12
The front door slammed against the wall and nearly broke away from the frame as Linc kicked it open and stepped back into the dark house. So violently, the door ricocheted instantly and closed behind him all on its own. The acidic taste of his own blood from where Mia’s elbow had connected with his teeth during their scuffle lingered in his mouth, its repugnant flavor painting a frown across his face.
Thankfully, Mia had stopped fighting him sometime during the trek back to the house, her body now nothing but a lump of dead weight slung across his shoulders. The sequins of her dress still prickled at his neck, promising to give him second painful gash to keep the first one company if he wasn’t careful. He gritted his teeth, wondering how such a beautiful dress—adorning such a beautiful body—could be so goddamn dangerous. The thought of that dress, of the body it hugged so tightly, its owner could barely move, even though it was still unzipped, infiltrated his brain and tightened his stomach. It carried him so far away from consciousness he didn’t even realize how close her head was to the wall next to the staircase until the deafening thud of her skull connecting with the plaster had filled the air, followed by her strangled cry.
“Fuck!”
Linc’s tongue begged to apologize as he stomped up the stairs, but he didn’t, letting her furious grunts and displeased expletives boom off the walls as he cleared the stairs, carried her down the upstairs hallway, and re-entered the bedroom. Her moans of pain were still present, but faint, as he carried her to the bed he should’ve never untied her from to begin with. Bending forward, he deposited her haphazardly onto the rumpled white sheets. She hit the mattress with a yelp, the speed with which he’d thrown her down causing her to roll away from him and nearly fall off the bed on the other side.
She stopped herself, however, digging her fingers and toenails into the sheets to keep herself on the bed, stomach down.
He nearly laughed at the sight of her, writhing sluggishly on her stomach like a baby who hadn’t yet learned to roll over. He wondered if she even had the strength to turn her body. She was surely regretting how hard headed she’d been earlier that night when he’d tried to give her something to eat and drink, and she’d literally, spat it back in his face.
“Congratulations,” he said to her heaving back, his voice joining in with her strangled gasps and bouncing off the walls of the empty bedroom. “You just bought yourself a bucket to piss in and a lifetime guarantee of never leaving this bed again.”
It seemed his voice brought something alive in her because, with a monstrous heave, she pushed herself up on her arms and rolled over, landing on her back, her eyes filled with hatred as she glared up at him.
But Linc didn’t notice the glare, his green orbs expanding to twice their size as they fell to the bust-line of her dress, where one of the straps had come undone sometime during their struggle, leaving both of her naked, ample breasts spilling out of the neckline. A flutter that should’ve been pleasant took up residence in his stomach, but it multiplied too quickly as he found himself entranced. Evolving into a ripple of blistering tremors. As if vultures with the tips of their wings set aflame had taken up residence in his stomach, threatening to burn right through the lining with every flap of their fiery feathers. His erection came in an instant, stronger than it had in a long time, pressing against his zipper so ferociously he worried it might tear through his jeans.
She followed his gaze down to her chest, rising and falling with just as much fervor as her heaving stomach, and then looked back up at him. Her eyes grew knowing through the smattering of dark brown hair falling across her face, saturated with leaves and shrubbery from her failed escape attempt.
Linc drew in a violent breath while yanking down the zipper of his hoodie. He tore it off his shoulders and down his arms, every inch of blood in his body pumping through his veins in a race to get to his aching dick, making the vessels in his arms pulse against his skin. Fighting to break free with just as much fervor as his dick fought for freedom against his zipper.
He tossed the hoodie at her, a deep cringe darkening his face when it landed on her stomach, doing nothing to conceal the soft globes of her breasts, her dark areolas, or her rock hard nipples, begging to be licked.
“Put it on.” When she didn’t immediately heed his demand, his voice came louder, harder, strained through his clenched teeth. “Now.”
She didn’t move, still brazenly holding his gaze, her own brown orbs growing just as deep and dark with the urgent hunger he could feel ripping his insides to shreds. Every part of him yearned to cross that bedroom and cover her up with the hoodie himself. But he couldn’t move.
He couldn’t touch her.
It would be the biggest mistake of his life.
She must’ve known it too because the tiniest smile lifted the corner of her lips and lit fire to her knowing eyes as she threw her legs over the edge of the bed, never breaking their gaze.
He took a healthy step back when she stood, holding the sweater at her side, the hood hanging by a prayer from the tips of her lithe fingers.
He breathed deeply. “Put on the goddamn sweater.”
She searched his eyes before dropping the sweater on the edge of the bed behind her and laying her hands on her hips, where her glimmering dress was somehow still intact.
Linc’s eyes fell to watch as she splayed her fingers against her body. As if they were just as eager as his own to touch every inch of her frame—its subtle dips and curves surprisingly voluptuous for a woman her size. His gaze followed those fingers as she dragged them up her body, slowly, lingering at her chest to give each of her exposed breasts a soft squeeze. To twist her nipples around her fingers, making them even harder than they already had been a moment before. The brown buds nipped into the air and nearly reached across the room for him as her fingers abandoned them to stoke a searing path up her ribcage. Her shoulders. The underside of her chin. Then, she reversed, moving her touch down her chest once more, giving her breasts another soft squeeze, a lift, before releasing them again, leaving them jiggling in her retreat as she trailed her hands over her stomach and dipped her fingers into her dress, which was bunched around her waist.
She leaned forward to push the tight fabric down her long legs.
Linc swallowed back the lump in his throat, gritting his teeth.
She stepped out of the dress that was now pooled at her feet, one foot at a time, her toes—painted red—pointed, making her every move utterly graceful and womanly. She stood before him, brown skin glowing. Wearing gold cotton panties and nothing else, z circular patch in the middle of her underwear a touch damper than the all the rest. A wetness so subtle most would easily miss it.
But Linc didn’t miss it.
“The sweater—” His cleared his throat when his voice broke.
Her smile grew wider. Playful. Amused.
An expletive sat on the tip of Linc’s tongue as his eyes continued traveling her body utterly against his will, but it petered away when his gaze landed on a scar. A startling disfigurement on the side of her thigh that started a few inches above her knee and stretched all the way up to the tiniest part of her waist. Leaving a jagged line racing up the edge of her body, like a black pinstripe. A blemish that promised great pain had been realized to see it come to fruition.
He gaped at the scar.
And Mia’s smile vanished. Every inch of amusement faded from her eyes. She’d snatched the sweatshirt up from the edge of the bed and used it to cover her body, her eyes falling to the floor as she nibbled her bottom lip.
Linc lifted his chin at her sudden about-face, his eyebrows rising slowly as he lifted his gaze back to hers.
Her eyes remained lowered, however. Some part of her seemed in the midst of asking him to turn his back. But she didn’t. Instead, she pulled the hoodie over each of her arms hastily, her hands trembling the entire way, and zipped it up. He was twice her size, so the sweater engulfed her. Serving as more of an innovative new take on a dress than a sweatshirt, it hit her mid-thigh and swallowed her arms whole. She didn’t even bother to push the sleeves up over the hands that were eating alive, letting them hang like shark fins as she crossed her arms tightly over her chest.
With her naked body hidden away, Linc found a new center. A balance that had been rapidly escaping him when she’d been defying him a moment earlier.
“Lay down and put your hands over your head,” he demanded.
This time, there was no knowing smile on her lips. No playful gleam in her eye. This time, she did what she was told without argument, verbally or physically, lying down on the bed, avoiding his eyes the entire time, and stretching her long arms over her head.
Linc took her in for a moment before crossing the room to the bedside table. The black fabric he’d used to restrain her earlier sat right where he’d left it after making the colossal mistake of freeing her wrists and ankles the first time.
Moving to the bed, he seized her wrists and bound them back onto the steel bars of the headboard. He watched her. He watched the tears gleaming in her eyes for the first time that night. Those gleaming brown eyes didn’t stop him, however, from moving to the foot of the bed and giving her feet the same treatment. Tying them tightly enough that she could never dream of getting out on her own, but not so tightly it was uncomfortable.
After he’d secured her, every bone in his body begged him to leave the room. The logical corner of his busy brain concurred.
She’s a terrible person. Even as his mind implored him, his body moved on orders only from his aching heart—or perhaps his aching dick—still screaming for release against the zipper of his jeans.
He leaned on the bed, making sinkholes as he pressed his fists on either side of her body, like a Gorilla towering over its prey, leaning in so close he could see the black shards that made flower designs in her chestnut irises. His nostrils widened as her sweet scent tickled his nose. Her shampoo? Her perfume?
Her?
He didn’t know.
He just knew, mixed with the carnal scent still rising from the damp spot he’d seen in her panties moments earlier, it was as dangerous as hell.
“I have every intention of returning you to dear old ‘Prince Ali’. Preferably without any extra… gifts added to the ones he’s already given you.” His eyes traveled in the direction of the scar he’d just seen on her leg, and when he brought his gaze back to hers, a gleam of hatred had flashed across her orbs. He couldn’t tell if that hateful gleam was in response to the memory of how that scar had found its way onto her body, or tailor made just for him. He didn’t care. “I don’t wanna hurt you.” He searched her eyes. “But if you push me, I will.”
Her eyes widened, her nostrils flared, and her breasts, whose seductive beauty he wouldn’t soon forget, heaved under the thick fabric of his sweatshirt.
He felt his own breath quickening in time with hers, forcing himself to push away from the bed and leave the room, his boots stomping across the floors in his retreat.
——
Bound once more, Mia gritted her teeth as she watched the animal stomp out of the room, unable to stop her heated eyes from traveling down the long, strong lines of his broad back and muscular arms as he went. Long, deep lines that had entranced her and taken her hostage from the moment he’d torn that sweatshirt off his massive body, reveling in the strength she’d always known he’d been harboring underneath, but still hadn’t been prepared for. The rippling six pack abs. The massive boulders, ebbing and pulsing under every inch of his skin. The deep V at his hips.
A deep V that had led the way to what she had been prepared for. To the raging hard-on that had taken up residence against his zipper. So long and thick between his jeans and his thigh she’d worried it might battle ram its way right through the denim. It was a sight she’d known she’d eventually find herself on the receiving end of, no matter how savage and heartless he was.
All men were exactly the same really, and his carnal response to her naked body was just the swipe of the match she needed to get her freedom flame burning once more. Assuring her that all hope was not lost after all. She’d now seen it with her own two eyes. Just how badly that barbarian really wanted her. It was only a matter of time before she broke him.
She looked to her right, where she’d hidden the sequin she’d ripped away from her dress in the bathroom earlier that night. The sequin that hadn’t left her fisted hand during her entire escape attempt. The sequin that had remained in her hand long after that scowling menace had carried her back into that bedroom and thrown her down onto the bed. The sequin she’d hidden next to the pillows while she’d still been lying on her stomach.
As she looked upon that sequin with rivets sharp enough to draw blood—fatal blood if she chose—she thought of his swollen cock. It was only a matter of time before he couldn’t fight her anymore. Before he finally gave in to the erotic urges tearing him limb from limb.
He’d give in.
And when he did, she’d be ready.