“Is it my imagination? She looks kinda like me, I think.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I agree.” His avatar raised a gun and began firing. Only then did I notice all the angry red dots on our radar. While I’d been staring at the characters, a ton of zombie cannibals had shown up.
If we died during the bonus level, it wouldn’t end the game, but it would end the round. We couldn’t die—I needed to drag this out so that Corbin would inadvertently ask another question.
Drawing my guns, I began shooting.
There was a white flash of light on the screen, then the sound of an explosion. “What the hell was that?” I asked.
“A weapon I picked up,” Corbin said. As color ebbed back onto the screen, I noticed a lack of vibrating red dots.
“Did you… Did that kill everything in the level?”
“Probably not everything,” Corbin said. “Looks like there’s a building straight ahead. Let’s go explore it.” His avatar took off at a run, and I followed.
The building was a large house. It looked sleepy and quiet, covered in snow. We couldn’t find a door and went around the perimeter…
“It looks like this place,” I murmured.
“It looks like a lot of houses,” Corbin said. “Come on. We’ve only got five minutes left.”
Corbin’s avatar opened the front door.
I jumped off the sofa. “No way,” I said, grinning. The building’s interior was exactly the same as the one we were in. Same rustic furniture, same reds in the carpets’ color scheme.
Even the throw blanket on the back of the sofa was exactly the same.
“How?” I asked.
Corbin’s avatar picked up the remote control. The television blinked on, and a cutscene played. The graphics weren’t great, but it looked like the awful car movie we’d watched our first weekend.
“Hey, baby,” Corbin’s avatar said, looking right into the camera. It was his voice. Corbin’s voice.
Heat raced across my cheeks, down my throat and chest, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
“Let’s play a game,” he continued on-screen. “If I win, I get to ask you two questions.”
I stepped closer to the screen. Obviously Corbin had done this, but… how? “Did you win a contest or something?”
“Just watch,” he said.
Chapter 33
He didn’t need to tell me to pay attention; I was hypnotized. “I’m not that much shorter than you in real life, am I?”
“Shh,” Corbin said, laughing. “I feel something crucial is about to happen.”
“Oh, Corbin, you’re so sexy,” my avatar was saying. “You’re so sexy! If I can’t have you, I’m going to become a nun.”
“Ridiculous dialogue,” I said. I couldn’t stop shaking my head, and I was grinning so hard that my cheeks ached.
“I won,” Corbin’s avatar said. “But I only have one question for you.” He slid onto his knees. The camera zoomed in, capturing those brilliant eyes. “Will you marry me?”
The scene froze. An empty dialogue box popped up.
Corbin stood slowly and stared down at me. The warmth of his body wrapped around mine. He smelled like home.
“Audrey,” he said. “Baby. Love of my life. I only have one question for you, but it’s important.”
“Oh my god,” I said, furiously blinking away tears.
Corbin gracefully lowered himself onto one knee. His electric blue-green eyes seemed to shine.
“The first time I saw you in that tacky greeting card store, I wanted you. Because you’re gorgeous, and you’re my type, and I’m a man. When I found you in the middle of the road, I thought it was a sign that there might be hope for me after all my sins.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. My jaw was quivering, I realized, and my lips, too.
Corbin caught my other hand in his. “That weekend, you cursed me out. You challenged me, you sparred with me. I was intrigued by you, and I knew you were special. These last few months have shown me just how special you really are, but I know I’ve only scratched the surface. I know I don’t deserve you, but I love you, Audrey Stroop, and I need you, and until my last breath, I’ll do everything humanly possible to make you happy.”
He reached under a sofa cushion and pulled out a velvety black box.
“Audrey. Baby.” His gaze held mine, but not in his intimidating, dominant way. He was a man, asking a woman for something he wanted.
I couldn’t believe it. Any second now and I’d wake up—
“Please do me the supreme honor of becoming my wife.”
Silence descended on the room, but I couldn’t react.
Corbin raised an eyebrow, then smiled, and I felt I might drown in the fathomless depths of him. “That needs to be a question, I know. Will you marry me?”
I still couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even focus; my eyes were flooding with tears. I swallowed hard, then swallowed again, willing myself not to completely freak out and ruin this moment.
“Yes,” I said, my voice trembling.
Corbin’s smile illuminated his face, and he was so perfect that I blinked away the tears, not wanting to miss even a millisecond of this.
He snapped the box open. Inside was the sparkliest ring I’d ever seen, a square diamond bordered by smaller diamonds. Even the platinum band was encrusted with gemstones. It was completely over the top… and I loved it. If he hadn’t been holding my hand steady, I probably would have been shaking too hard for him to get it onto my finger. The fit was perfect.
His fingers laced through mine as he stood. Looking deeply into my eyes, he said, “Thank you.”
The sincerity of his gratitude was enough to kill me. His mouth crashed onto mine. He was greedy, hungry. I felt like all the atoms of my body had melted, flowed around him and reformed with Corbin as part of me. Or maybe I was part of him. I pressed up against him, needing him to be inside me.
He broke off our kiss. “Not yet,” he said. “We didn’t finish the game.”
A question was now waiting on the screen. Did you say yes?
I picked up a controller and clicked the yes button.
Confetti exploded across the screen, and the cutscene ended.
“There isn’t more,” Corbin said, grabbing his controller. “Sorry. But we still have to grab the invisibility medallion from a trunk on the second floor or we’ll have to do without it for the rest of the game. They wouldn’t program around that.” His avatar dashed up the steps.
Red dots were appearing on my map. More zombie cannibals. I raised my guns—
My avatar was now wearing a ring.
Grinning, I checked my ammo, ran to a window and began shooting.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How did you do this?”
“I called in a few favors. Believe it or not, video game design is well outside my skill set. I wanted to hire someone, but because of piracy concerns, the game company insisted on assigning a small, trusted team of their own designers to help me substitute the bonus scene. The original is scuba diving for hidden treasure guarded by men who turn into sharks.”
“Sharks?” I shuddered. “They scare me. I’m glad I missed it.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “It wasn’t a bad bonus round. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks. The team is based in Japan, hence all the late nights. I had to be on their schedule. Those noises you heard—the panting, the pleading—that’s from the original bonus scene.”
Embarrassment made my face and throat burn hot. “Oh, god. I’m such an idiot.”
“Hey. Don’t blame yourself. I was behaving oddly. I know that. In the original, the female character ran out of air, then the sharks circled in while she begged. The developers didn’t swap out the audio until almost the final version, and I kept triggering it. You thought it was porn.”
“No!”
Corbin laughed.
“You know, my faith in you never wavered.”
At least Corbin wa
s gracious enough to smile. “No more secrets,” he said.
The bonus round ended, and Corbin saved the game.
He grabbed my hand, and I looked down at the ring. It was humongous. I wouldn’t be able to wear it to work. Not unless I wanted to get mugged.
“Audrey, I didn’t want to lie to you, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise, either. If I could have hired my own team or worked on it while you were gone, I would have.”
“But I unwrapped the game myself. How…” Then it hit me. “The beer. You swapped the game out while I was in the garage?”
“No. It was a patch, but the game system didn’t want to cooperate. That’s what I was doing on the phone, but you were too fast in the bathroom.”
I locked my hands behind his neck and pulled myself onto my toes. “So you cheated. The game was rigged to let you win.”
He winced. “I cheated, but the same way as the weekend we met. I played the game through a few times.”
“A few times?”
“Enough times to make sure I could win the bet.”
I kissed him. “That sounds like a ton of work.”
“You should have seen the look on your face,” he said. His voice dropped to a throaty growl as he added, “We do need to do something to help rebuild your trust in me.”
“I trust you!” I insisted.
He picked me up, holding me over his shoulder.
I squealed. The ring on my finger flashed. “Don’t go upstairs.” All the blood in my body rushed into my head, and I tasted beer.
“You should know by now that while I’m willing to entertain all reasonable requests, I don’t respond well to demands.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. What I meant was that I would really appreciate it, as your future wife”—I paused a second to hear the unfamiliar words I’d just spoken—“As your future wife, I humbly request—”
“My future wife. I like the sound of that. And I’ve decided that my first official act as your future husband is to put you across my knee and spank you for plotting to break into my office.”
“How did you know?”
Corbin swatted my ass, and I wiggled, then grew still; I didn’t want to make him drop me.
“How did I know about your devious scheme? I hope that’s a joke, because if not, you really underestimate me, little girl.”
“Obviously Benedict Rob told you. And I’m not a little girl.”
“Wrong thing to say.” Corbin headed for the steps.
Chapter 34
I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed he wouldn’t drop me, but Corbin’s hands were steady across the backs of my knees.
He threw open the bedroom door and entered the room.
On every horizontal surface, dozens of soft candles flickered. The seductive aroma of roses filled the air, and when Corbin roughly threw me onto the bed, I learned why; hundreds of rose petals covered the sheets.
“Wow,” I said, swimming my arms through the flowers. They were cool and delicate on my skin. “What would you have done if I’d said no?” My eyes went wide. “What if I’d said maybe?”
A thunderous expression came over his face. “Try it,” he said.
I pushed onto my forearms and pulled my legs up so that my feet rested on the edge of the mattress, my toes curling over the side. “Try it?”
Corbin came down over me, forcing me flat again, his body hot against mine. “Will you marry me?”
I tried to say maybe, but I couldn’t. Not when he was so close, staring down at me like that.
“You can do it,” he said. “Say no. Tell me you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with me.”
Oh, it turned me on when he got strict like that. I fell back onto the bed with a satisfied sigh. “When did you plan all of this?”
“The roses? A week ago. Obviously I had help with them, with the candles. They’re slow burners, but they had to be lit today.”
“And the game?”
“More than a week ago,” Corbin said as he straightened. He raised his arms, pulling his shirt over his head. The thin fabric revealed his sculpted muscles too slowly, and I reached out to help.
Corbin tossed the shirt to the side without looking.
“Careful,” I said. “You’ll start a fire.”
He came down over me on one elbow. “Maybe they’re not real candles.”
“Really?” I arched back, trying to take another look—they were real—and Corbin kissed my neck. I forgot about the candles then, forgot about everything except for the gorgeous man whose lips were kissing a burning trail down my throat.
My eyes fluttered closed. Of course my spanking was coming—the look in Corbin’s eyes had told me it wasn’t just an idle threat—but for the moment, I was enjoying his attention.
“Strip,” he ordered, and I looked at him. He meant business.
I peeled off my shirt, my bra. Removing my jeans and panties took a little more effort because Corbin refused to get out of my way.
My hands kept bumping into his solid body as I undressed for him. The entire time, Corbin’s attention didn’t waver. The things he did, the pleasure he brought, made him the center of my world. And I seemed to be the center of his, too.
“You could have helped,” I said as I finally kicked my jeans away, accidentally kneeing Corbin’s thigh in the process.
“Yes,” he said, his voice deep and commanding. “I could have. Turn over.”
Of course he couldn’t be bothered to move for that, either, and I had a bitch of a time flipping onto my stomach without getting tangled in the sheets, in my hair, in my own damned limbs.
Corbin moved back, and his large hands spread my thighs wide.
Silky flower petals pressed into my breasts, my neck, and the side of my face. They smelled like heaven, so much more layered and subtle than the bath bombs I indulged in weekly at home.
Corbin gripped a handful of my ass and squeezed, and I arched toward him, knowing that would make it less painful.
“You can’t wait, can you?” he asked.
I whimpered.
“You crave my punishment. You want me to spank you firmly.”
I laughed a little, but I didn’t disagree, partially because talking back would only earn me a much more thorough spanking, and partially because it was true. When Corbin spanked me, it didn’t just turn me on. It helped smooth out things between us.
He roughly pressed my knees even farther apart. I wiggled.
“Be still.” His rough palm slammed into my ass, and I gasped. When I inhaled, the perfume of roses filled my lungs.
Corbin got off the bed. I wanted to turn, to see what he was doing, but he’d told me to be still, and I didn’t dare disobey. Being sent to bed, horny and wanting on the night of our engagement—I shivered just remembering—would have been less than ideal. I wanted the rest of the night to be perfect, to go smoothly.
I sensed Corbin’s heat moments before his teeth nibbled my soft inner thigh.
Groaning, I struggled, trying to evade him.
He went a little higher, bit a little harder. My pussy clenched. I thought I felt moisture dripping, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a crushed petal.
He caught a bit of my skin between his teeth. It was a threat, a reminder of how strong he was and how much damage he could do if he wanted.
I went tense, but other than locking my muscles, I didn’t move.
“You need to relax, baby,” Corbin said, his voice deceptively inviting. I knew better, though. He wanted to catch me off balance, make me soft and pliant so that when he doled out his punishment, my reaction would be all the sweeter.
Pain was what I was prepared for, so when his tongue slowly licked through my folds, I almost shot off the bed.
My hands tore at the sheets, and my mouth opened in a silent plea. Please don’t stop, never stop…
He shifted down a little and flicked the tip of his tongue over my clit. If I’d been hanging on the precipice, it would have sent me careening o
ver the edge, but I was scattered in a million different directions and Corbin was slowly pulling me back together.
“Please,” I murmured.
“You want more.”
“Yes.”
His hands were rough and forceful as he pressed them into the backs of my legs, just above my knees. He kneaded up, pushing me into the bed.
Little tremors rocketed through me.
When he touched me like that, I was reduced to female, and he was male, claiming me. It was the moment when we both knew he was going to put his cock into my pussy. Or my ass. Or my mouth.
It was the moment when, no matter what happened, I wouldn’t want him to stop.
His pressing hands continued their steady climb, and when he reached the tops of my thighs, just below my buttocks, he squeezed so hard that I gasped.
My pussy tightened, and this time I was certain that it was my own arousal seeping onto the sheets.
“Please,” I moaned. “I want you inside me—”
His rough palm cracked against my ass, the sound almost deafening.
“Ooh,” I breathed out in little pants.
“You’ll have to wait,” he said with an impatient growl. His fingertips were painful on my skin, digging into my flesh, but I didn’t care, didn’t want him to stop.
I wished he would just shove his cock home and put me out of my misery. But of course he wouldn’t. He was too sadistic to take what he wanted if it meant I would also get what I wanted.
“You were a very bad girl these last few weeks,” he said.
“I’m sorry.” My apology came fast and without reservation. “Really. I’ll do better.”
“You will, surely, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have to punish you.” He laughed softly, the sound not quite cruel, but it wasn’t reassuring, either.
He released my ass. The sheets rustled as he repositioned himself. Then his hand slammed against my upper thighs, one, then the other. He paused. He slapped my ass.
“You need more,” he said. Almost immediately, he spanked my ass over and over, so fast I couldn’t count. He used both hands, and it sounded like rain, like a boxer working a speed bag.
Protected by a Dangerous Man Page 21
