MY FINGERS WRAP FAITH’S SLENDER wrist, that knife between us, but as I look at her, I think that if she intends malice, she’s far better an actress than any opponent I’ve ever faced. I see no intention in her face, nor do I sense any in her energy, see any in her eyes. But this moment damn sure reminds me that I’m not here because this woman rocks my world like no other, despite the fact that she does. I’m here because my father and her mother are dead. Because she is the only logical place murder leads, even if it now feels illogical to me.
“Trust issues much, Nick?” she challenges. “Who was she? Because clearly she fucked with your head.”
“You’re the one who plays with knives, sweetheart.”
“I don’t play with knives,” she says. “You inspired me.”
“Forgive me if I’m not flattered.”
“Do you have any particular fondness for that shirt?”
“Actually, I do. It’s one of my favorites.”
“Good. I felt the same about my dress. You owe me my revenge.”
“Revenge is not a word a man wants to hear from a woman with a knife in her hand.”
“Trust me and let go of me. I know that’s hard for a dominant like yourself, but fear isn’t a good shade for you, Tiger. And if it makes you feel any better, if I was going to kill you, I’d get that orgasm you’ve denied me not once, but twice, first.”
“The name is Nick,” I say, my gaze sweeping over the knife that just happens to be right in front of her beautiful breasts, before I refocus on her face and add, “unless you attempt to stab me. Then you meet Tiger.” And I think I’m losing my fucking mind, because I’ve decided that letting her have the knife is a good character test. I release her and press my hands on the island on either side of her.
“Now what?” I challenge, the current in the air electric, the push and pull of control between us damn near explosive.
Her eyes narrow, mischief in their depths, but again, I find no malice. More seduction, and playful sexiness that I rarely partake in. I like sex. I like fucking. I don’t like games that I don’t dictate and my games are not playful. But this woman, she is not like the others, she does not affect me like anyone before her, and the jury is out on whether that is good or bad.
She grabs my shirt and pulls it from my pants, and then takes the knife to the last button. It pops and flies into the air, hitting the ground with a magnified sound. Her gaze lifts to mine, and she says, “Still scared?”
“Don’t poke the tiger, sweetheart. You won’t like the results.”
“I’m not scared,” she promises, popping another button, then another, her free hand on my stomach, and if she wasn’t holding a knife, I’d move that hand to the damn throbbing in my cock. Instead, she just makes that throb worse, that hand following the path of the knife higher, and farther away from where I want it and her. I endure the torture of not touching her, and patiently at that, until she is finally at my tie, a little too close to my neck for comfort. I grab her wrist again, taking the knife this time, and tangling fingers in her hair. “Are you going to buy me a new shirt?”
“You can buy your own,” she says, her fingers tangling in the hair on my chest and not gently, that bite of pain, adrenaline in my veins, her determination to challenge me proving relentless. “And we both know you wouldn’t have it any other way,” she adds.
I toss the knife into the sink to my left, and before it’s even landed, I’m kissing her, drinking her in and this time, and unlike the kiss by the refrigerator, I don’t hold back and neither does she. Our tongues connect, stroke, battle…but it is one I will win. I will demand everything she has to give me. I want her free will. I want her as exposed as I vowed to make her, and it’s not to prove she’s a killer. It’s for me. For the man in me who not only wants to own this woman, I will. And when she tries to resist, when I sense her trying to withhold even a piece of herself, my hand covers one of her breasts. My fingers stroke her nipple with delicate, sensual touches that become rougher and rougher.
She pants into my mouth, and satisfied that wall she just tried to put up has fallen, I nip her lips, lapping at the offended area before I pull back, fingers still tangled in her hair. I yank at my tie and unbutton the last two buttons still intact, but I don’t move away. Not yet. I kiss her again, hard and fast, and while the resistance is gone, the taste of challenge remains on her lips, but it will soon be submission. She just doesn’t know it yet.
My hands go to her hips and I lift her off the counter and pull her to me, molding every soft perfect female part of her to my harder body, one hand cupping her sweet little ass. My lips linger just above hers, and damn it, there is this deep ache in me for this woman that is unfamiliar, unwelcomed. The lies I’ve told her are a fist in my chest that I reject. I have to know the truth and it’s not a truth someone just tells.
I squeeze her ass and then draw back and smack it, testing her, feeling out the depth of those nerves she showed me, her comfort level with where I might take her. Making a judgment on where I think she wants me to lead her. She doesn’t jolt with the impact. She doesn’t act shocked or angry. She leans into me, her body already submitting to me even if her mind has not, her hand covering my hand where it covers her breast. Her message is clear: She wants the kind of escape I’ve just offered. She wants me to push her to go to places that consume, to leave room for nothing else but the here and now. No fears. No nerves. No emotion, of which I hope like hell does not include guilt.
Whatever particular sins she wishes to escape—and to me emotions that control us are sins—she doesn’t just want someone to fuck. She wants that invisible something that she believes I can give her. After two years of trusting no one, she’s chosen to gamble on a man who’s here to expose more than her passion. If she is guilty of murder or blackmail, or both, I’m a master in every sense of the word. If she’s innocent, I’m a bastard in every sense of the word. I kiss her again, and this time there is anger on my tongue, accusation, my own lies, and maybe hers.
And when I pull back, my anger, my own torment over my actions, her trust, her possible sins and mine, have shifted the mood between us. Intensity that wasn’t there moments before pulses between us, a living thing, a band wrapping us, pulling us closer but in a dark, volatile way. Her hands grip my arms, fingers flexing into my skin. Our breathing is ragged, heavy. I scoop her up, aware of how naked she is but for her thigh highs and her high heels, aware she is mine to own now, and mine to destroy if I so please. And she doesn’t know it. There is something powerful and arousing about this idea that I’m pretty sure makes me a sick fuck, and I’m accusing her of being no better, she just doesn’t know it. But I reject the guilt that pierces a tiny part of my black, steel heart for her and her alone. I’ll make being owned feel so good for her.
I carry her to the living room, but I don’t take her to the couch. I take her to the rug in front of the fireplace and lower her to her feet in front of me. She reaches for me, and damn, as much as I crave those hands on my skin, I resist and catch her wrists.
“You touch me when l say you can touch me from this point forward.”
Her eyes flash with defiance. “And if I don’t agree?”
“Then I don’t touch you.” I walk her to me, her elbows bending, arms resting between us. “We both know what you want from me.”
“Which is what?” she demands, a hint of vulnerability in her voice that I find sexy as hell.
“An adrenaline rush. The kind that pushes your limits but comes with a burn for more tomorrow, not with the regret your nerves fear I’ll give you. But your hard limit pushes for just that. It says, all or nothing tonight. It says, go there now or there is no chance to go there later. I won’t go there now just to live up to your hard limit.”
“I didn’t set sexual limits. I set a time limit.”
“If you didn’t have a sexual limit, you wouldn’t have gotten spooked earlier and you wouldn’t have gone untouched for two years.”
“That two years has nothing to do with us tonight.”
“It does to me. You have limits. Someone broke them.”
“I don’t have limits tonight.”
“Except one night. And that creates a limit for me. I won’t take you too far and find out it’s too far, too late, to turn back time. Consider that my new hard limit, added to my promise to make you want more than tonight. Because I do.”
“If you plan to treat me like a delicate flower, this ends now.”
“I don’t do delicate flowers, sweetheart. Cowering females don’t get me off. But you aren’t that, and you do. You get me off, Faith. But submission isn’t weak. It’s fearless. It’s pleasure. But it’s also trust. You have to trust me like I did you with the knife. Trust for trust.”
“That’s why you let me use that knife.”
“I gave you what I give no one. My submission.”
She laughs. “That wasn’t submission.”
“As close as you’ll ever get from me. But that’s not what you want from me anyway, now is it?”
“No,” she whispers. “It isn’t.”
“And I want your trust, but I’m not demanding it. I’m asking you to let me earn it.”
“You’re asking?”
“Yes. I’m asking. Do what I say, but tell me to stop at any time. Just say stop. Or no. Or whatever language you want to use. I’m not the man who’ll tell you no means yes. Understand?”
“I understand that you are not what I expected.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“That’s a good answer. Because you shouldn’t, and if you did, you wouldn’t be the woman that has me this fucking hard.” I lean in and brush my lips over hers, licking into her mouth, before I add, “You taste like temptation and I am never tempted.” I inhale. “And you smell like amber and vanilla, not flowers tonight. This suits you better than the flowers.”
She breathes out with those words, her face lowering as if I’ve punched her in the chest. I release her wrist and cup her face. “What was that?”
“You talk too much and ask questions I don’t invite. Fuck me or leave.”
Her tone is defensive, but I’ve observed and pushed enough people in depositions and in the courtroom to know torment when I see it. And I don’t like where torment leads us. I don’t want to be there with her right now. “You’re right. Too many words.” I rotate her and press my hands to her shoulders, stepping into her, lowering my head. “Trust for trust. On your knees, Faith.”
She inhales deeply, but she does as I order, kneeling in front of me, and her spine is straight, her hands on her knees. A submissive position, and more and more, I am curious about her past, her sexual coming of age that she then denied until tonight. I squat behind her, stroking her hair away from her neck, my hand on her naked shoulder, my lips at her ear. “I own your pleasure for the rest of the night.” I brush my lips over her ear lobe. “And we’re going to start by getting you out of your own head.” My lips trail down her neck to her shoulder, where my teeth scrape before my tongue soothes that bite. “A nice guy doesn’t bite.”
“And you’re not a nice guy,” she whispers.
“Nice guys are boring,” I say, caressing down her arm and back up again, my fingers stroking the edge of her breast in both directions, “but you already know that, now don’t you?”
“But safe. They’re safe.”
“Like I said,” I gently tease her nipple, “you didn’t want a nice guy.” I cup her breast and meld it to my palm, two fingers tugging at her nipple. She reaches up to cup my hand, something I’ve noticed she does often, and I lean into her. “You don’t touch me unless I tell you to touch me.”
“I want to touch you, Nick.”
“And I want you to touch me, sweetheart. But not yet. Now, you let me take you where you want to go. Put your hands on the stool.”
She pants out a breath and does as I command, her palms flattening in front of her, and I notice her nails, a simple gloss, not manicured and fake. I don’t think she’s fake. Just guarded. I cup her face and lean around her. “Don’t move,” I murmur against her lips, kissing her, a slow lick of tongue against tongue before I release her, standing and removing a condom from my wallet. I tear it open, making sure she hears it, that she knows she doesn’t have to think. I’m protecting her. I shove the package back into my pocket and unzip my pants, rolling the condom over my painfully thick erection, but I leave my pants on, removing the ease of slipping inside her, that is tempting, but now is not that time.
I go down on a knee beside her, my hand on her lower back and slender belly. “Elbows on the stool,” I order, and the moment she complies, I lift her hips, placing her on all fours, my hand on her lower back, my lips pressing between her shoulder blades. She arches forward, and I reach under her, teasing one of her nipples, my hand sliding to her backside. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”
“Spank me,” she whispers.
“Yes,” I say, squeezing her backside. “I’m going to spank you, but I won’t hurt you.”
“What fun is that?”
There is that challenge again, and I caress her shoulder blades with one hand, while the other pinches her nipple, tugging it roughly. She arches forward while her backside lifts into the air just as I expect. I immediately give her nipple another tug, moving my other hand down to her backside and over it, stopping right above her sex. I give her a slight smack there, not meant to cause any pain, just pleasure. I earn a gasp and can hear her breathing now.
“What’s your tolerance level, Faith?”
“I don’t know.”
But she does know. No one plays in this world, and leaves it, without knowing her limits. She just doesn’t want to give them to me. That answer, the knife, the lack of sexual limits. They fit a pattern, that says hard limit. One night. I get nothing else, not even all of her tonight, but there is another layer to this. The layer that screams abuse. I lift her and move her to the stool, placing her hands on my knees.
“Tolerance level, Faith. I’m not—”
“I don’t know,” she hisses. “Don’t you get it? I don’t know, Nick. That’s an honest answer. I don’t know what worked for me. I don’t know what felt like too much because of who I was with and what was too much because it hit the wrong buttons for me. All I know is that I wanted this tonight. And I want you to put me back on my knees and finish what you started for once.”
There she goes. Pushing me. Challenging me, but I don’t let anyone push me. I study her, search her face, and she says, “That is as honest as I have been with anyone in a very long time, Nick. I need—”
I pull her to my lap, straddling me, my hand at her face. “I know what you need,” I say, kissing her, tasting that need, tasting what I’ve wanted to taste on her lips every time I’ve kissed her. Honesty. Hunger. Need. But it’s real now. She’s real, at least one part of her wall has crumbled. “And I’m going to give it to you.”
I stand up with her, carrying her to the couch where I sit down next to the arm, with her still on top of me, those gorgeous legs of hers spread across me. Her hands press to my shoulders, and I fill my hands with her breasts, my thumbs stroking her nipples, my head lowering, tongue lapping at one stiff peak and then another. “Please tell me why you still have clothes on,” she whispers, sounding desperate, breathless, and I like her breathless.
“I’d be inside you already otherwise,” I say.
“What’s wrong with you being inside me?”
My hands settle at her waist. “It’s not time,” I say, my gaze raking over her body, her long blonde hair draping her shoulders, touching the tops of her high, full breasts. Her plump, tight nipples are rosy red. “On your knees beside me and then lay across my lap, Faith.”