to kid myself otherwise. He’d always be the same sadistic bastard with a taste for my pain. I shut off the ignition, and the utter quiet of the night surrounded me. Haunted me. Ghosts weren’t so easily laid to rest in the still of the night.
Why am I here?
I had no answer—none that made any sense. He’d let me go. I was free . . . yet here I was walking into the lion’s den. My limbs quaked as I approached his door, and I almost turned back. I told myself to turn back, even chanted the words in my mind over and over again as if doing so would be enough to convince me. My traitorous fist wasn’t listening; it rose and announced my presence.
Oh God. Oh my freaking God . . . what the hell am I doing?
I whirled, intending to sprint to my car, but the door opened.
“Kayla?”
Damn. I wished for invisibility as I turned to face him, though I would have settled for the earth fissuring under my feet. The image of him standing there wearing nothing but flannel pajama pants was enough to render me speechless. I’d never seen him in something so casual. I wondered if the fabric was as soft as I imagined. Soft flannel against hard man.
I shouldn’t have come. I should have stayed far, far away.
“What are you doing here?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
He quirked a brow. “You don’t know?” I shook my head, and the edge of his mouth turned up. “What do you want, Kayla?”
You.
Only I had no idea why. He was like a disease, and the bad cells had multiplied and taken over. He’d infiltrated my system, and now I couldn’t get him out. Even now, standing in the freezing cold, my body flushed with warmth as I liquefied between my legs. Some crazy, destructive instinct rose within me, and I catapulted the last step and launched myself at him. Our mouths crashed together, open and hot and ravenous. We kissed like we were possessed, and maybe we were.
At least I was. I heard the door slam behind us an instant before he released me.
“Get on your knees.”
I fell to them without a second thought and reached for the waistband of all that soft flannel. Trembling with impatient desire—and maybe a little fear—I freed his cock and closed my mouth around him. A groan rumbled from his throat, evidence of his tightly held control. He grabbed my head, his hands shaking, and trapped me between them. No way would he allow me control—he was too close to losing it himself.
“Hands behind your back,” he ground out between tight lips. I obeyed, and his eyes, so ridiculously blue, never left mine as he fucked my mouth. “Kayla . . .” His composure fell apart, and his hips took on the rhythm of madness.
I’d never felt so powerful.
He screwed his eyes shut and pushed to the back of my throat, roaring his release as his essence gushed into my mouth. Despite the fact that my panties were drenched, I gagged. Which only meant he shoved his cock deeper. His pleasure wouldn’t be complete without my pain.
Still breathing irregularly, he pulled his pants up, and without a word, grabbed my hand. I followed him down to the basement. His fingers tightened around mine, as if he thought I might change my mind and bolt. I was considering it as we reached the last step. He’d had the damage repaired. The room looked as it always had; painful and cold. A dungeon indeed, though in this case I’d given away the key to my own freedom. I took one look at the St. Andrew’s cross and remembered how he’d buried his face between my thighs, and all thoughts of cold evaporated.
He hoisted me against him, and we fell to the bed where he trapped me between his braced arms. “What’s your safe word?”
I blinked. I hadn’t expected him to give me one. “I-I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much tonight, do you?”
“I know I want you.”
His eyes widened, but then his face settled into the Gage I knew and loved to hate.
“I don’t want to give you the option of telling me no, but I will. Last chance before I gag
King Abdullah II, King Abdullah