“How dare you,” I said, and my voice was shaking. Not with fear. With Rage. “You…you kidnapped me. You hurt me.”
“You wanted it.”
I had to laugh, harsh and metallic. It was too ridiculous. Too textbook. The excuse every asshole had ever given for hurting a woman. He’d hurt me. The awareness of it sank through me, wiping the brittle smile off my face. Not only then. Now. He hurt me now too.
“You don’t really believe that.” My voice was flat now. Don’t bullshit me, it said.
“Oh, but I do. You want the darkness. I can give you that. So don’t pretend with me. If you need to fight me, fine. If you need to cry, even better. But don’t pretend like I’m not exactly what you’ve been looking for.”
“Right,” I said sarcastically. “You’re the man of my dreams. Because you know me so well.”
“What did you think my business was about? What did you think I traded in—drugs? Weapons?” He laughed, low and cruel. “Flesh?” There was a pause while my mind shouted yes, that, exactly. “No. I trade information.”
He let that sink in before he continued.
“I knew everything about you before I ever laid eyes on you in that conference room. I knew you liked to eat scrambled eggs for breakfast and what your favorite antique store was. I knew about the foster brother who used to lock you in the closet. He paid for that by the way.”
My eyes widened. Did he mean that he had—?
“And I knew about your father. I knew that you had lived in darkness, but it was only when I met you that I realized you craved it too. I told Brody not to put you on the team. I warned you away too. But there you were anyway, offered up on a platter.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?” I asked, half shouting, half pleading. “If you just wanted to be with me, why not just take me normally—“
“Normal?” he scoffed. “You wouldn’t like me half as much if I were normal. I saw you, I wanted you, I took you. You want me to fucking apologize for that? No. This is how it works. I’m an animal, remember? A monster. You put a slab of fresh meat in front of me, this is what happens.”
“Is that all I am to you?” I whispered. “A piece of flesh? Of meat?”
“Yes,” he said, and the conviction in his voice didn’t allow it to be an insult. “You’re meat when I’ve been fucking starving my whole life, so fucking accept it. You’re mine. Mine. Got it?”
I cried then, with fat teardrops down my cheeks. I cried because he was right about me, and how much I wanted him. And because he was wrong about himself. He wasn’t an animal. He was the most intelligent, complicated person I’d ever met. He may not be good or virtuous, but he was human, flawed and powerful.
And I cried because he needed me too. I was the only one who could see past all the shit he had done, all the shit that had been done to him. Even Mia, as sweet and selfless as she was, only looked at him and saw a man to obey. I saw a man to worship, and that terrified me more than anything he could have done to my body.
I bolted. My heart pounding a staccato beat, I ran for the front door. I made it onto the porch before he slammed into me from behind. We flew into the air. He turned on his side, catching most of our weight on his shoulder and grunting on impact. I rolled to get up, but he already had a firm grasp around my waist and all I succeeded in doing was rubbing my body against his. It was clear almost immediately, from the tension in his body and the hard length against my thigh, that he was toying with me. A cat releasing his prey only to catch her again.
“Let me go,” I gasped. “I’ll scream.”
“Do it.” He was out of breath too, though I suspected for different reasons. Or maybe they were the same, after all. If I were honest, I could admit I wasn’t fighting very hard. I wanted to hurt him. I just didn’t want to get away.
“Asshole,” I hissed.
He laughed unsteadily. “Rookie.”
I moved to knee his groin—already erect, it would have really hurt—but he blocked me in time and pinned me to the porch. “Ah ah, be careful with that. If you break your toys, you don’t get to play with them.”
That was the problem, wasn’t it? I liked my toys better broken.
It made me mad how much he knew me. He’d gotten under my skin before I’d even realized who he was. Then I did try to kick him, hard, but he already had the upper hand. All I succeeded in doing was flailing against the wooden boards and panting beneath him.
“So angry. What a pretty sight.” He ran his thumb over my lips, which were pouting, I admit. It was childish, and I just barely held back from biting him. He would enjoy that too much. I glared up at him, mutinous, trembling inside.