This body awed her, chilled her, intoxicated her. Whether he sought pleasure or pain, he gave himself completely. As someone who so often held herself back, Laurel found it mesmerizing.
She wondered if the game had begun. If so, it was time to quit objectifying and get into character. This wasn’t her lover of eight months. This was a near stranger who both intrigued and frightened her, dangerous as a wild animal. Beautiful and bloodthirsty and hungry for who knew what. She let the scene settle in around her, tightening her belly with anticipation and fear.
She wasn’t his girlfriend tonight. She was his prey.
He pulled on his jeans, still staring at her. Still staring as he threaded his belt through the loops and buckled it.
“You like my place?” he finally asked, and shut the drawer.
She looked around the room, letting its stark simplicity strike her all over again, just as it had back in July. I’ve never been here before. I don’t know this man beyond the bully he embodies in the ring.
“It’s nice,” she said.
“How about my bed? You like that too?”
Her lips twitched and she glanced at the rumpled navy covers. “It’s big,” she managed, making her voice tiny, as weak as this man was strong.
“How long you been hopin’ to get invited home with me?”
She swallowed. “I was just happy for the ride. I should be getting back soon.”
“What’s the rush?” He came closer, and she drank in how huge he felt in dark moments like this. Tall, powerful. Threatening. “You want a drink?”
“No, thanks. It’s really late.”
“Stay, then. I’ll take you home in the morning.” He sat on the edge of the mattress, and she caught a spark strike in those hazel-blue eyes when she scooted a little farther away—he was a wolf, and she the deer who’d just twitched. He craved a chase. She craved the weight of this beast crashing down on her when he got his way.
“I can’t,” she said. “Thank you, really, but I should get home. I could call a cab—”
“Why would you do that?” He came closer and his hand closed around her wrist, not tight, but rigid as steel—the cuff of a man who scoffed at bondage props.
“You don’t have to drive me if you don’t want,” she said, channeling a woman too timid to call a man on his shit—the woman she’d been eight months ago, likely. It could be scary sometimes, the way the chemical rush of this role-playing so closely resembled true fear. Scary and exhilarating, and strangely freeing.
“I wouldn’t offer to drive you if I didn’t want to.”
“It’s late,” she said again, letting those words fall flat and tinny with false worry.
His eyes narrowed. “You’ve watched me fight the past, what? Three weeks, four?”
“Not just you. I watch all the matches.”
“I’m not blind, sweetheart. I see how you look at me.”
She conjured the smile of a woman more anxious than amused. “You’re one of the best.”
“One of?”
She swallowed again. “You’re the best, as far as I can tell.”
“That excite you?”
“It… I don’t know. Look, I think you’re an amazing fighter. I’m a little drunk. I probably have some kind of crush on you, but I’m not looking to act on it. Thanks for the ride, but I need to get home.”
“I asked if you wanted to see my place. You said you did. I think we both knew what that really meant.”
She made to leave the bed but that hand around her wrist bit down hard, feeling like the steel it stood in for.
He said, “Don’t.” The word gave her chills, because she knew it’d be her uttering it soon enough. “I don’t bite.”
You do. “I need to go.”
“A few more minutes won’t hurt. Just a kiss, then we’ll go. Promise.”
“It’s really late—” She was cut off by her own gasp, her surprise real as his hand twisted, wrenching her arm with a twinge. It lit something up inside her, a cocktail of fear and anger and frustration, and she wrestled her wrist free and made it to her feet. He liked a struggle. She’d give him one.
“I scare you?” he asked, tone eerie and casual, as chilling as if there were a jeer coloring that question.
She held her tweaked wrist. “A little.”
“You came after me, you know. Maybe you like the way I scare you.”
She didn’t reply, letting her gaze move meaningfully to the door.
“You like watchin’ me fight?” he demanded.
She met his stare. “Yes.”
“What else do you wanna watch me do?”
She held her tongue and let that dirty, twisted hybrid of fear and excitement work through her body and settle across her features. She watched his expression darken and heat in response.
“You like watchin’ me fight,” he repeated, stepping close, forcing her backward until her calves found the mattress, then her ass. “What else do you wanna watch? You wanna watch me fuck?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“You like watchin’ me bleed,” he said, speaking low, intimate, more threat than flirtation, now. “You wanna watch me come, girl?”