Nothing was touching the deep freeze that had taken up res in the center of her chest.
She had told her grandmother they were leaving just before dawn for Miami.
In retrospect, investing in a safe place in the heart of Benloise’s family business had been a dumb-ass thing to do. But with any luck, Eduardo, assuming he was still on the planet and the beneficiary of his brother’s will, would be so busy enjoying the purchase of pale blue Bentleys and animal-print Versace sheets that he wouldn’t come after the likes of her.
Assuming he even knew what his brother had done to her. Or planned for her.
Ricardo had kept so much to himself.
God … what had Assail done to that man?
A quick flash of that face of his, bloodied around the mouth and chin, increased her chill, and she turned around—
“Fuck!” she screamed as she looked out the foggy glass.
The male figure who had appeared in the doorway was still as a statue and powerful as a tiger. And he was watching her as a predator might.
Instantly, she was hot on the inside of her skin—because she knew why he had come, and she wanted it, too.
Assail strode to the glass door that separated them and tore it open. He was breathing hard, and in the inset light above her head, his eyes were bright as match strikes.
He stepped into the shower fully clothed, his Gucci loafers no doubt ruined, his dark brown suede jacket absorbing the falling water and turning the color of blood.
Without a word, he clamped his hands on her face and dragged her by the head to his mouth, his lips crushing hers as he backed her up against the marble with his entire body. Sola gave in with a moan, accepting his tongue as it penetrated her, gripping his shoulders through his fine clothes.
He was fully erect and he ground his hips against her, pushing his hard cock in and rubbing it against her belly, the gold H of his belt scratching at her. More kissing, the desperate, starved kind that you remembered even when you were eighty and far too old to think of such things. And then his hands were on her slippery breasts, his fingers pinching her nipples until the distinction between pain and pleasure disappeared and all she knew was that if she didn’t orgasm in the next moment, she was going to expire—
As if sensing what she needed, Assail dropped to his knees, threw one of her legs over his shoulder, and went down on her, his lips eating at her sex in the same way he’d attacked her mouth.
This was sex as punishment, an indictment of her choice, a physical expression of his anger and his disapproval.
And maybe it made her a sick bitch, but she loved it.
She wanted him to come at her like this, pissed off and nothing but edge, pouring himself into her so she didn’t have to feel as guilty … or as empty.
Gripping his soaked hair, she tilted her hips and forced him even harder into her, using her calf to his back so he found a rhythm that—
Sola bit down on her lip as she came wildly, her torso jerking against the marble with a high-pitched squeak.
Before she knew it, she was on the floor of the shower, stretched out in front of him as he peeled his soaked jacket and silk shirt from his carved chest. As he went for his belt buckle, she reached out for him, her hands impatient to get to that smooth skin and those hard contours of his.
He never said a word to her.
Not as he spread her legs wide and mounted her, not as his cock went in and he started pounding on her, not even as he braced himself above her and stared into her eyes as if he were daring her to leave everything he could give her.
Assail’s broad back caught the spray, shielding her from it, keeping her vision clear—so she could see everything from his fierce expression to his bulging shoulder muscles to the shadows thrown by his pecs. His wet hair swung to the rhythm, drops of water leaving the tips of the waves like tears, and every once in a while his lip would curl back—
Dimly, something registered as not right, a red flag raised in the far recesses of her brain. But that was so easy to ignore as another surging release took over, shutting down thought so that sensation was all she knew … Assail was all she knew.
As her sex fisted his erection, he began to orgasm, too, his body rearing back—
No condom. Shit!
Just as the thought flashed through her mind, it was gone again, her release redoubling on itself so instead of pushing him back, she reached out and sank her nails into his hips.
It was right about when her own release was fading that things went … a little strange.
Her body stilled in recovery and she felt him kicking deep inside of her, finishing what he had started.
Except he wasn’t done with her.
After he’d finished ejaculating, his pelvis locking against hers, he began to withdraw almost immediately. And she expected him to lie with her on the marble; maybe lift her up and carry her out to dry off and get in bed; maybe make a comment that, damn it, they hadn’t been safe in the slightest.