“Tamar. No. Do not do this.” He forced the dry sound past the pressure of the gun against his throat.
“Try to stop me, and I will kill you. Let go of me, Janos.”
He let his arms slide lower, embracing her. She was as stiff as a wooden statue. “No.”
The gun dug deeper. “I mean it.” Her voice shook.
“So shoot me,” he said. “Go on. End it.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You used this trick on me before.”
“It worked before,” he said.
“I’m wise to you now,” she said. “It won’t work again.”
“Yes, it will,” he said quietly. “Because this time it is not a trick. I know you now, Tamar. You will not shoot me. Put the gun away.”
Seconds dragged, oppressive with waiting. Rain rushed, an enormous, diffused sound all around them. Far-off thunder cracked and rumbled.
Crystalline tears welled up in her eyes, glittering in the gathering darkness. “Damn you,” she whispered.
He pushed the barrel of the gun away from his chin, took the thing out of her unresisting hand, and put it back in her purse.
He placed the bag gently on the ground and reached for her.
S
he struggled, of course. She could not help herself. It was a given, an automatic response. But the fight was a frantic search for some place to put that desperate energy raging inside her. She fought how hard she wanted him, how much she was beginning to need him. She fought that sad, yearning ache that scared her out of her wits.
Not just for his beauty, his intensity, his fabulous cock. She wanted the life-giving elixir of his kisses, she wanted to wander through the boundless wilderness of him, to get lost in him. She wanted to devour him, soak him up, drink him in. She wanted to be devoured.
Stubborn bastard. She was furious at him for being a stubborn dickhead about Georg, and at the same time, pathetically grateful that he had stopped her from drinking that toxic brew.
He had saved her. From Georg, from herself. How dare he.
Val pushed her against the wall, wrenching her arms behind her, and for some reason, his smoldering barbarian energy did not piss her off. She’d encountered that conquering warrior vibe in her lovers before, and had been secretly amused by it. Never tempted. Never stirred. It was just another weakness to be exploited, another blind spot to turn to her advantage. She’d toyed with men’s vanity, their illusions about themselves. She’d made them dance to her tune when she bothered with them at all. Puppets. Clowns. Big bore.
But Val was no clown. He had no illusions, no vanity. Val danced to no tune but his own. And she was anything but bored.
He was going to throw her down on the bed and fuck her, and she could not wait. She was going to explode, combust. She needed Val’s delicious hot scent to drive away the memory of Georg’s bitter odor, Georg’s sour breath, the damp, bruising clutch of Georg’s hands. After today’s nightmare, she was crazy for it, but she just couldn’t…stop…struggling. Her muscles trembled with the electric compulsion.
He immobilized her in his huge embrace and leaned, pinning her body against the wall. “Tell me that you want me,” he said.
She squinted, disoriented. “What?”
“Tell me that you want me,” he repeated impatiently. “I don’t trust myself to read you.”
She wrenched at her trapped wrists. “Why the hell not?”
He made a frustrated sound. “I want it too much,” he burst out. “I need it too much. I do not want to…how did you put it? Project my gutter fantasies onto you?”
She shook with breathless, hysterical laughter, every inch of her tensed against his body. “Why this sudden insecurity?”
His face was tense, a mask of rigid self-control in the shadowy room. “I do not want to be like him,” he said starkly.
Tam gasped in astonishment. The idea was so incongruous, she almost couldn’t process it. “Him? Georg? Hah!” Her voice cracked. “You are nothing like him! As if!” She shoved him hard to punctuate her statement. “You are his polar opposite!”
His grin flashed. “Ah. Good, then. This heartens me.”
She made a frantic growling sound, lunged forward, and sank her teeth into his neck, hard enough to hurt. “Goddamn it, Val,” she hissed when she let go. “Don’t be sweet. Not right now. You’re ruining the barbarian conqueror vibe. Keep waffling like this, and I’m going to have to put you down.”
He laughed, a free, delighted sound. Plaster dust and flakes of paint pattered down on the antique tile floor as he pushed her back against the wall. He wrenched her jacket down over her shoulders and off, then attacked the buttons of her blouse.
She gave him a shove that rocked him back a bare couple of inches. “Hey. If you rip the only clothing I have to put on my body, I swear to God, I will kill you. Slowly and painfully.”
He slowly uncurled his fisted fingers and let go of the handful of silk, but he did not step back. “Take it off,” he commanded.
She unbuttoned the blouse, and that was as far as his patience would stretch. He wrenched the sleeves down, flung the blouse away.
He stared at her breasts, his gaze hot and intent as he slid his sensitive fingertips slowly around her nipples. Tender, lazy strokes that left glowing streaks of light and heat in their wake, every nerve wanting him back. Hungering for more. Her nipples tingled. He bent low, and she gasped at the faintest contact, the scratchy brush of his stubbled cheeks, the softness of his lips. His swirling tongue, the wet suckling pull of his hot mouth. He kept her like that, topless and trembling against the wall while he made love to her breasts, until her tension melted, softened.
He gathered her up into his arms and tossed her on the bed. His huge shoulders were silhouetted against the dim light filtering in the door as he loomed over her, his face in menacing shadow. He tugged off her boots, her pants. Flung them behind him. His own clothes followed.
He was naked. So strong and powerful and hot against her skin. The empty shackle of the handcuff dangled, a kinky fashion accessory swinging and glinting on his wrist.
Something to push against, that was what he’d offered her the night they met. That was exactly what she needed, to keep pushing and pushing, until she finally pushed through that wall into someplace where she could stand to be. Someplace where her nerves weren’t firing in crazy panic. Someplace where she could let herself relax and feel it.
Val could give her that. He was tough enough. Brave enough.
He climbed on top of her, folding her legs high, draping them over his shoulders. Stroking his hands down the fine, sensitive skin of her inner thigh. He covered her with his body, caressing her pussy, and found her slick and wet.
But not wet enough for his first deep, relentless thrust.
She cried out and scratched his chest, drawing blood. He just stared down, pinning her beneath him against the swaying bed.
“Do not ever do that to me again,” he said.
She swatted at him, hard. “Do not think your big dick gives you the right to give me orders, loverboy.” She spat the words at him.
He seized her hands, pinned them on either side of her head. “Never…again,” he repeated hoarsely, punctuating each word with a deep, jarring lunge of his body.
She writhed and wiggled, squeezing and clenching around his thick shaft. “You still don’t get it, do you? It was the only way!”
He went still on top of her, his fingers tightening painfully around hers. “I will never get it,” he said. “It is too much. Do not ask it of me.”
She wound her legs around his hips, squeezing the little muscles of her pussy around his cock with all her strength. Lifting herself against him, to feel that sweet, hot, gliding thickness caressing her deep inside. “I’m not asking anything of you but this,” she said fiercely. “So why don’t you just shut the fuck up and give it to me?”
He did. Deep and hard, every thrust jolted her wonderfully closer to the place she needed to be. With each thrust she grew slicker, hotter, more eager for the next, more desperate for the licking flames, the unbearable sweetness, brightening, sharpening. Piercing bliss.
The bed squeaked and groaned. Val’s breath was hard, panting. She gasped for breath. Small sounds against the vast, diffused backdrop of lashing rain outside the open door, distant thunder, wind whipping the foliage outside, the fragrant, rain-scented chill. Their twined bodies churned, clenched around a molten core of sensation.
It exploded into bloom. Melting sweetness throbbed through her, endlessly. She floated through that infinite realm. Filled with grace.
He took longer to finish, gathering handfuls of her hair and burying his face against his shoulder. His climax tore through him violently. His hips pounded hard against her body.
They lay together, limp and damp afterward. Their twined bodies generated sensual, enfolding heat, despite the cold of the room. Day had faded completely. They rested, formless as clouds in the blue half light, in an otherworld apart from all the pain and confusion and danger.
She wished they could stay there together forever. She never wanted to break this fragile bubble of calm—but she had to.
She turned his face, tilting his chin up so that he looked up into her eyes. There was something he had to know.
“I did not fuck him,” she said. “I would have, true, but I didn’t. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I know that.”
“He couldn’t have performed, anyway. Not without an audience. It’s his thing.”
“I know. Hegel told me.” Val said.
“He got that from Kurt,” she said. “Kurt liked that. So, of course, Georg fixated on it. Kurt was God for him. I think what Georg truly wanted was just, well, Kurt. That was his way to get…closer.”
Val flinched, dragging himself out of her body. “Please. No more details. I cannot stand it.”
That infuriated her for some reason. She felt thrown back upon herself. “Why? Can’t you handle it, Val? Do I disgust you?”
His head swiveled around. “Shut up,” he said fiercely.
His harshness startled her. She curled up, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Fine,” she said distantly. “So we won’t talk.”
Val seized her by the shoulders and gave her a short, hard shake.
“I cannot stand the thought of anyone hurting you,” he said. “Not now, not in the past, and not in the future. Is that so fucking offensive to you, Tamar?” His eyes bored into hers, daring her to object.
She gaped at him, disarmed. “Um. I see.” She cleared her throat, and said the first thing that popped into her head. “Val? Could you get that handcuff off your wrist? It’s bugging me. Sort of like, ah, as if you were walking around with your fly open.”
He made a frustrated sound and got up, puttering around in the dimness to search in his discarded jacket on the floor. He pulled a tiny kit out of the pocket, smaller than a cigarette case, full of small tools.
He came back to the bed and switched on the flickering fluorescent light by the bed, and scowled with concentration as he picked the lock mechanism.
She rolled closer to him and stroked the dips and curves of his muscular thigh with her fingertips. It took him only a minute before he leaned over and snapped one of the open cuffs onto a wrought iron loop that decorated the painted metal headboard.
“It looks perverse, hanging underneath the
Madonna Addolorata
,” she said. “Sort of sacrilegious.”
He snapped off the light. The darkness seemed much deeper now. “It seems appropriate to me,” he said. “Under the circumstances.”
She didn’t want to touch that with a ten-foot pole. She got up from the bed—and stopped cold, as hot semen trickled down her thigh.
She stiffened in shock. “We didn’t…” Her voice trailed off.
Val’s dark gaze was unapologetic, and unsurprised. “No,” he said flatly. “We didn’t.”
She stood like a statue, her hands flat on her belly. There was nothing to say. She couldn’t blame him, despite his aggressiveness. That carelessness was mutual, and they both knew it. If he hadn’t jumped her, she would have jumped him. Without a thought of protecting herself.
Fear swept through her like an icy wind, weakening her limbs. The dark got abruptly darker, the air swirling through the door colder against her sweat-chilled skin.
She felt so fucking vulnerable.
“Is it a dangerous time?” he asked in a carefully neutral voice.
She harrumphed. “Who the hell knows? This is me, Val. This is Tam. Do I look like a woman with a predictable cycle? Could anything about me be characterized as regular? Get real.”
His chest jerked with dry laughter. “Ah,
sì
? And what does a regular woman look like?”
Her shoulders lifted, dropped. “Not like me, that’s for sure,” she muttered. “I don’t even eat. I go for months with no period. Nothing about me is normal.”
“Yes, this is so,” he agreed, a little too readily.
She slanted him a cool glance and hurried into the bathroom.
The water from the bidet was icy cold, and there was no soap, but it didn’t matter. She washed until her private parts burned from the cold, all too aware of the futility of the gesture. She dried off, wrapped the threadbare towel around herself. When she came out, Val was motionless on the bed.
“Promise me something,” he said.
“I don’t make promises,” she said. “To anyone.”
“I demand it.” His voice hardened.
“Demand all you want,” she replied. “Feel free. It changes nothing.”
But he persisted. “Never do that to me again, Tamar.”
“Do what?” She injected a fake lightness into her tone. “I’ve done a lot of unforgivable things lately. Help me keep them straight.”
“Do not use your body as currency.”
Anger boiled up inside her like lava. How dare he. He, of all people, should know better. “Do you think I ever wanted to, in my life?” she demanded, incredulous. “Did you ever want to, Val? What are you telling me? That you can protect me from the greed and lust and cruelty of all men forever? Do you think I can be sure I won’t be in a situation where I have to trade sex for the chance to live for another fucking ten minutes? Like today, for instance? Don’t be stupid! It makes me angry!”
“Just…promise it.” He bit the words out slowly.
“No,” she said.
He wrenched the towel off her body. His cock was lengthening. His eyes gleamed in the dark with undimmed intensity. Oh, God. Men. As if his huge, waving erection had anything to do with anything.
She clenched her jaw. “I will not lie to you,” she said.
“I’m not asking for a lie.” His voice vibrated with intensity. “I’m asking for you to change the truth.”
She shook, a tremor of laughter that was closer to tears. “Oh? Like it’s so easy? The truth is the truth, Val. You can’t change it. You can’t control a damn thing. There is no limit to how bad things can get. If you accept that, you’ll be stronger. Maybe you’ll survive. That’s the best a person can hope for.”
“I love your strength,” he said quietly. “Your strength excites me. Your cruelty exhausts me.”
She shook her head. “It would be so easy to lie to you.” Her voice trembled despite her best efforts to steady it. “I could have said, oh, sure, baby, you bet. I promise, cross my heart. But I didn’t. Not to you, Val. I’ve given you what I’ve never given any man in my life, you thick-skulled, ungrateful prick. What I never imagined giving anyone. And you call it cruelty.”