“Tell me what you think I look like,” he says, his voice a resonating growl. He lets go of my hand, and I have to lean forward to reach him properly. I shimmy closer, tucking my legs under my butt so I can balance properly, and then I raise my other hand to his face, too.
His hair is short, a little stiff from the styling product he’s got in there; his facial features are strong, pronounced. Jaw’s a little square, nose mostly straight apart from a slightly flattened part near the ridge of his brow. His eyelashes are surprisingly long, and his lips…I was right. His lips are full and way softer than any guy’s lips have a right to be. Especially a guy with a voice like his. From the tingling pads of my fingers, I can sense this guy has the face of an angel. A barbaric one—maybe like one of those guys who did a lot of smiting back in Babylon.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“I think you’re probably very attractive,” I admit.
He grunts. “And what about the rest of me?”
He applies a little pressure to my forearms so that they travel down to his chest, where my fingers meet with smooth skin and hard-packed, rippling muscle. His pecs twitch as my hands brush lightly over them, and then downward. I come across three horizontal ridges in his skin that shouldn’t be there, to the right of his abs spaced a couple of inches apart, and my fingers draw circles over them, trying to tease their story from them, trying to figure out where they came from. There’s an untold history of violence here, written in the planes of his formidable body. He shakes a little as I explore him, probing with a feather-light touch until I’ve traced my way across his washboard stomach and up over his obliques. He sucks in a sharp breath and tenses when I do that, and I smile a little. I actually smile. This guy’s ticklish. He doesn’t laugh or tell me not to touch him there, but his body tightens further still when I go over the area one more time to test the theory.
I move up to his shoulders, which are powerful and strong, and I lace my arms around the back of his neck, feeling over his shoulder blades. He’s huge, but I’m not really afraid of him. Of course I should be, yes, but I’m not. The valium has flattened out my fear, and besides, the way I’d imagined this, the guy was going to come in here and want to lay his hands on me; he’d poke and prod and examine every inch of me, and he’d most definitely want to see what he was paying for. So far, this guy has touched me sparingly and that was on the hand.
“Well?” he asks.
“Where did the scars come from?”
“I was stabbed.” He doesn’t ponder on whether he’s going to answer me; he just comes right out and says it.
“Did you nearly die?”
“Yes.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
I let my hands fall from his shoulders and find the scars again, one, two, three of them. They feel jagged and terrible under my fingers. “What happened to the person who did this to you?” I almost don’t want to ask. Mystery Man’s been unnervingly candid since we began this bizarre interaction five minutes ago, and I’m afraid his answer will finally put the fear of God into me.
“He got what was coming to him,” he says softly. The bed sheets rustle when he moves, his stomach muscles contracting under my hands; when he touches my hair, tangling his fingers into it, I’m still trying to decide whether he means he killed whoever did that to him.
“I’m very particular about what I want. You need to do what I ask you without question and this will go nicely for both of us, okay?” he breathes.
A shot of adrenaline finally lights up my nerve endings—the appropriate reaction to my situation. What the hell have I gotten myself into here? Valium or no Valium, I know that sounded like a threat. I’m in way over my head, but there’s little I can do about it. Besides, Alexis. Always Alexis. “I can do that,” I whisper.
“Good. Lie on your back.”
I let go of him and suddenly I feel like I’m afloat in the middle of an ocean, drowning, with no way of saving myself. The sensible, smart part of my brain that still clings onto a vague sense of self-preservation is screaming that I should probably get the hell out of here, and for the first time the wrath of Eli almost isn’t enough to keep me pinned to the bed. But the thought of finding Alexis is. My muscles are jumping, ready to explode into action, when the guy gently takes hold of my right ankle.
“Did you touch yourself today?”
What the?! “Do…do you mean—”
“Have you made yourself come today? Have you played with your pussy?”