“It is kind of a prison, isn’t it?” She looked around the room as well. “Although I’ve never actually been to prison, have you?” She looked up at him.
His gaze met hers. Those damn eyes. So blue. Seeing too much. One eye was very bruised. She was going to have a hell of a shiner. It was already coming up, dark purple and swollen.
“Grew up in a prison. Been there a time or two since.” Both times he’d been there to assassinate a prisoner. Why the hell had the truth come out of his fuckin’ mouth?
He never talked. He kept his mouth shut. He didn’t like people or their reactions. He didn’t understand them, and he didn’t want to. Most of the time, he was contemplating killing them. He was disciplined and had been since he was a child, yet he couldn’t stop himself from telling her the truth because he hadn’t thought before he answered. Staring into those blue eyes, he drowned. Went under and acted like a fuckin’ pussy-whipped asshole. He had to get out of there before he ran his mouth and had to take her out. He had too many secrets to just sit there and cough them up because his dick was hard.
“Harsh. But you survived. Good for you.” Her voice sounded drowsy. Sexy. It was that tone she had. Musical. Low. Soft. It played over his entire body as if she was stroking him with caresses—or licking him with her tongue.
Her lashes lowered, those long, thick, feathery lashes that he knew he was never going to get out of his mind. At the same time, she touched him. A brush of her fingers against the back of his hand. On his bare skin. His body went still. That small brush got under his skin and rippled outward, spreading slow, flickering flames that kept growing hotter and hotter. It was as if she’d branded him inside his body and that stream of heat turned into a smoldering fire that began to consume him from the inside out.
He had to get out of there. She was tying them together in some undefined way he didn’t understand, but whatever magic she wielded, it was dangerous to both of them. She was . . . nice. She was beautiful. She was normal. He couldn’t be in her life, and she sure as fuck couldn’t be in his. He didn’t want a woman. He didn’t need a woman. Not full-time. Not when he knew if she belonged to him, he’d become an even bigger monster than he already was.
He picked up bitches all the time. Always, always, he was in charge. He did his thing, they blew him and some of the time it brought relief. Not most of the time, but some of the time. Once in a very long while, he snagged a woman who let him use her roughly, completely on his terms, and when she blew him, the relief lasted more than a few hours. The results were days, weeks and once in a while a month or two where the monster in him settled.
“You goin’ to sleep on me?” He hoped she was. He didn’t want her to. He’d never sat with a woman in the dark and just talked quietly. Maybe he just needed to hear the sound of her voice.
“No. I don’t like places like this. They walk in and out and think they aren’t disturbing you, so you have to be nice. They’re helping you. But if I fall asleep, when I jerk awake because they’re in my room, my heart goes wild and I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”
Her lashes fluttered. The dimple appeared. He found himself looking into the deep blue of her eyes. His heart contracted. She was so fucking beautiful he had no right to even look at her. He’d heard the fairy tale—Beauty and the Beast. Sitting on her bed, looking at her face, that body that was created just for him . . . that story could have been theirs.
“Savage, why are you looking so sad? Everything ended the best way it could. The little boy lived. You lived.”
Once again, she touched him. This time on his face. That same brush of her fingers, featherlight, but she created that same strange, shimmering fire that sank under his skin and spread through his body like living flames. He should have knocked her hand away—that would have been the sensible thing to do—but already those flames had made their way into his bloodstream and were growing, spreading fast, picking up speed as the firestorm rushed through his body and then settled in his groin, robbing him of breath.
He wondered what she’d do if he took out his cock and jerked off. Could he do that without ordering his dick to actually work? Coat her skin with him? With his seed? Brand her his? Fuck. Write his name on her from breasts to pussy. His alone. His property.