Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [69]
“What do you mean?”
He started toward her, a slow, stalking gait, and she froze. He was threat personified, and all her instincts said “run.” And all her instincts said “stay.”
He came right up to her, towering over her, his body brushing hers. He leaned his head down and whispered in her ear. “You don’t care whether I killed Nate or not. You don’t even care if for some crazy reason I want to kill you. All I have to do is touch you and you don’t care about anything but me.” He slid his hand between her legs, and even through the denim of her torn jeans she quivered, swaying toward him.
He brushed his lips against the side of her neck, and she arched. “It’s called power, baby girl,” he whispered. “Sexual thrall. I own you, and it doesn’t matter what I did, what I will do. All that matters is you’ll do what I say. Won’t you?”
He was stroking her, and she could feel herself getting damp. He moved his lips to the corner of her mouth, and he moved one leg between hers, pressing. “Won’t you?” he said again.
She wanted to touch him. She wanted to put her arms around his waist and pull him tighter against her body, she wanted to sink down on the floor and finish what she’d started earlier. She wanted to do anything he asked of her, and more.
But she couldn’t. She looked up into his dark eyes, and she wanted to disappear into the darkness, into the heat and power. But she couldn’t.
“Did you have anything to do with Nate’s death?” She could barely get the words out.
She expected him to pull away. He didn’t. He pushed his leg between hers, pulling her forward so that she rode against his hard thigh, and she moaned. “Do you trust me?”
God, she wanted to. She wanted to empty her mind and her heart of everything but Dillon. He was going to make her come this way, and she didn’t want to. She wanted him to stop, to talk to her, to tell her there was nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about, that she could trust him with her life.
“Do you trust me?” he asked again, his leg sliding against her, harder, and she felt the quivering of an incipient orgasm begin to wash over her. She was having trouble breathing, and if she weren’t supported by the table behind her and his leg between hers she would have collapsed.
She was almost there, and he knew it. He knew everything about her body in this short time. “Do you?” he asked, one more time, brushing his mouth against hers, and she wanted more, she wanted his tongue, she wanted everything. Everything but losing herself.
“No,” she whimpered.
“No? No, don’t do this, or no, you don’t trust me?”
“I…I…” She could barely speak, she was shaking so hard. He could finish it if he wanted to, but he was holding her just on the edge, taunting her. “No, I don’t trust you,” she said. “And no, don’t stop.”
He pulled away from her, so abruptly she fell back against the table. She looked up at him, dazed, but he’d already stepped back.
“Sorry, baby girl. You can’t have one without the other.”
And he walked out into the night, into the snow, without another word, slamming the door behind him.
16
He hadn’t taken a coat, and he didn’t give a shit. He didn’t get cold easily, an advantage in this climate, and the flannel shirt would be enough to get him away from Jamie. He should have known, of course. She’d been raised by the Duchess, side by side with Nate. There was no way she could have come through life untainted, no matter how innocent she seemed. Fucking him was all well and good—she’d do anything he wanted her to if he just touched her the right way. Anything except trust him.
Crazy that that would bother him. Why the hell would he need her to trust him, when all he really wanted was her ass? To burn off twelve years of frustration in the shortest possible time.
Maybe it was because she’d trusted Nate, believed in him as she’d never believe in Dillon. Nate was the most treacherous creature Dillon had ever known, including the thugs he’d met during the year and a half he’d spent in prison, and Jamie still thought he walked on water. And she looked at Dillon and saw a bad boy