Crisis averted. Horror stymied. This will be okay. This is fine. Just breathe, and everything will be fine.
I told myself that. Repeated it like a mantra as I lowered my arm, the silk still dangling from my wrist, relief flooding through me, so powerful it left me weak and a little dizzy.
“We’ll go far, I promise you.” Slowly—so frustratingly slowly—he stroked his fingertip along my collarbone. Then headed downward, lower and lower in a straight line between my breasts and to my abdomen.
My muscles contracted with the touch, my breath coming in little gasps. Then he moved lower still until his fingers found me wet and ready and even the slightest brush of his touch against my clit sent shivers coursing through me and made my body go limp.
“Not yet,” he said, withdrawing his hand with a devious grin, then drawing me to the bed, and easing me down so that I was prone with Tyler looking down at me from above.
“Lovely,” he said. “Now spread your legs. I want to see you open wide for me. Ripe for me. I want to see your body glisten.” With deliberate slowness, he slid his hands up my legs, then eased them apart. I closed my eyes, my head turned away, both aroused by his touch and embarrassed by the desire that I knew he could so plainly see.
“You look delicious,” he said, and as he spoke he trailed a finger up my thigh, then over my hip and up the curve of my torso. He lifted my arm, and I felt the brush of his lips as he trailed kisses up it. “I want to touch you, to take you as far as you can go, and I want to make certain that you can’t squirm away from the pleasure.”
The cold thing was back, twisting in my gut, and I jerked upright, my eyes flying open as the fear crashed over me.
But there was nowhere to go. The sash was still around my wrist and though I wasn’t sure when he managed it, I was attached quite firmly to the bed. “No.” I’d meant to scream the word, but it was only a whisper.
“No? You came of your own accord, Sloane.”
He reached for my other hand, and I tried to breathe. Tried to be a cop, and not a fourteen-year-old girl. Tried to swim up through this black ocean of fear. But I couldn’t. He’d thrown me off center—yanked open the door to the abyss—and I was falling now.
“You know the rules.” His voice undulated, as it filtered through the fear that was pounding in my head. “You had the chance to leave—more chances than I should have given you. And yet you came to my bed, aroused and wanting me.”
“But not this.” I forced the words out. “Not this. Dammit, Tyler, let me go.”
I was struggling now, my heart beating wildly. The room that had been bathed in golden light was now as red as blood. As hot as death.
I could barely see him through the haze, could barely hear him through the maelstrom in my head, the memories, the fear, the pain, all tied up together like some horrible, violent monster that was intent on swallowing me whole.
“Just relax,” he was saying as he began to twist what looked like a curtain sash around my other wrist.
No, no, goddammit, no!
I’m not sure how I managed it, not sure how I made my body move the way it did. But somehow I lashed through the pain. Somehow, I caught him across the face, my fist plowing hard against his temple.
“Goddammit!” His curse was filled with pain, and he reared back, and I took advantage of the movement to thrust my knee up. A one in a million chance, but it worked, and I heard his low, guttural groan as I caught him hard in the balls.
I tried to bolt off the bed, but my arm was still tied fast to the headboard. And as I tried to steady my breathing—tried to think—I saw Tyler lift his head, and I saw the heat and danger flash wildly in his eyes.
Before, I’d been afraid of the memories. Now, I was afraid of the man.
This is it, I thought. Dear god, this is it.
“Stay away,” I snarled. “Just stay the fuck away.”
“Sloane.” He said my name and then dropped his head, his body hunched over on the floor beside the bed.