“Not until I prove a point.”
“There is no point.”
“There is if you’re wet.” A smile tainted his vibrating timbre. “Wouldn’t that just topple you further from your self-imposed grace?”
“Don’t mistake a bodily function for anything other than what it is.”
“So, you’re saying I should just fuck you and not hold myself back because it’s just a bodily function?”
I tried to hide my fearful quake. I didn’t succeed. “You can do anything you want to me. You’ve proven that over and over again. You could fuck me. You could kill me. There is no one to stop you. But you’re lying to yourself if you think I want you just because my body might do something against my will.”
“So you don’t deny I’m making you wet.”
“You have nothing to do with it. It’s—”
“I have everything to do with it.” His lips skated over my throat again, making me shudder. “You’re flushed. In another few minutes, I guarantee when I insert a finger inside you, you’ll want it.”
“I’ll never want it,” I growled as much as I could with him stopping my ribcage from expanding for air. “A man gets hard because of blood flow to the area. A woman gets wet because of the same thing. It’s just biology.”
“It’s stimulation.” He unsheathed his teeth, scraping sharp canines along the path he’d just kissed.
“It’s manipulation.” I bucked again, wedging my hands under me against the table, trying to push up.
He pulled back a fraction, giving me space to inhale a large suck of oxygen. The life-giving air made my head swim, and for the first time since waking after the most horrendous day of my life yesterday, I noticed how weak I was.
How my biceps wobbled without much strength. How my stomach fluttered around emptiness. How my entire body started to shake, almost uncontrollably—not because of Sully’s nasty experiment, but because my blood sugar levels had finally crashed.
Whatever leftover energy I had vanished in a single breath, leaving me woozy, nauseous, and feeble.
I’d never let myself get to this level of starvation before. I was a smart traveller and always had muesli bars, trail mix, or a sugary drink in my bag, just in case we were exploring too far from a food source.
But here, I hadn’t eaten since arriving. All I’d had was some stale crackers in a plane crate. God, how long ago was that? This monster thought he looked after his possessions. He gloated about his girls wanting to seduce him so they became his for eternity when he couldn’t even stop torturing me long enough to ensure I wouldn’t die from malnutrition.
It took every shred of pride I had left, but I let my arms buckle, surrendering to his control. “I’m not feeling very well.”
Any ordinary man would back off immediately. He’d ask questions, figure out my malady, and do his utmost to ensure I felt better.
This man…he just chuckled in my ear and trailed his fingers to brush against the lips of my sex. “Lies won’t get you free.” He sucked in a breath as he teased the tip of one finger inside me. “Just like lies about your wetness are bullshit.”
God, the pain.
I tensed against the sore, swollen muscles of my million orgasms yesterday. I flinched against the agonising oversensitivity. Every part of me had been brutalised, thanks to his elixir, and just the tiniest touch today was a talon, a claw, a machete.
“Sore, Eleanor?” he murmured, easing the entire length of his finger inside. “Were you a bit rough with yourself yesterday?”
I squeezed my eyes shut as he stroked me.
He didn’t drive his finger deep and ruthless. Instead, he feathered his touch as if fully aware of how excruciating it was for me.
His hand around my nape let me go, brushing aside my hair to press a kiss directly on the beads of my spine. His gentleness was totally unexpected after his unleashed fury from before.
My lack of food left me with no reserves, and tears bled from my eyes, splashing on the table.
“Do you concede that I was right?”
I didn’t reply. I kept my eyes closed. I tried not to focus on the spinning room.
His finger dived in and out, revealing, in very explicit terms, that there was lubrication. That I was wet—not drenched like I was yesterday, but definitely not dry.
I’d known the second he’d kissed my ear that I didn’t stand a chance. All women knew when they were wet, and I couldn’t deny he’d won.
But I couldn’t let him win.
Lying prone on the table with his hand between my legs, I hissed, “I’m glad I’m wet.”
His breath caught, his voice layered with black suspicion. “You are?”
I nodded, catching my hair on the lacquered wood. “At least my body has protected me from the pain of your touch. At least you can’t hurt me, no matter how hard you try. You could fuck me and call it punishment, but because my body anticipated something so heinous from you, I won’t have any lasting effects. No tearing because I’m too dry. No blood because I’m not ready. You would just be yet another bastard who took what wasn’t his to take, and I would forget about you the moment it was over. My wetness ensures you are nothing. Just a temporary nightmare that will be over soon. The moment you finish, I would never think about you again. I would never—”