LITMIR.BIZ

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he wasn’t finished. “Before I approached you, I had photos, knew of your unusual beauty. But when I saw you in the flesh, the total effect punched me in the gut and not just on account of your looks. Time had only scraped away whatever prettiness youth inflicted and brought you profound beauty in its place. I believe it will only keep bestowing more on you. You were stunning, but you’ve become exquisite. With age, you’ll become divine.”

      She gaped at him. Once, when she’d believed him to be a human being, not a machine that made money and devised plans of annihilation, she’d believed him when he’d praised her beauty. But even then, when he’d been doing everything to keep her under his spell, he’d never done it with such fervor and poetry. That he did so now...offended her beyond words.

      Fury tumbled in her blood. “Spare me the nausea. We both know what you really think of me. Is this one of the ‘other things’ you had in mind? To ply me with preposterous flattery and have some more sick fun at my expense?”

      “I was actually trying my hand at sincerity.” He turned fully to her. “As for the ‘other things’ I had in mind, it’s...this.”

      And she found herself flat on her back with Richard on top of her, his chest crushing her breasts, his hips between her splayed thighs.

      Before her heart could fire the next fractured beat, he rose over her and stopped it.

      This was how a devil must look before he took one’s soul.

      Inescapable. Ravenous. Dreadfully beautiful.

      “Eight years, Isabella. Eight years without this. Now I’ll have it all again. I’ll consume every last inch and drop of you. That’s why I brought you here. And that’s why you really came.”

       Three

      Time congealed as she lay beneath Richard, paralyzed. Even her heart seemed afraid it would rupture if it beat.

      Then everything that had been gathering inside her since he’d walked away—all the betrayal and despondence and yearning—broke through the cracks and she started to tremble.

      A shudder traversed his great body as if her tremors had electrified him, making him crush her harder beneath him, crash his lips on her wide-open ones.

      His tongue thrust deeply and his scent and taste flooded her bloodstream, a hit of a drug she’d gone mad for since she’d been forced to give it up cold turkey. Gulping it down, she rode rapids of mindlessness as he filled her, drank her the way she remembered and craved. Richard didn’t kiss. He invaded, ravaged.

      He didn’t only catapult her into a frenzy, but sent her spiraling into a reenactment of that first kiss that had launched her addiction.

      That day he’d materialized like an answer to a prayer, cutting down the guerillas who’d been threatening her team with death...or worse. She’d been so shaken thinking she could have died without having the one thing she’d ever wanted—him—had been so grateful, so awed, she’d gone to offer him what he’d seemed to want so relentlessly. Herself.

      He’d let her into his room, his gaze consuming her, letting her see what he’d do to her once she gave him consent. And she had, melting against him, giving him permission to do anything and everything to her.

      He’d taken her mouth for the first time then, with that same thorough devouring, that coiled ferocity. From that moment on her body had learned what heart-stopping pleasure his kiss would lead to, had afterward burst into flames at his merest touch, the fire raging higher with each exposure.

      The conflagration was fiercer now, with the fuel of anger and animosity, with the accumulation of pain and craving and repression. This was wrong, insane. And it only made her want it—want him—more than her next breath.

      His roughness as he teased her turgid nipples, his dominance as he ground against her molten core, made her spread her thighs wider, strain to enfold him, her moans rising, blind arousal fracturing the shackles of hostility and memory, drowning them and her.

      Suddenly he severed their meld, wrenching a cry of loss from her as he rose above her.

      His gaze scalded her, his lips filled with grim sensuality. “I should have listened to my body—and yours—and done this the moment I got you in here.”

      His arrogance should have made her buck him off. But lust for this memorized yet unknown entity, so deadly and irresistible, seethed its demand for satisfaction.

      “Say this is what you wanted all along. Say it, Isabella.”

      A hard thrust and squeeze of her buttocks accompanied his brusque order, melting her further. But it was the harshness on his face that jogged her heart out of its sluggish surrender.

      The world spun with too many emotions, after years of stasis. Years when she’d felt him this way only in dreams that had always turned into nightmares. In those visions, he’d always aroused her to desperation before pushing her away and taking off his mask. The merciless face he’d exposed before walking over her sobbing body had always woken her in tears then plunged her into deeper despondence.

      Dreading those nightmares had robbed her of the ability to rest. It was the memory of them now that made her struggle to stop her plummet into the abyss of addiction all over again.

      “What if I don’t say it?” Her voice shook.

      At her challenge, his gaze emptied of intensity. He released her trembling flesh and in one of those impossible moves, he separated their bodies and was on his feet.

      To her shame, she’d thought his response to her challenge would be to take his onslaught to the next level. She still expected he’d pick her up and carry her off to bed.

      He only sat on the coffee table, clearly deciding to end their encounter. The letdown deepened her paralysis.

      His brooding gaze made her acutely aware of how pathetic she looked prostrated as she was, sending chagrin surging through her numb limbs. Feeling she’d turned to jelly, she pulled herself up and her dress down.

      Once she’d tidied the dishevelment he’d caused, he drawled, “Now that there’s no hint of physical coercion...say it.”

      Her heart skidded at his deceptively calm command. “You mean there’s no coercion because you’re not on top of me anymore? I’m here purely by coercion.”

      “I submit, this is false. I only gave you an excuse to have your cake and eat it, too, a justification you can placate your dignity with. But it’s easy to invalidate your self-exonerating assertion. I’ll escort you to the door, activate it for you and you can walk right out.”

      “And then you’ll call my friends.”

      “There are things you could do that would make me do that. None of them include choosing to walk out now.” He rose to his feet. “Shall we?”

      She scrambled to her feet only when she found him striding away for real and had to almost run in his wake.

      “That’s it? You go to all this trouble to get me here, interrogate me for a bit, then abruptly shift to what seems to be your real objective, and when I refuse to ‘say it’ you show me the door?”

      “I have to. It won’t open unless I tell it to.”

      His derision, and the fact that he’d shrugged off what had happened when it had turned her inside out had her fury sizzling.

      Catching up with his endless strides beside the pool, she snatched at his arm. Her fingers only slipped off his rock-hard muscles. It was he who stopped of his own accord, daring to look as if he had no idea what was eating her, but was resigned to putting up with an inexplicably hysterical female.

      “Why do you want me to say it?” she seethed. “Is your ego that distorted? You want me to admit how much I want you when you never wanted me in the first place?”

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