Her vulnerability caught in her throat. “Then what are you doing with me?”
“Solving your problems.” I tightened my hold on her. “One by one.”
“Dane—”
“Come with me. If you need to talk, do it in bed.” I was done talking, and she didn’t need to hear any words from me. She needed actions. I led her into the bedroom and dropped her hand only long enough to set my cell and 9mm on the nightstand, then strip out of my soaked clothes.
As if she were too afraid to look up at my eyes or down at my dick, she stared religiously at the scars on my chest. “What are you doing?”
I heard the anxiety in her voice, I saw the tension in her expression, but I ignored them and grabbed the hem of her shirt. “Undressing. Same as you.”
“I wasn’t undressing.” She lifted her arms.
“Now you are.” No bra, her nipples hard as fuck, she sucked in a breath as I pulled the shirt over her head. Fuck, she was gorgeous. I reached for her jeans.
Her hand shot to mine.
My dick pulsed, but I stilled. I could’ve given her words. I didn’t. I leaned down and kissed her forehead once. It said more than anything I could’ve told her.
Her breathing sped up, but she dropped her hand.
My gaze locked on hers, I dropped to a squat and dragged her jeans down her legs. She gracefully pointed her toes and stepped out of them. Resisting the urge to touch every inch of her naked body as I stood back up, I allowed myself one indulgence. I took her chin. “Were you a dancer?”
Heat hit her cheeks. “I practiced ballet when I was younger.”
I searched her face for any other goddamn triggers that asshole had given her, but it was her posture that was telling. Her back straight, she didn’t lean toward me. “I’m not going to fuck you.”
She exhaled.
“Unless you want me to.”
She pulled away from my grip and dropped her gaze. “I know what you’re doing.”
It was what I wasn’t doing that she should’ve taken notice of. Not taking her nipples in my mouth, not shoving my dick in her tight cunt, not claiming her moans with my mouth. My dick hard as fuck for her, she had no clue what I wasn’t doing. “No, you really don’t.” Impatient, tired, fuck—testing her, I put force into my tone. “Get in bed.”
She flinched, but then she scrambled on the bed and got under the comforter. “Just because you know what my triggers are doesn’t mean you get to use that against me.”
I lost patience. Yanking the covers back, I crawled on top of her. My hands on either side of her head, my knees straddling her hips, I hovered above her sweet body and forced her truth on her. “Why do you think he chose you?”
She turned her head and crossed her arms.
Quick, precise, I grabbed her wrists and held them over her head. “He chose you because you were naturally submissive.”
She bucked, but she didn’t even attempt to pull her wrists out of my loose grasp. “I was not.”
Smelling her desire, seeing her hard nipples, I knew she was fucking turned on. “You like this.” Calculated and slow, I brushed the head of my cock across her thigh.
Her knees fell open and her voice dropped to a whisper. “No, I don’t.”
My dick settled against her pussy. “You like a man telling you what to do. Your cunt’s wet. Your legs are spread. You want me to fucking take you.” I lowered my voice and fought to keep from thrusting into her. “You’re a submissive, sweetheart. He did not give that to you.”
She pretended to struggle against my hold. “Yes, he did.”
“No,” I corrected. “He didn’t.”
“Get off me.” There was zero force in her tone.
“Say it like you mean it and I will.”
She stopped struggling and looked up at me with the burden of his abuse etched across her face. “You don’t know what he did.”
I switched her wrists to one hand and cupped her face. “I don’t need to.” It would fucking enrage me. “You were a natural submissive, and he preyed on you. That wasn’t your fault.”
“You think I’m weak.”
“No. I don’t.” The fucking opposite.
“You’re lying.”
“Watch it,” I warned.
“Or what? You’ll hit me?”
Flippant and offhand, I knew it was a knee-jerk response. I knew what abuse did to a person, but I answered her anyway. “I will never hit you.”
“No, you’ll just pin me down.”
“Ask.” She needed to fucking ask. She needed to know I would stop if she said the word, but she also needed to know I liked her submission. I fucking wanted it. I was going to push her and dominate her and take her every damn way I wanted, but we needed her boundaries out in the open. I’d respect her fucking triggers, but not if she wasn’t honest with me.
“You think that makes you a man? Holding a woman down?”
Ignoring the venom in her tone, I answered her calmly. “You’re not asking to be let go. Know why?”
Her chest heaving, looking like she was going to spit in my face, she didn’t say shit.
I answered the question for her. “Because you don’t want that power exchange. You want me in charge. You want me making the decision.” I leaned closer and drove it home. “You wanted him making the decisions.”
She crushed her thighs against my ribs and bucked against my hold. “He did this! He turned me into this! He made me into a freak who begs for it!”
My stab wound ripped with pain and my nostrils flared. “Spread your goddamn legs.”
She tried to head-butt me.
“Right fucking now,” I yelled.
Her thighs eased off my waist and she fell back to pillow to glare at me. “Go ahead,” she taunted. “Fuck me.”
I breathed past the fucking burn in my side and leveled her with a look. “You want to beg, you fucking beg. You want me to let go, ask. You want to walk out that door, then walk. But if you want to be fucked like the submissive you are, know your triggers and set your fucking boundaries. I will respect every goddamn one. But know this—when you’re in my bed? There is no ambiguity. I call the goddamn shots because that’s how I fucking like it.”
“You’re not calling any shots. You’re yelling at me. You can kill a man, but you can’t fuck a woman?”
“Ask.” I wasn’t fucking yelling, and I wasn’t playing her goddamn game.
“With a pretty please and sugar on top?” she mocked. “You’re naked and on top of me with a hard-on. Don’t you know how to use it?”
I didn’t fucking work to get a woman. I didn’t put up with bullshit, and I sure as fuck didn’t play immature games. I lowered my voice to a deadly calm and gave her one last chance. “You want to fuck, you ask. You want to be dead to me? Mouth off one more time.” I let go of her and sat up.
Her arms above her head, her chest heaving, she didn’t move.
Not one inch.
Then slow and deliberate, her knees fell open, exposing her wet pussy.
It was all the invitation I needed.
I grabbed her waist and shoved into her tight cunt. Sinking to the hilt, my cock hit her fucking cervix and she gasped.
“Take a breath,” I commanded.
Her eyes wide, she drew in air as her small hands grasped at my forearms.
Goddamn, she was tight. Unbelievably, lose-my-fucking-mind tight. “You need me to pull out?”
Soft and breathless and pure submission, she whispered, “No, please.”
My cock throbbing, I almost lost it. “You know what you’re gonna give me?”
She bit her bottom lip. “Trust?”
Jesus, she was fucking with my head. “An orgasm.” My thumb on her clit, my palm pressing into her lower abdomen, I thrust into her. Tight and slow, I ground my hips against hers, and fought to keep from shooting my load.
Her back arched and her fingernails dug into my arms. “Oh my God, what are you doing?”
“Making you come.” I gave her another slow grind.
Her inner muscles clenched around my dick. “This… oh God. I’ve never felt….”
I pulled halfway out and fisted myself. Pressing my cock up as my other hand pressed down on her abdomen, I shoved halfway in and stroked her G-spot. “Felt what?” I watched as my dick sank into her small body.
“Oh God,” she moaned, moving her hips with mine. “No condom.”
My gaze shot to hers. “You on the pill?”
Her chest rose and fell, and guilt spread across her face. “Please, don’t stop.”
Goddamn it. “Answer me.”
“No,” she whispered.
My dick pulsed, my chest rose with an inhale and I cataloged. Seven knife wounds, five gunshot wounds, two IED explosions, three concussions, four bounties on my head, two hundred and thirty-seven confirmed kills, and at least a dozen other assholes who wanted me dead.
That wasn’t father material. No attachments, no family. That’s how this worked. I didn’t get to take advantage of her. I didn’t get to think about a future.
I stared at her then I told her the truth. “I could be dead tomorrow.” I never told anyone the truth.
She didn’t blink. “So could I.”
“I won’t let that happen.” I hadn’t fucked without a condom since my ex-wife.
Her hands moved up my arms. “You can’t control everything.”
I wanted to fucking claim her. I hadn’t wanted to claim anyone since I was eighteen. Slow and measured, I eased out then rocked back into her. “I’m going to control your orgasms.”
She bit her bottom lip, but her gaze drifted. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I don’t want you to say a thing. I want your tight cunt to pulse around my dick, and I want you to fucking know what consensual sex feels like.”
“I’ve had consensual sex,” she whispered.
Because she fucking whispered it, because she was conditioned by Fedorov, because she was so goddamn beautiful but she didn’t have a single ounce of self-confidence not related to sex, I knew she was lying. “Whose idea was Vega?”
She didn’t answer.
“Who drove you to him? Who told you not to come? Who picked you up afterward?”
She shivered.
I didn’t let jealousy or anger rule me. Ever. But I was balls deep in a woman who deserved more than Fedorov’s abuse. She deserved more that what Vega had ever fucking given her, and she deserved a hell of a lot more than me. But I wanted her, and I was pissed the fuck off. “Who paid Vega to fuck you?” I demanded.
She closed her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“We’re not fucking talking about it.” She wasn’t saying a goddamn word. I pulled out. “Make a choice.”
She sucked in a sharp breath and her eyes popped open. “I already made a choice.”
One way or another, she was going to tell me to fuck her before I let her come. “Did you tell me to fuck you?”
Silence.
“Do you know what you’re not doing?”
She stared at me. Then without an ounce of ambiguity in her voice, she answered, “I’m not saying no.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Fuck me. Please.”
I shoved back into her.
Her head fell back and she cried out.
I circled my thumb over her clit. “That was a choice, sweetheart.”
“Please,” she panted. “Make me come.”
I grasped her jaw. “This, right here, is who I want to fuck.” I kissed her.