“Well, I don’t want them.”
“You can use them to decorate your T-shirts. Your yoga pants.”
She glances down at her glittering ball gown. “You knew?”
“I know when a woman’s wearing a million dollars in diamonds, yes. Though I am curious about your plan with Taggart. Were you planning on stripping naked in the ball?”
She reaches back and tugs on a few silken ties. The elaborate gown slips from her shoulders, revealing a black sheath dress that hugs her slender body. God, she would have caused a riot in this thing. I’m rock hard just looking at her, my bodily response impossible to control.
She tosses the dress aside. “Good lord, that thing was heavy.”
“The problem isn’t the diamonds. The problem is the coke.”
Her arms freeze in midair where she’d been shaking them out. Slowly she puts her hands on her lap. “My sister is recovering from her problem.”
“Your sister needs professional help.”
“She doesn’t want a rehab center.”
Frustration flares inside me. “So you’re going to become an addiction counselor, is that it? Anything she needs? What if what she really needs is a dealer?”
“I won’t let her slip.”
“This is taking things too far.”
“She’s family. You wouldn’t understand.”
We both freeze, and it takes me a moment to understand the sensation in my chest. Pain. She managed to hurt me, when I didn’t think I had emotions left.
For a long time I had no family.
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did. And a year ago you would have been right. I didn’t know my family. I didn’t want to care about anyone. But I’ve gotten to know them, my brother Liam. His ward, Samantha. My other brother Josh. I would do a lot for them, even die for them, but I can’t live for them.”
“I’m not doing that. I’m helping London through a hard spot.”
“And you won’t stop helping until one of you ends up dead.”
She glares at me. “That’s not your problem.”
“Oh yes it is.” I grab her and drag her back onto my lap. Without the heavy fabric, the hard, little diamonds between us, it’s like holding her naked. The silk does nothing to hide her breasts, her stomach, her hips. Lust turns me into something else, something baser. An animal. It’s taking over and winning. “You made it my problem when you fucking ran from me.”
She squirms, trying to escape. It only makes me harder. “Let me go.”
“You should know that running only makes me chase you. It only makes me pin you down and fuck even harder as punishment. I was going to wait until we got to the house.” I palm her breast, not bothering to be gentle. There’s nothing gentle about me right now. “You made that impossible.”
“It’s not my fault.”
I rub my thumb over her nipple and feel it harden. “Not your fault that you’re so goddamn beautiful my chest hurts from looking at you? Not your fault that I hurt, actually hurt with how much I need to be inside you?”
“No,” she mouths, her lips round in the moonlight, the word silent.
“Yes.” I shove her hand, crude and abrupt, to my pulsing erection. She gasps as she feels it. Large. Imposing. Yeah, it’ll probably hurt going in. That doesn’t make me flinch the way it does when she cries. I want her to hurt because of me, only because of me.
CHAPTER FIVE
Holly
He pushes me down to the floor of the SUV. My knees feel the carpet and beneath that—plastic and metal. An engine that’s barreling at seventy miles per hour.
“Now we’re going to play a game.”
His voice rushes over my back, my neck like a cold caress. Goose bumps rise. What’s he going to do to me? No, I already know the answer. There are only a few things a man can do to a woman who’s on her hands and knees. Have sex with me. Spank me.
“Are you going to fight me?” he asks.
“I’m wondering that myself,” I say, proud that my voice doesn’t shake. I’m shaking on the inside. A quivering mess of worry and reluctant arousal.
He grasps the gold dress and rips. The sound of it splits the air in the cabin, and I flinch. It cost a lot to have that dress made and took even more hours for me to sew the diamonds into it. He takes a long strip of the lace and diamonds and wraps it around my wrist—then the other.
In a few deft movements, my hands are tied behind my back.
The time to fight him has passed.
That doesn’t stop me from testing the knots, wrenching my arms to get free.
A sharp pain hits my ass, and I whimper.
“Good,” he says, his voice grim. “I like a fight. Now, the game.”
“I’m not playing.”
“I start a sentence and you repeat after me. Elijah, when I left your apartment, I went…”
I close my eyes and rest my face against the seat. Cool leather cradles my cheek. “What’s the point of this? You’re already angry at me.”
Another sharp pain on the curve of my ass. “Elijah, when I left your apartment, I went…”
I was out of my mind with worry for my sister. Terrified that Elijah wouldn’t help her. That he’d take the diamonds she needed to be safe. “Elijah, when I left your apartment, I went to stay with Marisol and her husband. The French couple. I used the same code you did to seek asylum.”
He stills behind me. “You did.”
“I threw out our credit cards, our IDs. Anything you could use to track us. They gave us a map of other houses we could stay in, a network of safety that took us all the way to Italy. There we stayed with a friend of London’s who’s a model.”
“Hell.” He mutters some colorful curse words. “I went back to the church. I thought maybe you had some kind of Stockholm syndrome, maybe you wanted some closure. And I retraced our steps on the escape, including a visit to the sweet old couple.”
“Don’t be mad at them.”
“I didn’t realize they were such accomplished liars.”
“I’m the one you hate. I’m the one you want to punish.”
“Oh yes.” There’s a smile in his voice. “I’m going to punish you.”
Blunt fingers trace the side of my breast where it’s pressed against the seat, my lower back that curves into my ass, the line of my sex through the thin silk. It’s a coarse invasion, deliberately designed to move faster than he should. It means, your pleasure doesn’t matter.
My body doesn’t care about this message. It finds his touch unbearably erotic, as if he’s awoken something, as if I’ve been hungry for this entire year.
“Elijah,” I say, gasping, needing.
A sharp slap. “I haven’t given you the prompt yet. Eager girl. You’re adorable when you’re horny, you know that? Almost impossible to resist, but I’ll find a way. I’ve been waiting too long for this.”
I can’t help the tilt of my hips, a candid invitation. “Please.”
“Elijah, I left you because…”