Ice Storm - Anne Stuart [88]
“Quite easily. You’ve been trying your absolute best to manipulate me, but I’m not the puddle of emotions you seem to think I am. I know what you’re doing, and I know what’s behind it. What’s wrong with you.”
“Please share,” he said amiably. “I’ve always been interested in other people’s opinions about my sociopathic behavior.”
“You’re afraid of me.”
This time she’d managed to shock him, and she could feel her fear ebbing, the icy strength taking over. She was far from defenseless, and she’d finally realized the weakness in his armor.
“Afraid of you?” He laughed lightly. “I hate to tell you, but I’m not afraid of anyone or anything. It’s both my strength and my weakness. I don’t care if I live or die, I don’t care who I hurt. I’m not afraid.”
“You’re afraid of me,” she said again. “And I think you always have been. You kept me drugged and pliant in that hotel room in Marseille—I remember it better than you think. And you never let me touch you. It was as if you were experimenting on me, to see just what you could make me feel, and you never were there at all.”
“You were drugged, Isobel, and it was eighteen years ago—”
“And two nights ago,” she continued ruthlessly. “On board the ship. You just wanted to prove you could make me feel. But you didn’t feel anything at all. You didn’t let yourself.”
He was looking no more than remotely interested in her theory, but she wasn’t fooled. She knew the truth this time, and she wasn’t going to be distracted.
“You didn’t climax. You couldn’t. You could manipulate me enough to make me feel powerless, and then you pulled away. Is it women you’re afraid of, Killian, or just me?”
He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes hooded, unreadable. “What are you trying to do, Isobel?”
“Call your bluff. Get you to leave me the hell alone. You don’t want me, you just want to fuck with me. So here I am, you son of a bitch. Take me.”
She could feel the power coursing through her, a strangely mournful power. It was a triumph to realize he’d only been playing with her, a triumph to know that she really didn’t matter.
His smile was almost wistful. “You’re right about two things, Mary Isobel Curwen Lambert,” he said. “I absolutely want to fuck with you. I’m calling your bluff. So why don’t you go down on me and prove yourself right?”
The silence in the room was muffled, absolute, and the caffeine must have finally hit overload, because her heart was slamming so hard against her chest that surely he must have heard it. And if she turned her back, gave in, he would win, and she could never let him do that, never again.
Her knees hit the floor as she sank down in front of him. Her hands were shaking as they worked on the snap of the new jeans. He didn’t move, just stood there and let her fumble with the zipper, his hands at his sides.
He wasn’t wearing underwear. She grasped the denim and yanked it down, and in the murky light his cock was hard, bigger than she’d expected.
She looked up at him, her eyes cold and hostile. “So you can get an erection,” she said. “Too bad you can’t come.”
And she put her mouth on him, a deliberate taunt, an insult, a sly, erotic challenge that she knew she would win. She closed her mouth around him, sucking at him, pulling with her lips, letting her tongue swirl around the rigid, unfeeling length of him, as she proved to him…
She felt his hands on her head, oddly gentle, his fingers threading through her hair, pulling it loose from its tight bun so that it spilled over her shoulders. He was stroking her scalp, kneading her, letting her taste and suck and then swallow, as he froze, his body rigid, his cock pumping into her mouth as he held her there.
She fell back, shocked,