Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [51]
“You can always take that butcher knife you hid under your mattress and stab me midorgasm. Then you could find out for yourself how arousing it is.”
“Killing you wouldn’t be very arousing,” she said. “Satisfying, maybe, but arousing…no.” He knew about the knife, even where she hid it. Was there nothing he didn’t know?
“If you’d rather use my bedroom I’ll get another knife for you,” he offered. “I’m trying my best to be helpful here.”
He came up to her, and she told herself it was too late. Maybe it had been too late from the moment she saw him. He put his hands on her shoulders, sliding them behind her thick hair to meet at the back of the caftan.
“Come on, Ms. Spenser,” he whispered, mocking. “I can give you the best orgasm you’ve ever had. Prove me wrong.”
She lifted her face to kiss him because she knew it was going to happen. This was to save her life, she told herself, closing her eyes. This was her only chance to save herself and Harry. Virgin sacrifice to the god of death.
But she was no virgin, and this was no sacrifice. She felt his hands catch the back of the caftan and rip, and she heard a shower of tiny buttons scatter over the tile floor as the fabric parted, exposing her back to the cool night air.
His hands covered her shoulders, pushing the caftan down her arms, so that she stood there, dressed only in the tiny scraps of lingerie she’d been forced to choose.
His blue eyes swept down her body, and his wicked mouth curved in a smile. “I was hoping you chose those,” he murmured. “Much more fun than nothing at all.”
He wasn’t even breathing deeply. She reached out and put her hand against his chest, where, if he had a heart, she would feel it beating. Her own was racing. His was slow and steady, like a machine. If machines had hearts.
“Yes, I have a heart,” he said, his hand covering hers and moving it inside the unbuttoned linen shirt, so that she could feel his smooth skin against her palm, her fingertips. She half expected him to feel cool to the touch, but he was warm, almost hot.
“You have a heart,” she agreed.
He put his hand on her breast, and she flinched, holding still. “But yours is racing. Why, Genevieve? Are you afraid of me?”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“Yes. But that’s not why your heart is racing.” “You think I’m all aflutter with desire?” she said, fighting. “I’m not that easy.”
“You’re child’s play,” he whispered against her mouth, a feather-soft touch that wasn’t quite a kiss. “All I have to do is touch you and you melt.”
She wondered whether she could kick him, but he’d already warned her that it tended to piss him off. Besides, she couldn’t seem to summon up the energy past her initial outrage.
“You drugged me,” she accused him as he kissed the side of her neck, and she could feel his teeth against her jugular. And beneath her palm, the beat of his heart was smooth and steady.
“I’m drugging you right now,” he whispered. “There’s more than one way to wipe out a woman’s defenses.” He pushed the thin ribbon strap of her bra aside to kiss her shoulder, and her own heart lurched.
“Enough,” she said, stumbling back, away from him. “I believe you. You can turn me on against my better judgment without getting excited yourself. I’m impressed. Maybe you could even give me a thousand orgasms, though I sincerely doubt it, but I’m not interested in trying. Now let me go.”
But he caught her wrist, pulling her back toward him, and before she knew what he’d intended he slid her hand down the front of his linen trousers, to the shockingly hard evidence that he was far from unmoved. “Who says I’m not aroused?” he murmured. “I just know how to control my body. My cock may want you but the rest of me isn’t quite as desperate.”
She tried to pull her hand away, but he was too strong, his long fingers like a manacle on her wrist, holding her there, even as he pushed against her, slowly, rocking.
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re a sick bastard.”
“I can be,” he agreed. “Why don’t you try to find my weak