Black Ice - Anne Stuart [36]
He stepped back from her, fastening his clothing. She was looking up at him as if he were a ghost, and he wanted to pull her into his arms, to comfort her. She looked so bereft. For all her claims of sophistication she was clearly not used to what he’d just put her through, and she looked disoriented, lost.
But he couldn’t. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against hers, pulling the dress back around her body and tying it at the waist. He couldn’t keep her out of sight of the cameras any longer, but he could keep it from being too easy for them.
When the logical answers get ruled out, you have no choice but to believe the impossible. Chloe Underwood was exactly what she claimed she was. An innocent, caught in a maelstrom far too powerful for her to even understand. And oddly enough, it was the so-called good guy who had done the most damage. Up to this point.
He was going to have his work cut out for him, distracting Hakim from his own suspicions. He needed to get back to that computer, erase little Miss Busybody’s virtual fingerprints and convince the others they had nothing to fear from her.
But first he had to finish with her. He kissed her on her mouth, lightly, carelessly. “Eh bien, sweetheart,” he murmured. “That was very nice. Too bad we don’t have time for more.”
She stared up at him, lost for a moment. And then she reached out and slapped him, using all the shattered strength in her body, and it jarred his head.
Regret was useless, remorse an unknown emotion, and his body was still humming with satisfaction. He gave her a crooked smile, picked up his discarded jacket and walked out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
Chloe leaned against the wall. Her legs felt weak, barely able to support her, and she slid down, slowly, ending on the beautiful parquet floor. She began to shake—it started slowly, as nothing more than a faint vibration that grew until she was shivering uncontrollably. She wrapped her arms around her body, but she couldn’t get warm. She closed her eyes, but the television was still on, the moans a staccato accompaniment to her confusion, and she opened them again. The torn lace underwear lay on the floor in the little foyer, in front of the antique chest of drawers that had probably never seen such usage in its long, elegant life. Then again, this was France.
She wanted to throw up. There was no question about it—she was horrified and sick inside at what had happened, and she still couldn’t understand why.
She hadn’t said no. There was no way she could avoid that simple truth—she hadn’t told him no. Whether he would have taken that for an answer was beside the point. She’d let him do that to her.
And the awful, sickening thing was, she’d liked it.
No, that was the wrong word. Like had nothing to do with it. She hadn’t liked being manipulated, intimidated, tormented and used.
But he’d managed to make her climax anyway, despite it all. Or, most horrifying of all, because of it?
No. She had no hidden, dark need to be punished, humiliated, used and discarded. There were no dark shadows hidden in her past, no twisted self-loathing that begged to be treated with carelessness.
So why had she let him? Why had her mind screamed no as she’d kissed him back? Why had she clung to him, knowing who and what he really was? Why had she come?
She could tell herself it was simple biology. Her family, if she had ever been insane enough to discuss it with them, would tell her it was a normal, physiological reaction. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to horrify and sicken her.
The problem was, she knew, deep inside, what was shameful, what was horrifying, what was sickening. Not that she’d managed to have the most powerful orgasm of her life under such unloving circumstances.
But that she wanted to do it again.
9
Bastien was back at the computer, moving