couldn’t help but note the way he’d emphasized the “barely” and scowl at his attempt to minimize the situation—as if I was some prudish weirdo for “freaking out” over an asshole threatening to fondle my privates without my consent.
“Was your worst fear that I would touch you in a way that would hurt you?” My face heated all over again, and I wished he hadn’t been holding it captive. I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t want to talk about it in the first place. “Or that I might touch you in a way that felt good?”
I swallowed. I was sure based on my coloring and my increased heart rate he had his answer. I would forever despise him.
