Crown of Lies

Taking a deep breath, I marched across the room. His arms opened wide, knowing what I did—that the only way to delete the sudden weirdness between us was to return to the basics.

The place where hate and like didn’t matter.

His lips stopped my thoughts. His arms ceased my worry. He let whatever restraint he had left fray and stalked me backward, his mouth never leaving mine, his sheer power corralling me against a sideboard.

His fingers grabbed my jaw as he kissed me hard.

His taste of mint and darkness flooded my senses.

I trembled in his hold.

As quickly as the kiss began, it ended. His fingers stung my oversensitive skin as he tugged me forward, moving stealthily toward a door past the open plan kitchen, living room, and dining. All around, large picture windows allowed the city to entertain us with its electric vibrancies and pedestrians below.

Opening a door, Penn let me go, allowing me to drift forward into his bedroom while he tossed the black bag onto his bed.

I followed it as the silver glitter dildo called the Seahorse bounced out and lay accusingly on the dark gray coverlet.

Penn didn’t notice. Or if he did, he didn’t glance at it. I doubted he’d notice anything else now I was in his lair. I was his conquest, his trophy. I didn’t know why I got the feeling this was more about him than it was about me, but in an odd way, I was glad.

I could take what I wanted without having to worry about emotions getting in the way. I could keep myself protected all while giving him every intimate part of myself.

I shivered as he stalked toward me, crowding me against the wall. He seemed to prefer me locked in place, unable to go anywhere.

He hadn’t offered me a drink or something to eat.

He’d brought me here to fuck me.

That was all.

I knew I might be hurt by that later. That for all my bravado and belief I could keep this about sex, I might still over-analyze and read into every moment. But right now...right now all I wanted was him. All I needed was him, and I was prepared to be cold-hearted to do that.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, Elle,” he murmured, planting one hand on the wall by my head, imprisoning me. The pulse in his neck was visible as his gaze slipped from warm sable to brutal black. His other hand landed on my cheek, his thumb grazing my jaw to the corner of my mouth.

He paused, holding his thumb there. “You don’t have a clue what you’re doing to me, do you?” He pressed his erection against my belly. “And I’m not going to tell you.”

What? What am I doing to you?

The way he said it ached with tenderness. For the briefest second, he wasn’t some rich tycoon about to strip and devour me but a sweet seducer drowning beneath his own untruths.

That was the problem with being guarded.

People with lies could never make friends. But people with trust could never make enemies.

Both were weak.

I sucked in a breath, parting my lips, allowing him to insert his thumb into my mouth.

The intrusion was sexy and hot, and his skin tasted of salt.

I wanted to ask why he wouldn’t tell me. That I wanted to know what crazy power I had over him when I felt so helpless in his presence. But he leaned forward, licking my bottom lip as he held my mouth open with his thumb. “I’m not going to tell you because I'm going to show you.”

He leaned against me, chest to chest, hips to hips. He trapped me just as he had in my office and the alley and the street and my department store.

He trapped me, and it dredged up yet more memories of three years ago when a hooded man freed me from robbers and awoke my teenage soul. The differences were startling. One man had unlocked my world. This one did his best to imprison me.

Neither would be successful.

Only I held that power, and it was my prerogative to lend it to another or deny it.

A faint hint of anger and untapped desire siphoned from him to me, yet beneath that, there was something else. Something I hadn’t felt from him before.

Softness wrapped in barbwire.

It didn’t diminish the intensity of how he watched me, touched me, controlled me with the multiple facets within him. His facial scruff scraped my cheek as he bent his neck and kissed my throat. My eyes slammed closed as his teeth bit my collarbone. His aftershave shot up my nose as his hands landed on my sides, swooping up to rub my nipples with his thumbs.

His lips traced up my neck, kissing but not gently. Nothing about Penn was gentle. It all came from a place of violence mixed with pleasure. The slipperiness of his teeth added a thrilling dimension to his warm mouth, and I moaned as he once again captured my face in his strong, cool fingers and tipped me just the right way.

His lips sealed over mine, sweet to start then vicious. My body slammed against the wall, harder and harder as he tried to consume me, his lips causing bruises that would never heal.

I had no choice but to let go. To give up standing and breathing and thinking.

If I didn’t, I’d scream with his possession.

Giving in was the easiest and only option.

Because then I could stop thinking and just be. Be a woman, desire...me.

He controlled every minute thing.

He was right when he said he wouldn’t lie to me.

The kiss told me things he no doubt wanted to keep hidden. Things like ‘this is me, this is who I am. I won’t apologize’. And beneath that...beneath those sexy messages of wanting to fuck me was a deeper, darker thread.

A thread that dared me to argue, to probe deeper into who he was, to switch him from passionate stranger to someone I could perhaps call...not a friend, but at least an acquaintance.