This is madness.
He senses my rising panic. “Only a few hours, and then I’ll let you run away.” His voice turns dark. “For a while.”
With his hands on my shoulders, he lowers me to the bed and lays me flat. He stands looking down at me. I’m exposed and vulnerable beneath his gaze. His expression is one of perfect concentration and total control. He slowly rubs the heel of his palm along the bulge in his jeans.
When I lick my lips, his eyes flash.
“Tell me what you want,” he demands.
“You.”
His smile returns, only now it’s edged in danger. “Oh, you’re gonna get me,” he says softly.
I shiver with equal parts anticipation and dread. I hear the unspoken whether you like it or not, and know without a shadow of doubt that he’ll come looking for me after tonight is over.
I might have intended a casual fling, but Ryan intends something else entirely.
He’ll never find me. No one can. I’ll vanish like I always do.
Even as I reassure myself with those words, I’m doubting them. Something about this man makes me believe he’d follow me to the ends of the earth.
“I need to get you out of your head,” Ryan says, watching me.
Those damn eyes. They see everything.
I sit up abruptly, scoot to the edge of the bed, and take the top button of his fly between my fingers. Looking up at him, I say, “How many times do I have to tell you to shut up?”
His laugh is husky, but turns to a groan when I rip open his fly and swallow his erection.
He’s big and hard in my mouth, a pulsing heat against my tongue. I open my throat and take him all the way to the base, thrilling to the sound of his broken gasp. He settles his hands on either side of my head, and they’re trembling.
Adrenaline surges through me.
I want him undone. I want him to feel what I just felt, that sudden, jarring loss of equilibrium, knowing someone else has taken over your body. Knowing someone else—a total stranger—is in command. I want to knock him off his smug pedestal and leave him whimpering at my feet.
I want to punch him in his pretty face.
Who is he to control me?
Then, without warning, I’m flat on my back with Ryan on top of me, his elbows braced on either side of my head.
“We’re not doin’ this if you’re pissed off,” he says, breathing hard.
Now I want to kill him. “I’m not pissed off!”
“Lie to me again, and I’ll take you over my knee, woman,” he growls.
I try to shove him off, but he weighs too much. Plus he’s bracing himself with his arms and legs. Budging him is impossible. I grit my teeth, seething with frustration. He puts his lips next to my ear.
“Normally I’d tie you up right now and force you to tell me what the fuck is wrong, but since you don’t like bein’ restrained, we’re just gonna have to have a conversation like adults.”
I can recall with perfect clarity how many times in my life I’ve wanted to commit murder. This is time number three. I want to strangle him. I want to squeeze his thick, tanned neck and choke the life right out of him, then maybe light him on fire and do a victory dance as he burns.
I’m losing it. I close my eyes and suck air into my lungs.
Ryan grips my head. His heartbeat thunders against my chest. His cock, wet from my mouth and rock-hard, presses between my legs. “Be honest with me for once!” he says into my ear.
A sob catches in my throat. Suddenly, I’m fighting tears, mortified by these ridiculous emotions, hating how powerless I feel.
“You make me feel weak,” I blurt, then groan at my own stupidity.
A shade of tension leaves his body. His voice gentles. “You keep forgettin’ you’re the one in control, Angel. This is happenin’ because you want it to. Just ’cause you’re feelin’ some kinda way about me, about this thing between us, doesn’t change the fact that you’re here, lyin’ naked underneath me right now, by choice. Trust it. You’re not the kind of woman who’d be here by accident, no matter how different this is from what you usually do.”
My chest rises and falls in rapid bursts. “How do you know what kind of woman I am?”
Looking into my eyes, he speaks deliberately. “Because I see you. And I know that’s what really scares you. No one ever gets to see the real you, but I do.”
Knife to the heart, slicing it wide open.
God, the truth is awful. And this terrible intimacy is even worse. I think it’s probably the worst thing in the world.
Ryan holds my head still when I try to turn it. At the end of his patience, he snaps, “Either you drop this hiding bullshit and be brave, or I’m kickin’ your ass outta my room! What’s it gonna be?”
His stare is blistering. I stare back, hating myself for liking him, cursing whatever gods might exist for putting him in this room. Anyone else and I’d have stuck to my plan. Anyone else and he’d be deep in a peaceful, sedative-induced sleep right now. Instead, fate decided to put me in the path of this man, the trained killer with the beautiful laugh and addictive kisses and eyes that see straight down to the bottom of my soul.
Finally, in a small voice I say, “I’ll be brave.”
It’s not like I have a choice. If he kicks me out, I won’t be able to climb the balcony to Prince Khalid’s suite, and then I won’t be able to steal the necklace, and the consequences of failure aren’t something I allow myself to think about.
Better to suffer here in this bed than at the hands of the masters I serve.
Nostrils flared, Ryan inhales slowly. His gaze darts all over my face. “I mean it,” he warns.
I swallow, muster my courage, then wrap my arms around his back. “I know.” My voice is a pathetic, wavering thing. When the tear slides from the corner of my eye, I don’t try to wipe it away. I just lie there and hate myself.
“Oh fuck, Angel,” he breathes. He looks dazed, in happy disbelief, like someone just told him he won the lottery. Because of a tear.
I don’t understand this person.
At.
All.
He kisses me so gently, I want to break every piece of furniture in the room. “Stop it,” I beg. “Stop being so…sweet. I can’t take it! Just fuck me like you would anyone else!”
“How do you know I’m not like this with anyone else?”
“The same way you know I’m a liar!”
He stares at me for a beat, blue eyes glittering. “Fair enough,” he says with frightening calm. “But just so you know, me not bein’ sweet is gonna leave marks.”
I exhale in relief. “Thank God. That I know how to handle.”
Not even a split second passes before Ryan shows me exactly what not sweet involves as his fingers, hard as stone, dig into my skin.
Seven
Ryan
If she wants it hard, she’s gonna get it hard, and God help her if she changes her mind.
Once I’m unleashed, there’s no stopping me.
My kiss is savage. She returns it with a grateful noise, digging her nails into my back. She’s luscious heat and satin beneath me. She’s killer curves and a million contradictions and walls so thick, a man needs blast charges just to uncover her true smile.
Who are you, Angel?
I pull her head back and kiss her throat. She cries out when I bite her, scratches her nails down my back.
I’m glad she can’t see my smile.
I flip her on her belly, then roughly drag her up onto her knees, hiking her beautiful bare ass in the air. Then I bite that, too, because I’ve wanted to do it since the second I saw her. With her face buried in the coverlet, she moans.
I slap her ass and bark, “Quiet!”
She gives me that kitten growl that tells me she wants to tear off my head.
I rip my wallet out of my back pocket, find a condom, and open the foil package with my teeth. I’m sheathed in seconds. I grab a fistful of her hair and steady her with my hand gripped around one of her hips.
Then without another word or any warning, I plunge my hard dick inside her.
This time when she cries out, it’s guttural. Her back arches. She clenches her hands into the covers and bucks back against me.
“That’s right, sweetheart,” I say, my voice a rasp. “Fuck yourself on my cock.”
She obeys without hesitation, thrusting her hips back to take me even deeper inside. My balls slap against her slick pussy. My hand tightens in her hair.
I haven’t even removed my jeans. Or shoes. Or gun.
I’m in heaven.
I slap her ass again, laughing darkly when she curses. My handprint looks branded onto her skin. Next to the little indentations of my teeth, it looks like a mark of ownership.
Lust and possession surge through my body. I want to mark her all over. I want her to remember who had her, feel the ache of my passion tomorrow, see the bruises on her skin.
I reach around and pinch her swollen clit, stroking it between two fingers. She breathes my name, and I lose my mind. I bend over her body, wrap my arm around her waist, brace my other hand against the mattress, and drive into her over and over, grunting like an animal.
She fucking loves it. I know because she tells me.
“God, yes, Ryan, so good. I love it, so good, please, oh God, please—”
I growl at her, “Who told you you could speak, you bad girl? Who?”
She mews and buries her face deeper into the blankets.
When I can tell from her broken cries that she’s right on the razor’s edge of orgasm, I pull out and flip her over, manhandling her to get her on her back with her ankles over my shoulders. She hasn’t even caught her breath before I’m inside her again.