His gaze fixed on her with a new kind of intensity as he put down his mug, straightened from the counter and prowled closer.
Feeling more exposed now that daylight gave her no place to hide, she forced herself to stand her ground. “If physical threats aren’t among your extreme measures, what then? If you think your previous warning of exposing me to Rose and Jeffrey stands, it doesn’t. I’m walking out of here and going straight to the practice to tell them everything.”
His ridiculing glance told her he didn’t believe her capable of doing that. Out loud he only taunted, “I’d still have dozens of ways to make you comply.”
“Why are you even asking me to do this?”
“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah...I got that already. You’re the man who says ‘jump’ and everyone hops in the air and freezes there until you say down. Quit marveling at your unstoppable powers. It got old after the first dozen times. So give me a straight answer already. It’s not as if you care about going easy on me, or about me at all.”
“Bloody hell, who am I kidding.” Without seeming to move closer, he was all over her. Before she could even gasp, he buried his face in her neck and groaned, “It was I who made a catastrophic mistake, Isabella. I’m not done. I’ll never be.”
Suffocating under the feel of him, the hard heat and perfection of him, with the mess of reactions he wrenched from her depths, she started struggling. “Let me go. Now.”
He only carried her off the ground. She opened her lips to blast him and he closed them with a mind-melting kiss, tasting her as if he couldn’t stop.
It was only when she went limp in his arms that he let her lips go, barely setting her back on her feet, pouring one final groan of enjoyment inside her.
“Got that out of your system?” She glared up at him, wishing her hatred could melt his flawless face off his skull.
“I just told you there is no getting you out of my system. So let’s not waste more time in posturing and theatrics. Let’s get past what I said to you earlier.”
“Just like that, huh?”
He squeezed her tighter. “It would be more time efficient. I already admitted to being a pillock and a tosser.”
“What?”
His lips spread wider at her croak. It wasn’t right. Nature was such a random, unjust system, to endow him with such an array of assets and abundance of charisma. But then, that was what made him such an exemplary fiend.
“That means massive idiot and supreme jerk in the tongue of my people.”
“And you think calling yourself a couple of fancy British insults exonerates you and compensates me? I’m sure in your universe you consider tossing a half-assed apology at someone will wipe away any injury you’ve dealt them. Not in mine.”
His eyes sobered. “I got you here thinking I could get closure and move past you at last. I went through the motions but not only didn’t I get said closure, I no longer want it.”
Needing to poke out his eyes and wrap her legs around him at once, she pushed at him, bracing against the feel of his silk-sprinkled steel flesh. Just remembering what that chest had done to her as he’d tormented her breasts and pounded his potency inside her...
She gave a strong enough shove that he let her go at last. Because he’d decided to, she was sure.
Regaining her footing, she steadied herself. “So you’re not even apologizing. You just realized you’ve jumped the gun, that you didn’t get enough of me and want a few more rounds.”
He stroked his hands over his chest, as if tracing the imprint of her hands against it. “I want unlimited rounds. And I never thought it a possibility to have enough of you. I only wanted to be rid of my need for you. I no longer want that. I want to indulge that need, to wallow in it.” He reached for her again, slamming her against him, cupping one of the breasts he’d ravaged with pleasure. “And before I made that bloody blunder of following through with my no-longer-viable intention, you wanted nothing more than to binge on me, too.”
She pushed his hands away from her quivering flesh. “I’m actually grateful for said bloody blunder. It gave me the closure I needed, in the form of a vicious slap that jogged me out of my pathological tendencies where you’re concerned.”
He grabbed both her hands and dragged them up to his face. “Slap me back as hard as you like. Or better still...” He pulled her hands down, pressed them nails first over his chest. “Take your pound of flesh, Isabella. Claw it out of me.”
Trembling with the need to sink her nails and teeth into his chest, not to hurt but to worship him, she fisted her hands against the urge and stepped back. “Thanks, but no thanks.”