17
With the switch for Emma scheduled for that evening, Linc was more eager than ever to be rid of Mia Ali. Not because she was particularly unlikeable—he actually admired how hard she’d been fighting him since the moment he’d carried her out of that gala. Not because he hadn’t believed the pain in her eyes when she’d admitted she’d rather be dead than return to Malik Ali—he’d believed her. He didn’t even want to be rid of her because she talked too damn much—which she definitely did.
No.
He wanted to be rid of her—he had to be rid of her—because the sight of her right then, stroking her clit beyond that see-through shower curtain, was going to be the death of him.
The fog rising against the shower curtain did nothing to hide her gorgeous body or the rapid stroke of her fingers between her thighs. It had done nothing to hide her hand when she’d begun sliding it down her slick stomach moments earlier, drawing a languid path toward the triangle between her legs. It had done nothing to hide the sight of her collapsing against the shower wall as her fingers picked up their pace. The trickle of the shower water didn’t even drown out the first moan that parted her lips as her head fell back under the spray, her eyes fluttering closed.
He told himself to look away, but his eyes wouldn’t move. Locked to her tightly closed eyes and her purring lips. His gaze only occasionally relinquished her enraptured face to fall down to her pussy, where her fingers were still hard at work bringing her the pleasure that had left her moaning out of control. Her moans came harder. Faster. She was close, her body writhing, jerking, and quivering. Like a tidal wave of pleasure was rippling through her and taking her out of her body.
“Stop,” he tried to say, but the lump that had taken up residence in his throat swallowed the word before he could dream making it across the bathroom to her. Add in the noise from the shower water, along the music of her breathy moans, and his strangled plea for mercy never stood a chance at reaching its destination.
A cringe ate up his face as he covered his aching dick, which hadn’t stopped begging for release from his jeans all morning, but never more so than it did right then.
Her groans moved to cries that rose in power every second she continued touching herself, higher and higher like a symphony, until she finally reached her peak, her body writhing against the shower wall as her orgasm rippled through her body.
Only then did Linc release the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He shot up from his seat on the toilet when she turned off the shower water and pulled the curtain away, seizing the bath towel he’d left stacked on the counter next to him. He opened the towel just as she pulled back the curtain, still gasping from her peak, and held it up for her to step into. She did, the shower water splashing down from her soaking body as she climbed out of the tub and onto the floor, taking the towel from his hold and wrapping it around her body.
Linc’s eyes remained narrowed away, toward the laundry chute in the corner of the room. As if he was now considering jumping in head first to make his escape.
“Were you watching me?”
His eyes flew to hers at her whispered question. Drinking in her sopping wet hair and skin, as well as her gentle, knowing smile, he didn’t answer.
Still gasping, she reached out and cupped the bulge in his jeans.
He moved her hand away.
“Stop.” This time he did manage to say the word, but it was still clipped. Strangled. He knew his voice would only betray him again, so he didn’t dare speak further.
She stepped toward him.
He lifted his chin and stepped back, hitting the bathroom sink.
Her smile grew. “I was thinking about you.”
His nostrils flared as her whispered words caused the dick he’d already believed was throbbing as long and thick as it was capable of, to double in size in an instant.
She watched it happen, appearing entranced by his zipper before lifting her eyes to his. “How long has it been?”
He pressed his palms against her shoulders when she got too close, stopping her.
She cupped his hardness again.
And this time, he didn’t push her away.
——
Mia didn’t know when she’d stopped pretending, but she had. She hadn’t been lying when she told him she’d been thinking of him while masturbating in the shower, minutes earlier. She’d been genuinely curious when she’d asked how long it had been since he’d made love to a woman. Still stunned that a man as beautiful as him—heaving before her as he fought his most basic needs—could be so hungry for something he could get so easily. Her pussy really did throb for the dick she had cupped in her hand.
And at that moment, with the sharp, deadly sequin she gripped in her other hand, she really did want him inside her. She wanted that bulge in her hand, so thick and long she almost worried if he’d fit, filling her to the hilt. She moved in close until their chests were flush—until nothing separated their bodies but the towel still wrapped around her.
Then something snapped in him, causing a wave of darkness to flash across his face before he took her shoulders again and eased her back. “Stop.”
It was the first time in her life a man had ever told her to stop. The first time a man was capable of seeing her as anything but an object, even as she stood before him, naked as the day she was born. The feeling that blasted through her took her breath away, and before Mia could stop herself, her body was moving on its own accord. She returned to him and cupped his cheek with her free hand. Needing to feel his face, even as it glowered down at her.
The moment her skin was on his, he flinched and swatted her hand away.
So she laid her palm on his gasping chest instead. He seized her wrists in a death grip. She gasped at the tightness of his hold as he held her claimed wrists up between their bodies, their gasping lungs the only sound filling the bathroom.
They searched each other’s eyes as a searing silence fell. Mia wondered if he was going to throw her across the room. Or maybe over his shoulder again like he had last night. Carrying her back to the bed where he’d bind her limbs once more.
Instead, he was on her, charging forward so suddenly it caused Mia to stumble backward, yelping when her back hit the door of the bathroom, making it slam against the wall. In what felt like the blink of an eye, her naked thigh was locked in his big hand, his fingers digging into her skin as he lifted it high on his hip. Then, he was pressing his bulge against the warm cavern of her pussy, still slippery from her exploits in the shower, and his other arm was around her waist, pulling her body flush with his as he buried his gasping lips into the crook of her neck.
The zap of ecstasy that shot through her shocked Mia so badly she was only able to whimper as butterflies assaulted her stomach.
When he licked and sucked the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder, she couldn’t help it when her whimpers moved to strangled cries that tore up her throat like a lightening rod. She lifted her leg higher against his side all on her own. Dragging her fingers down the back of his head, she pulled him in deeper, closer, silently begging for more of his lips and tongue against her skin, her pussy pulsing for him. Her heart hammering for him.
Some part of her became only distantly aware of the sequin still locked in her hand as his trembling fingers traveled her body hungrily, cupping her bare ass, her thighs, and her breasts, still covered by the towel, moving all over as if he couldn’t get enough of the feeling of her body under his fingers. As if he couldn’t touch every inch of her fast enough.
She was just as desperate for him. Her splayed fingers running his back, his shoulders, and his hair, stroking every muscle in his body—which were even more solid than they looked—trying to pull him in closer even though every inch of their bodies were already sealed tight.
The sequin in her hand was forgotten.
Everything was forgotten. All she wanted was for him to be inside her. All she wanted was the button and zipper of his jeans undone. Her trembling fingers dropped between their bodies to do the job.
“Fuck me,” she begged, sinking her hand into his unzipped jeans and cupping his dick, the hard skin just as hot to the touch as the wet walls of her pussy, which pulsed to become better acquainted with the monster she’d just gripped with her fingers.
His strangled cry warmed the crook in her neck, and she knew he wouldn’t stop her. He needed it just as badly as she did. She could feel the tight hold he had around her waist, as if he were trying to drag her entire body under his skin, the strength of his hold bringing her to her toes. She could feel it in his chest, where his heartbeat was slamming against hers, as if entangled in a boxing match, both trying to pummel through their aching skin to land the knockout punch. She could see it in the desperation of his movements in the mirror on the opposite wall. The way the muscles in his back were so tight they seemed near shattering. The way his every limb trembled in the reflection. She watched herself in the mirror as she dragged her nails down his strong back. As he reached behind him with one hand to shove his jeans down over his ass. Desperate to release his throbbing cock and sink it inside her. Where he so clearly, so despairingly needed it most. Where they both needed it most.
But Mia’s eyes widened when, instead of pushing his jeans down in the mirror’s reflection, his body suddenly stilled, and instead, he seized his gun. The gun was hanging on by a prayer in the back pocket of his undone jeans. At what seemed like the speed of light, the gun was in his hand, and he’d pointed it into the hallway, pulling the trigger three times.
As three shots rang out, a bullet pierced the mirror, shattering the previously erotic vision of their writhing bodies, stopping Mia’s heart in mid-beat, and drawing a horrified scream from the depths of her throat. She locked her arms and legs around his body, clutching him tightly as the fear clutched her bones when the reality of what was happening finally dawned on her.
He pulled the trigger several more times, the backfire of his gun making his body jolt, and hers too, since her limbs were still locked around him and basically an extension of his own. The first deafening shot had made her ears ring, but she barely heard all the rest. Only after he’d stopped shooting did he push away from the door, still holding her up, every inch of desire washed from his eyes, as they remained trained on the hallway. Without looking at her, he set her down on her feet and forced her body behind his, gun still primed on the hall.
Mia huddled behind him, gripping his arms on either side, her heart now racing in shock as opposed to blind lust. She peeked around the shelter of his torso and was met with the sight of two dead bodies lying on the hallway floor, each of them with a gun under their—now lifeless—hands, their limp fingers still primed on the triggers. Mia recognized those two dead bodies in an instant.
“Malik’s men,” was all she could say, digging her nails into his pulsing biceps.
Without another word, he sucked in a breath, seized her arm, and dragged her to the bathroom door, hesitating only a moment to look both ways, checking if the coast was clear before he pulled her into the hallway. His arm remained flexed, gun pointed and ready to fire in one hand as he used the other to drag her across the hall and back into the bedroom. He crossed the room to the opposite side of the bed and hurled her to the floor.
Mia landed on the wood with a yelp, hidden from view behind the bed, still holding the bath towel to her body as she looked up at him.
“Get under the bed and don’t come out until I say.” He turned away from her without another word and moved to the door, checking the hallway one last time before stepping out of the room and disappearing from sight.
When the sound of his feet pounding down the stairs boomed into the bedroom, Mia found her common sense once more. The common sense that had nearly been lost in the bathroom, moments earlier, when he’d slammed her against the wall and sucked the sensitive skin of her neck between his full lips. When he’d anchored her leg on his hip and pressed his hardness into her slick center. In an instant, she regained the common sense she’d lost in the heated moment she should’ve been using to get the sharp rivets of her sequin into his neck and not his hard dick into her pussy.
When more gunfire rang out from downstairs, it didn’t scare her this time—it moved her. She shot to her feet, heart racing. Her wide eyes flew past the door of the bedroom and to the dead bodies still lying on the hallway floor before locking onto the bathroom. The bathroom where the laundry chute to freedom awaited her once more. Freedom not just from Malik, but from the beautiful man downstairs who’d almost stolen what little remained of her sanity.
She raced around the bed, her lungs now gasping in desperation for escape as opposed to desperation for the beautiful man who was surely in the midst of getting himself killed in a shootout with Malik’s soldiers. Whether he won the gunfight or lost, she had no intention of being there when, or if, he returned. She could only hope Malik’s goons kept him distracted long enough for her to escape. For good this time.
The thought of escape warmed her heart and put a hopeful smile on her face. But that smile was gone as quickly as it came when a shot of searing pain suddenly lit the bed of her foot on fire, shocking her so badly that she tripped over herself, fell forward, and cracked her skull on the black steel footboard of the bed.
It was only when her entire body collided with the floor—the pain making it impossible to move—that she saw the large pieces of shattered glass that still littered the floor at the foot of the bed. The shattered glass that had gotten there the night before, when she’d spit in her captor’s face, angering him so much that he’d hauled the glass of water he’d been trying to give her across the room, breaking it to pieces. One of those pieces of shattered glass, she could only assume, was now lodged deeply in the bed of her foot.
Her vision blurred.
She tried to blink the haze away, but the flutter of her lashes only came more slowly—more sluggishly—with every second she tried to fight through her suddenly unfocused vision.
Before she could think about how deeply that broken glass must’ve sunk into her foot, or about how profusely she must be bleeding, the blurriness taking over her body finally won over and her eyes fluttered shut, the entire world fading to black.