Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
The welts on her skin stung each time she tensed. What if he decided to be really cruel and dig his fingers against them? She’d probably pass out.
With his hand on her hip, he ground against her in tight, slow rolling motions. The hair below his abs rubbed against her ass, and every hard naked inch of him twitched—his chest, his legs, his swollen erection. Goose bumps shivered down her spine.
She feared him as all monsters were meant to be feared in the dark. Only he wasn’t under the bed. He was in it, his breath on her neck, skin against skin, and he was hungry.
If she looked over her shoulder, she’d find a monster with eyes of golden green, wearing a face she once caressed and kissed and loved. With hair she’d stroked with intimate affection, the strands in every shade of the deepest black—the color of his soul.
“I know you’re awake,” he said in a rumbling voice and lowered his lips to her neck, whiskers scratching and teeth scraping.
“I don’t want this.” Her throat closed up, strangling her voice. “Please, Matias.”
He bit her earlobe then suckled the sting. “I’ll change your mind.”
Not happening. Her mind hurdled along a course that ended with a punch to the esophagus, his skull slamming against the marble floor repeatedly, and castration. She couldn’t escape, but maybe a chokehold would help him understand how fucking wrong it was to take an unwilling woman.
With a deep breath, she twisted toward him and swung to hook her arms around his neck.
He didn’t move, but something caught her hands, holding them to the pillow. The fuck? She tried to yank free to no avail, and her pulse detonated.
The mattress bounced as he leaned toward the side table. The lamp clicked on, and a dim glow illuminated the bed.
Lying on her back, she angled her neck and spotted two skinny ropes between her hands and the headboard. Her blood turned cold.
She knew restraints intimately, had fought them and lost too many times. No amount of jerking and yanking would help her, and the ties on her wrists were the kind that constricted under pressure, the braided nylon so thin it blended with the white sheets. No wonder she hadn’t noticed it when she woke.
“Don’t test the knots.” He crawled over her, easily restraining her kicking legs as he settled his hips between her thighs. Then he braced his elbows on either side of her head, studying her with a predator’s vigilance. “They’ll only cinch tighter and cut off the blood to your hands.”
But her legs weren’t tied. She relaxed her arms above her head, her hands curling into fists. “Why am I restrained? I’m not—”
“I want you this way.”
“I have chlamydia and…and syphilis and—”
“You’re clean.” He rocked against her, gliding the rigid length of his cock along her mound, breaths slipping, and lids falling half-mast. “We both are.”
She turned her head away. “You don’t know—”
“Picar drew our blood and took swab tests on the plane.” He gripped her face and forced her gaze back to his. “I’ve never had sex without a condom.”
Neither had she, and she sure as fuck didn’t want to start now.
Except she had always wanted this, with him, without anything between them.
Not like this.
“Christ, Camila, I’ve waited—” His fingers slid into her hair and dug against her scalp, eyes searching and voice hoarse. “I’ve waited an eternity for this.”
Molten gold bled into emerald rings around his irises, the bones of his face sharp across his cheeks, square around his jaw, and exquisitely Matias. Women everywhere probably fell at his feet—with or without his command. How many had sampled his warm skin and tasted his firm lips?
Her heart twisted. Why did she care? She didn’t, but it still hurt like hell lying beneath him and staring into eyes that had once meant the world to her. And it was only going to get worse. He was going to fuck her and make this ugly goddamn mess of feelings a thousand times uglier and more painful.
A hot ember sat in her throat. She pinched her lips together, refusing to give voice to her weakness. There was no sane reason for her to feel anything but pure fucking rancor.
Yeah, that. The anger, the murderous hatred… She grabbed hold of it and let it consume her. Snapping her teeth together, she crunched her abdominals and kicked a leg up and over his shoulder. With a twist of her hips, she landed a knee hard against his jaw, using his shock to drive him to the mattress and into a cry-angle choke.
But without her arms, she couldn’t stop him from trapping her leg and rotating it. With her kneecap against his torso and the pressure of his upper body against his grip, her leg snapped straight, hyper-extending the knee joint.