by Amber Bardan
I blink, eyelids lighter.
“It’s good you’re coming around.” He runs his knuckles over my cheek.
I don’t flinch. Don’t move. Won’t give myself away.
Never. I’ll never come around.
He studies me harder. “Why are you?”
I swallow, throat tight, then wet my lips. “The thing about women is we really respond best to incentive.”
His eyes narrow a fraction and he keeps on staring at me.
I stare back, don’t look away until he rolls to his side. He lies on his right, tattooed half up, and rests his head on a bent arm. His expression evens as though maybe he’s actually relaxing, more passive than I’ve ever seen him. It’s like catching a snake sunbathing.
I roll to face him, and touch the leaves winding his bicep. “Why does the tattoo end here?” I trail my fingers down, over his elbow to his clear wrist. “It seems like maybe it should come to here.”
“Growing room.” His expression resets.
I don’t ask what comes next in the story he’s writing on his skin. There’s a chance I can change what happens. I glance at the rose, the one on the center of his chest. There’s an ember underneath there. Under skin and bone and flesh, there’s something I can fan. Its heat reaches me not just through his body, but through his eyes in those tiny unguarded moments when he touches me.
It’s not too late. Not yet.
I have nearly three weeks left to make Julius King fall in love.
Chapter Sixteen
I dip my spoon into the big oval bowl, collect thick Greek yogurt, then slide it between my lips. I smile closemouthed. I’m eating breakfast in the house as I have every morning for the last week. This is so much better than before.
This is winning.
Julius walks through the kitchen doors, and I don’t even flinch. There’s no need to hide. I have the snake coiled nicely around my little finger. I rest the spoon in the bowl and turn my smile on him. He gives me one in return. The even line of his teeth flashes, dimples bite his cheeks and for a moment I’m winded. For a moment I almost forget who’s making a pet of who here.
He sits opposite me and opens his laptop on the table. My skin floods with warmth. Being near him doesn’t get easier, no matter how I master external reactions. Even though my plan is working, the instinct remains—the instinct that sends my heart racing whenever he is close.
I eat another scoop of yogurt, but my hunger has moved to another region. There’s more than one reason my heart races around him. My body, the shameless hussy, remembers why. There’s a physical cost to this game for me. My senses are tuned to him, because all it takes is one look from me and he’s mine. One look and I’m up against a wall, straddled in his lap or propped against a table, his hand between my thighs, his lips sucking the cries off my tongue. Each time he holds me a little longer, squeezes me a little tighter.
Julius gets me off every day and I’ve never even touched him back. He doesn’t try to put my hand on his cock, or guide my head down. He acts like my pleasure is his bliss.
This is working.
His fingers fly across the keyboard, then he glances at me over the top of the screen. Cool blue eyes fixed on me.
“If I wanted to toy with you, I’d have made you my pet.”
His words come back to me like a swinging fist. My spoon clatters into the bowl. I won’t feel bad for what I’m doing. Not at all. He’d do the same.
Julius would do far worse.
I reach for the jar of cherries in syrup, and twist the top. The lid sticks. I tuck the jar under my arm, then squeeze the lid with my right hand until my bicep shakes.
It won’t open.
I glance up at Julius. He still watches me from behind his computer. Not offering to help like a decent human. And the bastard knows full well I won’t ask.
“Try your other hand,” he says, then looks at the screen.
My brows raise without the satisfaction of having him seeing it. I roll the jar out from under my arm and swap sides. Why, thanks for your assistance, Julius. I snort and twist the lid. The top pops off with a crack.
I jerk back, syrup spilling down my wrist, then stare at the open jar. Huh. Must’ve loosened it before. I glance at Julius, his gaze springs free from where it’d snuck back to me. The tips of his fingers rub from side to side on the tabletop.
I wipe my wrist and take a cherry. The gentle roar of lapping water washes over me. It’s funny how I hardly notice the sound anymore. His fingers slide to that same beat.
“I have something for you.” He leans forward and pulls an envelope out of his pocket, tapping it once on the table before sliding it toward me.
I shove the cherry into my mouth so fast I almost choke and reach for the envelope. My heart does a soft sweet little flutter as I tear it open, and pull out the folded paper.
A grin bursts onto my face.
I soak up the words and trace the lettering with my finger. A sigh washes through me. “His handwriting is getting so good.”
In the letter, my baby brother tells me about the model airplane he’s almost finished working on, and all the things that go through his little adorable boy mind. “He’s so clever.”
“He is.”
My attention snaps from the letter and fixes on Julius. Suddenly the flutter in my chest is a boom. How involved is Julius with my brother?
Does he read our monthly letters?
“I hear he’s top of his class.” Julius watches me as he offers that gem.
I can’t take my focus off him. There’s this pressure in the room. Like held breath waiting to rush out, that feels a lot like things he’s not telling me. “That’s great.”
The coffeemaker groans, and Imelda stalks through the kitchen.
There’s a softening in his eyes. I can’t be sure if the sentiment is new, or if I just missed it before. Julius has a crush on me. It’s still not enough. Not enough to ensure when the time comes, I’ll be able to persuade him.
I rub my lips on the back of my knuckles.
Julius shuts the laptop, then leans back. Imelda brushes up behind him, and rests a hand on his shoulder, placing a coffee in front of him. Her fingers curl into his shirt for three unnecessary seconds, each of which I count. I glance to her face. Our gazes connect for a scathing eternity.
I know why she hates me. I look at Julius. He knows it too. Hasn’t missed a beat, judging by the tugging at the corners of his lips.
Does he think I’m jealous?
I swipe the spoon from my bowl, lower my chin and set my voice as low as I can make it. “Take your hand off my man before I put my spoon through it.”
Imelda gasps, but remains clutching his shoulder.
She turns to Julius for help.
Silly girl, you won’t find it there.
My heart hammers, but I hold on to the spoon. Stand my ground as though I mean it.
“You heard her,” he says.
Imelda backs away, then flees the room. The small not completely corrupted part of me wants to go after her. Even if something I didn’t like grazed me when she touched him, I don’t like to be cruel. Don’t need to be possessive, either. He’s mine whether I want him or not. There’s no competition.
Except those words weren’t for her or me.
“A spoon, how vicious.” Julius picks up his cup and takes a sip, his lips curl over his teeth at the end, then he sets the coffee down. His attention is so tied to me, one wrong move will give me away.
“Why do you encourage her if you mean anything you’ve said to me?” I drop the spoon and press both hands onto the table and lean toward him. Let every remembered anger I have toward him rise to the surface until my face burns with it.
Julius takes the lid off the sugar bowl and adds an ex
tra half a scoop to his drink. “Tolerating and encouraging are not the same.”
“She was all over you.” I bang my palm on the table. Coffee sloshes out of his cup. “I want her gone.”
Something shifts across his face. He picks up his cup and tips it to his mouth. The mustered bravado slips from my grasp and my fingers curl under my hands. That coffee is hot. Not for gulping, yet he does. As though he’s impervious to heat. The cup clinks down and his chair flies back.
He rounds the table. I turn in half the time it takes him to get to me. His hips meet mine as the tabletop meets my tailbone. “If that’s what you want, she’s gone, in two weeks.”
Air flies from my lips.
He buries his hand in my hair. “But I want to hear you say it again.”
I blink hard. “I want her gone.”
He tilts my head back and devours my face with his gaze. “No, that I’m your man.”
My eyes burn under the strain of his scrutiny, but I keep my eyelids from flickering. “You heard me, I won’t say it again until you earn it.”
He releases my hair and laughs. Pulls me against his chest and the sound rumbles through my blood. My nipples strain tight and my belly flutters.
He smooths the curls at the back of my head.
“Come.” He takes my hand, and leads me down the hall toward his room.
Good Lord, he’s going to try to earn it now?
We enter his bedroom and he shuts the door. I step back toward the bed. He follows. I keep myself breathing, try not to focus on his stalking gait.
I need this to happen. I need to get under his skin. My attention shifts to his pants. I’m not half as afraid of his cock as I am of what’s between his ears.
And I want this.
No use lying to myself about that. I do. I’ve thought about it enough times over the years. There’s a part of me that’s been hungry for so long.
He moves past me and opens the bedside-table drawer. I rub my sternum.
Bloody hell, he’s getting protection.
Talk about getting to the point. I breathe out. He turns back to me, and begins unwinding a coiled tape.
I back up into the bed, and shake my head. No. There is literally no way ever, not a chance, ever, that there will come a time where I will allow myself to be tied up by Julius King.
Just no.
I don’t care what books say about bondage and orgasms. He can just go ahead and put that tape away. I will not. He pulls the tape tight between his fists.
I clear my throat. “Yeah, this is not what I was thinking was going to happen.”
“Lift up your arms.” A smirk turns one side of his mouth.
For a moment I picture it—my arms up, him tying up my wrists—all the wicked things he could do to me then. My nipples get harder. Seems as though my body is just as crazy as my brain. “Not going to do that.”
“Fine.” He bends down on one knee.
He passes the tape around my waist and pulls it snug. I gasp and look down at the tape. Numbers and lines run along the outside. It’s a tape measure. I’d seen only the blank side. Guess my mind is just completely dirty these days.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking your measurements.” He stares at the join as if committing it to memory, then stands. The tape drags along my back, then he wraps it around my bust. It slides over my nipples and moisture pools in my sex.
“Why? You know my size.”
He glances up from my chest, the clench of his jaw letting me know I’m not the only one dying under the strain of the tape over my nipples. “This is for something special.”
Suddenly, that tape around my chest is a vice. A crushing immobilizing vice. My lungs can’t expand against the restriction.
I know just what he’s having made and I can’t let it happen. I can’t stand here waiting to be saved.
I’m out of time.
He measures my arms.
My head swirls. “Isn’t it a bit late notice?”
“No, everything is ready, this is just to be sure.”
He kneels down again. I grasp his head. It’s either that or fall down. He measures my thighs, and he hasn’t written anything down, but I don’t doubt he’ll remember every number. He winds up the tape but before he can stand, I join him on my knees.
I smooth my hands down his cheeks, and look in his eyes. Search for something more than flecks of white like lightning in pale blue.
What happened to him? What happened that made him so terrible?
He stares back at me, and his eyes are far from empty and so far from unfeeling.
His eyes are alive.
I just need to reach him. I straddle him, and press my cheek to his. He falls onto his backside. The tape hits the ground beside us, unraveling.
“I need you,” I breathe into his ear. “I need you so much. Please fuck me.”
My hands run the curve of his head. The short hair on the back of his skull prickles my fingertips. I run my touch all the way to his crown, loving the way even his hair resists me as I push against the grain, loving that his head is so perfectly round and so perfectly large. I find that for all my deceit I’m not hardly lying.
His rough cheek grazes mine.
Not hardly.
I hold him tighter, and rock into his lap. His cock rubs against me. Everything gets warmer. The thing nestled between my legs is huge, and a crapload harder than his fingers. The difference between his erection and his hand is about the same as swinging with a hammer and letting go a wrecking ball.
There’s a chance sex between us will destroy me. I shift my hips, revel in a wave of pleasure as his erection grazes my swollen nub.
It doesn’t matter, I’m ruined anyway.
He flips us over. My back hits the ground, and air knocks out of my chest. His body wedges between my thighs, and I blink looking up at the meanest-looking human I’ve ever seen.
“You think I don’t know what this is?”
I slam my palms against his chest, but he’s still above me. He’s still staring at me as though he’s worked out every one of my lies.
I close my eyes, but there’s no blocking him out.
He leans down and my arms are no resistance. “I’ve indulged you, baby, because I want this even when I know you’re pretending.” His hand moves between my legs, cups me over my underwear. Everything under his touch responds, oblivious to the choking sensation in my throat. “Because I enjoy your soft body, and the hot sounds you make for me.” His words are raw and husky and palpable between us. “I enjoy proving you’re mine.”
I’d almost forgotten in the last week his real face and who he really is. Because we’d played a new game. Things have been nice. He’s been nice.
Incentives.
I almost forgot that Julius King is not a nice man. He’ll be going through with his terrible plan.
Unless I convince him not to do this to me.
His face lowers to mine and I open my eyes, my hands spread flat and open against his shirt.
“Still want me?” The heart under my palm throbs. He can’t pretend. His control hangs by a thread and I’m mental enough to snap it.
“I want you.”
He leans back and in one clean movement, my panties tear from seam to seam. He thrusts two fingers inside me, hooks them there and moves differently than ever before. The room around me illuminates. He jerks his fingers up and down, his palm hitting my pelvic bone. I can’t stay still, my hips twist, and my legs kick, pure crushing pleasure rips through me. He hauls my back against his torso, clamps an arm around my waist and does. Not. Stop.
Heat burns up my neck, and the back of my head knocks against his shoulder. This time it’s no game. No incentive. More than pleasure.
He pro
ves who owns me. “You want me in here?”
Through the haze I see his hand between my legs, my torn panties and my own shiny flesh—a distorted vision—drenched in bliss. It’s the most delicious sensation I can imagine.
“Do you want me, baby?”
My thighs clench. Everything in my abdomen tightens.
I sob my answer. “Yes—yes.” And it’s true. I want him. But, for all I try to seduce Julius, for all my body aches, and my heart pounds for him—I can’t ever forget this man is a monster. Yet I embrace him, hold on to the arm that surrounds me and keep him there. His movements get rougher. Back and forth. He plays me like he’s a maestro, and my body sings for him. So does my voice—it sings and howls. I contract. From core to surface, my body spasms.
The world goes dark and silent for an instant, then it’s bright and loud and wet. Liquid runs down my shaking thighs.
My own rasping gasps fill my ringing ears.
The arm around my waist loosens, and Julius’s breath warms my temple. He fingers me gently and my legs fall loose. I sag into him.
“Do you see now how it’s going to be between us?”
My eyelids drift shut, I will them not to, but they do.
His fingers sink into me, slowly now. The hand around my waist moves to my face and he tilts my head back. “Do you?”
I blink, and his rough magnificent features fill my vision. There’s nothing I want more than his lips on mine.
“If I wanted to toy with you, I’d have made you my pet.”
Is this what he means? Is that what I am?
His movements begin again inside me, just like before, and this time he holds my jaw, keeps me looking at him. There’s nothing but him, his scent, his touch and the sight of him filling my vision.
Need breathes through my system again, agonizing and raw.
The answers flow to me from his expression, and it’s nothing I expected. He yanks between my legs, and I yell something at him. I never knew this was possible, not what he does and not how I’m responding. The reaction keeps happening all the same.
I implode—scream—loud and openmouthed, gushing again before I can finish a cry.
