Merciless Love: A Dark Romance(29)

His hand shook slightly as he gripped my naked thigh underneath the dress. I whimpered, unable to hold it in.

“Spread your legs, babe. This'll all be over quick if you help me out...”

He reached into his pocket and jerked out a small phone. At some point during the struggle to dress me, he'd switched on the lamp on my nightstand. The pale light bathed us, but it wasn't the least bit soothing.

The faint glow was sick. It had been infected with the hurt and ache coiling up my belly, the raw need to understand, and to accept I wanted him. We locked eyes as I shifted my thighs apart.

New fire bathed my cheeks.

Sultry. Thick. Unbearable.

I was exposing myself to a madman I wasn't sure if I lusted after or wanted to kill. I hadn't been able to figure it out since he captured me, and this latest dance we were doing just deepened the confusion like a noose around my neck.

He raised the device. It made a little clicking noise like an old-timey camera shutter, and then beeped. I laid back, pinching my eyes shut so hard blood rushed in my temples.

Just let him do this. Let him get this over with.

He can see your body, but he can't see through you. He can't find out how crazy this makes you if you don't let it slip.

More clicks. More beeps. I still felt his heat even when he wasn't touching me, when he was just guiding the phone up my belly and over my nipples, serving me up as a feast for the monster I hadn't met.

Then he laid one hand on my breast, covering the globe, squeezing around my nipple. I nearly hit the ceiling. My whole mind fell apart, drowned in the thick wetness pooling between my legs. So, so hot, but I wanted to be hotter!

“Cassie. You're shaking.” He spoke slow and soft, the way a rider talks to a frightened horse. “Open your eyes. Look at me, babe.”

This was one command I wished I'd fought. As soon as I did, the tears came, a deluge I'd somehow held back through the whole terrible thing between us.

“Get up. Turn around and sit with your back to the camera. It's almost done.”

The pressure on my breast relaxed. It was more therapeutic than sexual, but the affect was all the same. It was hard to listen to him and move with the flames licking me from the inside out, fires kindled and fed by his evil touch.

Whatever. I was just glad to have his hand off my breast when I finally shifted into the position he wanted. His hand moved behind me, slow and steady. Evan focused most of his camerawork on my ass.

I stopped crying. Suddenly, I was feeling exhaustion – heat exhaustion, maybe. I collapsed against him, trying not to fall into a full on panic or faint, taking my breaths one at a time.

Slow. Steady. You've got to keep control.

He caught me, standing right over me when I opened my eyes. I was upside down, staring at him, trying to decipher the storm in his eyes.

Looking didn't help.

It only deepened the mysterious surge in my head, and that frustration fed the thing I wanted to ignore, raw lust plucking every nerve. His hands moved slow, trying to comfort me, or else just sample the flesh he was preparing for market. I couldn't tell.

“We're all done, Cassie. See? It's not so damned bad when you listen, is it?”

He expected me to nod or squeak a reply. Well, I sure as hell wasn't giving him the satisfaction. I clenched my teeth, praying he'd go away, anything to leave me to regroup in this latest bizarre torment.

But it wasn't so easy, and I wasn't that lucky.

His right hand sank lower down my back, riding the plush curve in my side, all the way down my hip. He grazed my thigh and curved in, dangerously close to the openness in the slutty dress he'd decked me in.

Crap, crap, crap.

Rough calloused fingers caught virgin flesh. He was on my bare thigh, snaking his fingers through the wetness, dangerously close to the swollen heat that made me squirm.

No more hiding. I was really and truly screwed.

Evan sucked in a low, deep breath, tracing the thicker cream up my inner thigh. I'd leaked all over myself while he held me down, spilling corruption all over my skin.

“Holy fucking shit...hotter and wetter than a whore in port. Fuck!” He said the last word like a gunshot.

This was lust, real corruption in wet fire, thick as honey. Not the lies about sex and desire I'd been fed in the congregation. If sex was a sin, then the Prophet himself wouldn't have had an adoring gaggle of wives clinging to him everywhere.

No, this wetness, this desire was a sin against myself.

My nipples ached to be squeezed, but it was nothing compared to the heat down below, the fire so close to where his fingers were moving.

“Don't move. Just hold still and feel this. I need to feel you, babe. Gotta know I'm not just losing my mind...”

Two strong fingers brushed my slick folds. Our lungs pumped simultaneously, and we sighed together, drunk with new need, new desire. If he didn't do something to dash the fire, I was going to explode.