Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 90075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
My core clenched.
I almost came.
He said I was a witch?
Then what the hell was he?
A warlock?
A magician?
Some sort of circus performer with true magic? Magic that seeped into a woman’s blood and turned her into liquid fire?
“Okay, okay, restrain yourself for ten more minutes. Jesus.” Giselle threw a pencil at Hunter before pushing a questionnaire toward me. “Just fill that in and—”
“You fill it in, Gis. Doubt we’d be able to read her writing with how badly she’s trembling.” Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “Besides, she’s held the pen. We know everything we need to know...right?”
“Yes.” Giselle gave him a nod I couldn’t decipher. “All good.”
All good?
What did that mean? I glanced at the pen in my hand before Hunter snatched it from me and tossed it back to Giselle. “Next question.”
I looked back and forth between them, pretty sure I’d fail this test, seeing as I’d forgotten my own name.
“Are you open to bondage?” Giselle asked.
“Yes, she is. Next.” Hunter answered for me with a devilish grin. “It’s a particular fetish of mine that I’ll enjoy delivering.”
“What’s your pain threshold on a scale of one to ten?” She quirked an eyebrow at me.
“Um...” I risked a look at Hunter. He watched me with calculated stillness.
Would he use my answer as his guide tonight? If I said ten, would he make me bleed? What if I said it was a pathetic number one?
“Let me rephrase that question,” Hunter murmured. “Do you get turned on by the thought of me teasing you with a feather? Running it between your legs, toying with the prude you pretend to be, or are you wet at the thought of me spanking you with my hand, leaving five red fingerprints on your perfect ass? Do you shudder at the thought of my belt singing through the air, slapping against your virgin skin? Or...” He captured my ear again with naughty teeth. “Do you want to come beneath the savage kiss of a whip? A whip that runs up and down your body, marking your belly, your breasts, before landing on your clit?”
I swallowed hard. A droplet of sweat rolled down my spine.
“Y-You have to stop,” I choked. “You can’t keep talking to me like that.”
“Like how?” He arched an eyebrow, adorably confused.
“Like....like that.”
“What with truth?” He scowled. “I hate to tell you, Ella, but if you can’t handle me describing what I plan on doing to you, you’ll most likely die when I do it.” Tucking chestnut hair behind my ear, he lowered his voice to a seducing whisper. “I know you’re afraid. I know you’re eager but wary. I know you’re probably thinking that you’re not going to survive this, and...you’d be right.”
I moaned as he pressed the softest kiss to my mouth. “But isn’t that the point? You want to be destroyed. You want to be at my mercy. You want to know what it feels like to have all that power you’re clinging to so tightly stripped away from you. You want to know what I’ll do to you when you have no control. You want to know who you’ll become if you let me rule you, worship you, shatter you piece by piece until you’re nothing more than—”
“Ella?”
Oh no.
No.
No.
NO!
My racing heart stopped with wrenching agony.
My cheeks turned to pyres.
My wetness instantly dried into shameful dust.
Hunter stiffened as he raised his head, no doubt locking eyes on the one man I couldn’t look at. The one man who’d starred in a few of my dirty fantasies, all while I couldn’t stand him in the flesh. The one man who always managed to make me feel small, childish, and utterly unimportant.
Nicholas Davis.
“Who are you?” Hunter asked coldly, his arm binding me to him with possession.
“I’m...I’m—” Nick’s voice hardened. “Doesn’t matter who am I. Who the fuck are you?”
Hunter seemed to double in size. His hard body turned to granite. “I’m the owner of this establishment. Is there a problem? Are you not having a good time? If you’re looking for condoms, there’s a large bowl in the foyer of the big top. If you want refreshments, they’re—”
“I don’t want condoms or a damn drink.” Nick crossed his arms, his chequered blazer still rucked to his elbows, ensuring everyone saw the tendons flexing in his powerful forearms. Forearms that did not belong on a scientist.
Don’t look.
Don’t look.
I kept my eyes locked on Giselle in the booth as Nick shifted in my peripheral. She gave me a wince, sensing the tension as if it were a great clotted cloud of awful.
If I looked at him, it was all over.
Who was I kidding?
It was already over.
I might as well go home with my tail between my legs and move out because I could never face Nick ever again.
My little dabbles of wondering if he came here tonight were the worst kind of joke. Because he was here. And now, I wanted him to be anywhere else.