A Prince's Ransom: Kidnapped by the Billionaire (41 page)

Sebastian pulled back, but his hands were back on her hips. She was hauled further up onto the bed again and flipped over onto her stomach incautiously. She was nearly about to yell at him for it, but he ignored her entirely and pulled her hips and ass into the air; she reacted only quickly enough to get on her hands and knees before crying out as he rammed himself inside of her. Her hands twisted into the pillow she’d grabbed, and she arched, coated in sweat that plastered her hair to her back. He pulled out and rammed into her again, hard and fast, and bent over her, so that his equally damp chest molded against her spine. One of his arms was still wrapped around her hips, but the other reached up, grabbing a handful of her hair and turning her head, so that his lips brushed against hers as she growled in annoyance.

“Tell me you want it, Tobin,” he hissed at her, even though he was still slamming in and out of her slit. “Say my name, and tell me you want it.” Releasing her hair, he found one of her breasts and squeezed the soft, supple mound, burying his lips into the curve of her neck and grunting as he pummeled into her. “Say it.”

“I want it,” she growled in turn. “Fuck you—I want it! Sebastian, I want it!”

He hilted inside of her so hard that the scream she’d muffled before ripped from her throat—and a burning, paralyzing release spilled from her insides, milking against his cock for a painfully long moment, until her trembling arms collapsed beneath her, and she vaguely felt him kiss her shoulder as her eyes shut.

Slowly, out of breath, Sebastian slid himself out of Tobin and lowered her more properly onto the bed. He couldn’t entirely tell if she was actually passed out or not, but her eyes were shut and she didn’t react to him climbing off the bed, so he didn’t try to wake her for the time being. Instead he was running his hand through his hair, rubbing at the spot where she had yanked on it, and then glancing around for a bathroom. It wasn’t hard to find, and he moved toward it quietly, shutting the door before flipping on the light and starting to clean himself off.

Of course, turning on the light prompted the sudden hissing of another cat that hadn’t been asleep out in the main room, and he jumped slightly before lifting a brow at the calico. It was perched on a windowsill lookout over the street, the tip of its tail twitching with what might’ve been an attempt at menace. Sebastian reached out carefully and rubbed the feline’s cheek, only to draw back as the claws of one paw extended and the cat nearly reached out to scratch him.

“Don’t like me already, hm?” he muttered as he turned toward the sink, turning on the cold water and bending over it. “Well, I can’t say that’s a bad idea.” The cat meowed, and he chuckled before finishing cleaning himself up and turning the light back off. He returned to the other room, glancing toward where she was still sprawled out naked on her bed before moving to the door to the bedroom and quickly heading back out into the living room. Sebastian had a feeling that she would prefer him not being in the apartment when she woke up, when the high of ecstasy and the slight buzz of alcohol wore off. That was the reason he had left his clothes out here—to give her a few minutes of space. But he wasn’t going anywhere just yet. What would it really have accomplished to sleep with her and then take off? Contrary to Tobin’s belief, he wasn’t actually trying to make himself a bigger asshole than he was. She was kidding only herself if she thought him disappearing after one night was going to make her feel better.

Grabbing his boxers and pants off the floor, he winced slightly when his phone tumbled from the pocket and smacked onto the floor, only for his eyes to narrow as he saw he’d missed a couple of phone calls and a text. Kneeling down, he picked it up and opened it. The number he hadn’t answered was one of Capozzis’, and the text… “We need to talk.”

“Shit,” he muttered to himself. He sighed and texted back that he’d go and talk to Capozzi in the morning, only to finish getting dressed, save his shirt. That completed, he lowered himself onto Tobin’s couch and crossed his arms as his head tipped back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. What the hell did his boss want now? Capozzi hadn’t talked to him much since this whole debacle had started, and he’d kinda preferred it that way. It’d given him time to do all of this with Tobin, and that… he wouldn’t regret that.

He heard Tobin start waking up, probably before she meant to or want to—probably half an hour after he’d left her room—and he smiled wryly, lifting his head. The cat from the bathroom had escaped without him noticing and was now seated on the coffee table, staring at him. He jumped again, then stared back at it. “You’re demonically possessed, aren’t you?” he asked sardonically, and was given another meow in response. Yeah, he preferred dogs to cats. Especially cats that might be evil.

Sebastian could’ve turned around when he heard her bare feet slowly padding on the floor, but he didn’t; he waited several moments, listening for the sign that she’d noticed him. “Fuck,” she whispered to herself, and he smirked slightly for a moment.

Only then did he turn around, hooking his arm on the back of her couch and meeting her gaze through the darkness. “Nice to see you too,” he replied.

Tobin was staring at him, and after a long moment she took a deep breath and moved to her kitchen. “What the hell are you still doing here?” she demanded, although her voice was conflicted enough that he could tell she wasn’t sure whether or not she was relieved he wasn’t gone. Interesting.

“I always thought girls hated it when guys just left after sex,” he pointed out nonchalantly, and watched as her jaw tightened.

“Yeah, but I had sex with you expressly to make you go away.”

“How’s that working out for you?” he asked, and stood, stretching. Tobin’s dark blue eyes raced over his broad, exposed chest, and he smirked—but when he moved around the couch toward her, she drew away, and his eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to go away that quickly, that easily. I told you before that there isn’t a girl I’ve met who’s like you. And you’re fooling only yourself to pretend that you don’t feel something as well.”

“What do you want me to say?” she asked, exasperated. “That… that that was the best sex I’ve ever had? Well, fine—I’ve said that much, and it’s even true. But the rest of it? I don’t want you to stay after all that’s happened, I can’t want you to stay. I want my life back, because when I look at you I’m still terrified out of my mind. You held a gun to my head—”

“That I was never going to use, Tobin.”

“—and you’re a thug,” she continued as if he hadn’t interrupted him. “You’re so quick to disparage him for being a nice guy, but you’re no more than a thug and a brute! You killed a man the day we met, you kidnapped me, you had sex with some drunk floozy in a restaurant bathroom, you’ve been stalking me, and…”

For a moment, Tobin stopped. Sebastian had frozen, certain he was glaring at her, silently daring her to say the rest of what she was going to say. Her throat tightened. “Having good sex with you is not a good enough reason to overlook all the rest of it. It is not enough to make you anything remotely related to a good choice to start a relationship with. You got what you wanted, Sebastian, you had sex with me, but that… that’s all you’re getting. You need to leave, now.”

She moved toward her door, unlocking it with trembling fingers, but he didn’t move toward her. “No,” he replied softly.

Her fingers froze, and she looked back at him. “Excuse me?”

“No. I’m not going to leave. You promised me one night. That was barely half an hour. I’m not going anywhere until morning, Tobin—and I have until then to convince you. I think you’ll find that I can be rather persuasive.”

She had paled, and he moved toward her, reaching out for her. Before he could touch her, though, she was jerking away, and he gritted his teeth. “You… you are out of your mind if you think I’m letting you stay until morning—you’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to have sex with you until morning. Unlike some of us, I actually have a job that I need to get to at a reasonable hour, and so you need to leave now.” She finished unlocking the door and started to twist the handle, but before she could actually open it, he was surging against her and shoving her against it, eyes flashing. The door slammed slightly, and she gasped, staring up at him with wide, frightened eyes. “Let go of me,” she breathed.

“No,” he growled, careful not to hurt her, but also not letting her go. “I am not going anywhere, Tobin—I am not letting you just walk out of my life like it meant nothing. Or do you think it was easy to—”

“Easy to what? Not kill me?” she demanded, though her voice still barely came out in a whisper. “Oh, I’m so sorry that that was such a moral dilemma for you, Sebastian, but you’re out of your damn mind if you think that makes it mean something! Let go of me!”

“All the reasons,” he answered like she hadn’t spoken—like she wasn’t now squirming against him, trying to get herself away from where she was wedged against the door. “I know all of them, all of the reasons why you shouldn’t let yourself anywhere near me. How about the reasons you keep doing so anyway? The reasons you haven’t called the police, the reasons why you agreed to this night at all. Do you really think that you just had sex with me because I wanted it? No, I made sure of that much if anything at all, I think.”

“Beyond the fact that I don’t want to draw more attention to myself, give someone even more reason to kill me than they have for the fact that I saw your face and the face of that guy who’d been shot? Because there is someone still out there who would kill me if they knew I was still alive, isn’t there? Whoever you did any of what you did that day for. Don’t give me the bullshit idea that it’s because I actually wanted any of this!”

He pressed against her harder, clenching his jaw when he noticed her wince. “You did, Tobin. You wanted it. I am not leaving until you admit—oof!”

Before he could get off the rest of his demand, Sebastian’s eyes bulged with the familiar, painful sensation of Tobin’s knee being driven into his balls. Instantly he scrambled back from her and fell to his own knees, gritting his teeth and staring at her ankles as his eyes watered. Goddamn, fuck this girl.

“When you’re done crying, Sebastian,” she told him softly, although her voice was barely steady as she looked down at him, “you can see yourself the fuck out of my apartment, and out of my life.”

She inched away from him until she was away from where he could grab her, and then she was hurrying toward her bedroom. He shut his eyes tightly for a long moment, forcing himself to breathe, until there was a sound in front of him. He looked up again, and his eyes narrowed at the calico cat who was curiously staring at him from where Tobin had been standing a few moments ago. It seemed amused by his pain, and he glared at it.

Tobin tipped her head up into the warm stream of water from her showerhead. Her eyelashes fluttered beneath its pattering, but she didn’t pull away for a long, long moment. She could still feel him over every inch of her—his touch and his lips and his taste. Inside of her… inside of her felt raw and tender like it hadn’t in a really damn long time, and it humiliated some part of her to admit that even to herself. That part of her had been appeased a little bit by kneeing him in the crotch, admittedly, but she knew it was probably going to be a long time before she could wash away how all of that had felt.

She wasn’t blind—she knew that parts of what he had said were true. But so much of the rest of it was absolute bullshit. The idea that this meant something? That this was supposed to mean anything after everything he had put her through? He was out of his goddamn mind if he actually believed that bullshit. Having good sex with him didn’t mean anything—no, nothing. If it meant anything, it meant that he had sex with way too many girls like that one in the bathroom stall, who was used to free drinks despite barely being old enough to have them in the first place. That was what he wanted to mean something?

Finally, she pulled her face out from the water, running her hands over her cheeks to wipe away the excess water and opening her eyes. He hadn’t… forced her, she told herself quietly. Some might argue that he had, or that what he had done was no better, but he hadn’t done that. She had wanted it. Maybe it had taken a bit of ale and the hope that he would go away when it was over, but she had wanted it then, more than she could remember wanting a guy in a while. Certainly more than she’d wanted that guy a few weeks ago. Wasn’t there the most annoying irony in the fact that she’d gotten pissed off at him for trying to sneak out, but the fact that Sebastian hadn’t angered her even more?

She smelled like cigarette smoke from that bar, and her heart ached with guilt as she thought of Kevin. She’d had a good time with Kevin. A better time than she had expected—and immediately after, she’d gone to have sex with some other guy! No, this definitely couldn’t happen again. She couldn’t let this happen again, and if Sebastian wouldn’t go away this time, she would call the police. She would. She had made way too many concessions to Sebastian already. This had gone on long enough. Tobin only hoped that she’d never have to reveal to anyone that she had had sex with him in the hopes that he would go away.

Shave. Shampoo. Conditioner. Soap. She stood beneath the warm water for a while longer, until her toes didn’t feel cold from the hardwood floor of her apartment. Finally, she turned off the water and reached for her towel, rubbing it against her hair and skin, making herself as dry as possible. As she pulled her robe back on, she winced as she dragged her brush through her brunette hair, yanking out the tangles, then left the bathroom. After a night like this, she was starving. And the mild buzz of ale from the bar had worn off a while ago; maybe a glass of wine before she went to bed…

She flipped the light on in the hall, doubting she would wake up her two sleeping cats and not knowing where Autumn was. Still brushing her hair, she shut her eyes at a particularly painful tangle, and sighed before looking up again and freezing halfway down the hall.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered to herself, staring at her couch. Staring at her couch where Sebastian was lying—where he was sleeping, where he had fallen asleep after she had kneed him in the crotch and told him to leave. Anger swelled and she thought she’d burst a blood vessel as she glanced toward her door. All the locks were back in place and she swallowed the urge to yell at him to wake him up. And she wasn’t going to call the police now when she wanted to avoid anyone realizing she’d slept with the bastard.