by Edie Harris
He stretched out next to her, facing her, his head sharing her pillow. Too late, she squeezed her eyes shut. Her ankle chafed against its restraint, the one she was cuffed into every night before bed by Artyom. Poor, apologetic Artyom.
“I know you’re awake, kitten.”
Eyes open again. “I am.”
A gnarled hand lifted, bent fingers shifting her hair away from her temples. “You performed well tonight.”
Performed, as though she were a dancer. A month ago, her stomach would’ve turned, but now...it was too late. “Thank you, Pakhan.”
Twirling a section of hair, he inhaled sharply, deeply. “You put on a show. Was it because you had a man, for the first time?”
Yes, it had been a man tonight, the first time she’d taken a blade to a male victim at the behest of this particular man. “Perhaps. I’ve...never had a man before.” She refused to breathe through her nose, to take Pakhan’s scent into her lungs when he lay this close. It was an intimacy too far. Now for the hated words: “Thank you for giving him to me.”
“Ah, Mary, my pet. I can still smell the blood in here.” He licked his lips, and her lashes fluttered down, blocking the sight. His grip on her hair tightened to the point of pain, but she didn’t fight it, him. Not when there was a goon lurking in her kitchen—she could hear his heavy footsteps as he paced—and another no doubt guarding her door. And she was so very, very tired. “Did you scrub the floors?”
“Yes.” But he was right, she could still smell the blood, like iron in her nostrils, stinging and foul, and abrupt, nauseating panic knotted her throat. “Yes, I scrubbed the floors,” she whispered, tensing when his hand left her scalp to trace over her bare shoulder. The burn scars on his palm rasped unpleasantly down her arm, but she couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t shudder.
Until he leaned in, the tip of his nose brushing hers, his mouth hovering mere centimeters away as he muttered, “I wish I’d seen you on your knees, kitten. Next time I bring you a toy, I’ll remember to stay.” His fingers dug into her hip.
“Wake up, Chandler. Now.”
She gasped into brutal and sudden consciousness, sweat dampening her brow, the back of her neck, the crook of her elbow. Her legs thrashed, overheated and trapped within the tangle of cotton sheets, and she shoved blindly at the naked male chest blocking her view of the suite’s door. Her escape, she needed to escape before—
Hands, not scarred but gently callused, cupped her jaw, soothing as the quiet murmurs coming from just above that naked male chest. It took moments, more than a few, less than several, before Chandler comprehended where she was, who was in this bed with her...and that she was sobbing.
“You’re all right.” More shushing, thumbs brushing over her wet cheeks as she blinked away tears and sleep and the cobwebs of her nightmares to see Tobias’s shadowed face above hers, his dark brows drawn together in concern. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
Without pausing to consider the consequences, she launched herself at him, upper body colliding with the warmth of his torso as she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung for dear life. The heat of her tears dampened his shoulder, but she didn’t apologize, merely clung, nails pressing into the firm musculature of his upper back, his bare skin alive under her fingertips.
Miracle of miracles, he held her. Strong arms locked her securely against him, and as the tremors of memory faded, she melted into him. He was bigger than her, far bigger than made any sense as he couldn’t be much more than twelve stone, but within his embrace, Chandler was safe. Safer than she’d ever been in the entirety of her twenty-nine years. Aunt Ophelia had done her best by Chandler and Pippa in the years after Reggie’s arrest and subsequent death in prison, but the older woman certainly hadn’t been what one might term warm and fuzzy. Hugs were scarce on the ground, and while Chandler had mourned Ophelia’s passing a few years back, her sole source of comfort had always been her twin.
She sensed Tobias wasn’t much of a hugger, either, but lord, was he good at it. He held her with one arm around her waist and the other crossing her upper back, that hand cupping her shoulder and his cheek resting against her head. Her right hip aligned with his, the sheet tangled between them and her jersey soaked through with sweat, but that didn’t seem to bother him. Nothing seemed to bother him about this situation, as he waited for her to calm enough to release him.
After breathing in the comforting scent of him one last time, she let go, falling back against the pillows with a watery sigh.
“I don’t like it when you cry.” He wiped away the wetness from her face, his gaze caught on the movement of his thumbs, brow furrowed in apparent concentration.
“Good on you that I don’t cry often, then, yeah?” Sniffling, she blatantly stared at his upper body and tried not to think of how seeing him so unclothed made her feel. Honest to God, she’d never thought she might see him so...naked. And he wasn’t even naked, soft sweatpants riding low on narrow hips cut with bitingly lean muscle. There wasn’t a spare ounce on him, the bumps and ridges of subtle roping beneath sandstorm-tan skin drawing her eyes, tempting her hands, her lips. Dark hair dusted the shadows of his pectorals, another seductive line below the dip of his navel disappearing into the waistband of his sweats.
The caps of his shoulders were strong, curved with obvious strength and looked good enough to nibble on. Her tongue darted out to dampen her lower lip before catching it between her teeth because she couldn’t—could not—risk surrendering to the emotion-driven impulse to turn Tobias Faraday into a midnight snack. She recognized vulnerability when she felt it, and her dreams left her vulnerable to the ache he’d awakened inside her with his kisses.
She wanted more. She wanted to watch his biceps flex and tighten as he held himself above her, wanted to see perspiration bead upon his skin as he worked his beautifully fit body over hers, into hers. She wanted to tug that cotton knit over his arse and grab a handful, or two handfuls, of what she had not-so-surreptitiously checked out more than once when he was tailored to within an inch of his bespoke life.
She wanted him, inside her. That hard cock of his she’d felt against her belly and pressed between her thighs had her craving sex as she never had before, because with Tobias, she sensed it—fucking—would be...different. He knew her every bad deed, all the black marks against her name, her father’s name, and yet he held her when she cried. He bloody wiped away her tears.
Pain pierced her heart, almost immediately dulling to a tolerable bruise that thumped in time with each beat. Of their own accord, her hands lifted to cradle either side of his face, mimicking the movement of his thumbs over her own cheeks.
He cleared his throat and shifted so that his thigh ran the length of her upper body, a brand and a barricade in one. “Bad dream?”
“You could say that.” Her hands fell, as did his—to her upper arms, where he absently attempted to rub heat into her chilled flesh. Their suite wasn’t precisely cozy, and now that she’d quieted from the remnants of her feverish nightmares, she found herself shivering, which appeared to make him frown more ferociously. “What about you, Toby? Tell me what the Ice King dreams of.”
The rubbing of her arms halted, and a moment later, his palm flattened between her breasts, pressing down lightly over her sternum, revealed by the stretched neckline of her jersey. His long fingers spread to weigh on the subtle roundness of her chest. “I dream about silence, and the consequences of silence.” He sighed. “You need sleep.”
“I know, but...” She was the furthest thing from tired, the bleak dark behind her eyelids giving way to images of Nash, the Priest, the nightmare. “I can’t.” Unable to resist making contact again, she laid her hand atop his, fingers curling over the bumps of his knuckles. Warm, he was so warm, the heat of his body making her want to move, to writhe. “I don’t want to sleep.”
“I do.” Faint amusement curved h
is lips. “Being your pretend boyfriend is exhausting work.”
She almost smiled back at him. Almost. “You’re touching me, Toby.”
“I am.” His fingertips flexed. “You’re not complaining.”
Maybe it was the nightmare’s echo, maybe it was living in Faraday captivity for too long, but her ability to say anything other than the most deeply embedded truths deserted her. “You know what would put me to sleep?”
“What?”
“An orgasm.”
“An orgasm,” he repeated, going still even as his breath hitched audibly. Storm-gray eyes gleamed in the darkness. “You want me to give you an orgasm.”
Chandler bit the inside of her cheek and tightened her grip on his hand, arching her chest up to meet the pressure of his palm. Her eyes fluttered shut when she heard him exhale, heavily. “Only if you want me to sleep again.” Without dreaming this time.
“I can do this for you.” He sounded as though he sought to convince himself, and why the hell did she find that endearing? “I can please you.”
The bruise on her heart softened further. “You already do. You’re just a bloody tease about it, is all.” The kisses and caresses that went nowhere, his scent everywhere due to their constant proximity—in the bath, on her clothes, beneath her skin. She could admit now that he was driving her mad, and she was a woman who had already dabbled in psychological brinkmanship, with disastrous outcomes. Madness was not a route down which she intended to travel.
“I won’t tease you anymore.” Determination in his husky voice, his American accent stretching the vowels out until her auditory nerves tingled. “This time...this time, I make you come.” His palm drifted over her stomach to where the sheet bunched at her waist, pausing before he slipped his hand beneath the covers. Blunt fingertips toyed with the edge of her panties.
She moved helplessly under his touch. “You’re teasing again,” she complained, breathless. He was always teasing her, but she understood why. Sort of. Who they were to one another was complicated at best. They both knew what they shouldn’t be, no matter how quickly the desire between them flared, escalated every time they clashed.
He shook his head. “I’m really not.” Without ado, he slid his hand fully into her underwear, eliciting a gasp from her parted lips. “God, you feel...” He cupped her, his middle finger finding her slit and the wetness he inspired. “You feel like the dreams I never have.”
She shivered, hard, mind reeling because that, that, was the single most wonderful thing anyone had ever said about her. To her. And those beautiful words had come from a man who spoke of silent dreams as though they were his personal nightmare. “You should hate me.” Her hands touched on his shoulders, his neck, stroking the smooth skin she truly couldn’t get enough of. “I should hate you.”
“Do you?”
No. Everything in her rebelled at the thought of hating him, a shock in and of itself. Her head tilted back on the pillow. “No.”
“I’ve jailed you,” he murmured as his fingers played. “I’ve taken away your freedom.”
“Took my mobile, too.” Legs shifting to displace the sheet, she moved her hips to meet each gentle stroke, and then the strokes that touched her deeper, more assertively.
He huffed out a wry laugh. “The least forgivable of my transgressions, obviously.” His mouth touched the exposed curve of her throat, his tongue flicking out to taste her skin, test her pulse.
Ah, but she liked how, whenever he got near enough, his ice burned away with the need to devour her. “People like me don’t have the right to offer forgiveness, Toby. No point in asking it of me.” She burned, too, absorbing the strength of him, the—
His finger slid into her without warning, an abrupt intrusion she was prepared for only because denying her lust for the buttoned-up, tumbled-down attorney in her bed was beyond her control. She moaned, gasping as he sank deeper, the scrape of his teeth along her neck making her shudder.
“There are times,” he whispered against her jaw, removing his finger only to impale her with two, but that was better, far better. “There are these times, Chandler, when I despise how you see yourself.”
Confusion cut through her desire, eyes squeezing shut as she fought to focus solely on the sultry-sweet sensations he elicited in her. “Why do you care?”
“Because you matter.”
Her hands clutched convulsively on his shoulders. “To who?”
A harder thrust this time. “To me.” His forearm, corded with tensile power, lay in the valley between her breasts, over her quivering belly, heavy and masculine and taking for granted her implicit submission.
Ah, fuck. She loved it. His barricading arm, his hand in her panties, the way his other arm curved on the pillow above her head, his fingers twisting in her messy hair as he nipped a path down her throat to her clavicle. And his words. God, she loved his words. “Oh.”
“Do I matter to you?” He shifted his weight until the length of his erection nudged her hip, and she whimpered quietly at the evidence that he ached for her, as she did him. “I want to believe I do. I want to believe you wouldn’t let me touch you like this if I didn’t matter.” The rhythmic stroking of his fingers increased. “If I have to care, you should as well.”
But she couldn’t shake the innate defensiveness that had protected her guarded heart for decades. “Who said I care?”
“It’s a gift to care.” His voice was harsh, bitingly so. “Caring at all...the ability to feel something for another person that is complicated and frustrating and unclear and strangely, strongly true, that’s a privilege.” He paused, his big body trembling above hers, and lifted his head from where he nuzzled her collarbone to meet her gaze with his typical acute directness. “So I ask you—do I matter?”
Swallowing hard, she attempted to avert her eyes. “Toby.”
The hand not occupied with pushing her to the edge held her head in place. “Do I matter, sweetheart?” Oh, God, the earnest entreaty in his lust-roughened whisper. “Even for one moment, have I mattered? Do I matter?”
Those weren’t tears knotting her throat. They just weren’t. “Yes.” She writhed on his fingers until he moved—ah, fuck, yes, he was moving in her, that was what she wanted, needed.
“Say it again.”
“Yes. Yes, you matter.” She arched up to steal a fevered kiss. “But you’re my keeper, so hell if I understand how.”
“I’m your prisoner, too, did you know? You’ve trapped me within my own mind.” He didn’t give her a chance to respond, leaning down until his lips hovered over hers. “Kissing you. I think of kissing you constantly.” His thumb stroked her clit briefly, killing her, sending her hurtling toward pleasure. “This has not been a vacation for me, Chandler. I’m on the phone with my people in the States, running risk reviews on potential acquisitions, and there you are in my head, taking up space I don’t have to spare.” Long fingers spreading inside her, providing the most delicious of stretches to her inner muscles. “I think of putting my mouth right here and getting my tongue deep, so deep you can’t breathe without feeling me, without knowing it’s me who’s in you.”
“Toby.” Too fast. She was going to come too fast, and she wanted this to last, because he’d finally stopped teasing her and she loved how close he was. The connection between them, physical, more, it was unlike anything she’d ever experienced with a man.
That connection terrified her and compelled her in equal parts.
His breathing ragged against her lips, he thrust into her slowly, deliberately. “I try not to think about how badly I want my cock where my fingers are right now, because if I did, I’d go insane.” The rough heel of his palm brushed her clit with every pump of his fingers. “Because I want to be here constantly, sweetheart. Where you’re tight and hot and slick for me.” He kissed her then, wet and open, without artifice or agenda,
and her world fell apart.
Spine bowing off the bed, she came, her fingers tangled in his hair as she sought to steal the air from his lungs. Her cries were muted by the press of his lips, his strong arm stretched the length of her torso and working her so good, so very good, his entire body dedicated to her orgasm. She wished for the tremors never to end, relishing the clench of her core around his fingers, invading her so perfectly to draw out the trembling pleasure.
But eventually that pleasure subsided and he withdrew, tucking the sheet around her waist in a move so tender and so out of place, her fatigued mind could barely process it. “God, Toby,” she exhaled on a half laugh, strange humor bubbling up to spill out into the intimate darkness of their suite. “What are we doing?”
“Well, I just gave you the orgasm you requested,” he murmured, deflecting her question. “More like demanded, I should say.”
Sighing, she plucked at the sheet, more to keep from reaching for him and tugging him down to snuggle into than anything else. “That you did. But you didn’t—”
“I’m fine, I promise.” Carefully, he brushed hair back from her brow, his hand lingering on the pillow next to her cheek as he studied her in the shadows. “I want to know your nightmares, Chandler.”
Body quickly giving in to satiation, she could barely keep her eyes open but she needed to look at him when she told him, quiet but emphatic, “No. No, you really don’t.”
He didn’t push her, thankfully. Moments later, she drifted off to a perfectly dreamless sleep, unaware of Tobias leaning down to kiss her forehead before he retreated to the settee.
Chapter Ten
By midday Friday, Chandler’s tight little body seethed with unspent energy, forcing her to pace off the square footage of their suite, muttering to herself and punching at the air, her sparring partner invisible yet brutal.
