You Are Mine (28 page)

“Oh.” Her hand pressed harder against his chest. “Zac, shit, that's terrible.”

It was terrible. Another example of how vigilant he had to be when it came to his baser emotions. How he had to be very controlled and very disciplined about them.

“It wasn't ideal,” he agreed with supreme understatement. “In the end, to save the family name from being dragged in the mud, my grandparents had to pay off some people to stop manslaughter charges being brought against me. I had to leave England after that, which I did, gladly.” In fact, he hadn't been able to leave fast enough. “There weren't any other jobs for a man with my particular skillset naturally, and I was young enough and angry enough that I couldn't see the point of working in some factory for nothing. So when an ex-military friend of mine had an opportunity come up as a gun for hire, I took it.”

Eva was silent for a moment. “Why didn't your grandparents help you earlier?”

“Because they despised my father. Pretty much washed their hands of him. I was deemed to be cut from the same cloth so they didn't have much time for me either.”

“So they just left you? Alone with … those people?”

She sounded incensed, and of course she would be. Her father had been a similar sort, hadn't he?

“I survived.”

“Yeah, but still. So what happened after you got that first job? What was it?”

Now she was interested. Christ, he shouldn't have said a bloody word. He loosened her lock of hair. “Question time is over, angel.”

Her mouth firmed. “Why?”

“Because that's not what we're here for.”

“But I want to know. I mean, you know everything about me, Zac. Every single fucking thing. Why can't I know a bit more about you?”

The hot wire feeling began to twist again, his anger running like a hot current beneath a cold sea. She didn't understand. He couldn't afford for her to get to know him. Already his obsession with her burned like a bonfire and he couldn't feed the flames by letting her in. Sharing confidences and secrets had never been what this night was supposed to be about anyway.

It was supposed to mean freedom for both of them. Freedom from the cage of her fear for her. Freedom from his obsession with her for him—at least, that's what he hoped.

“No,” he said flatly. “Rest time is over.”

Her chin had a mutinous cast to it. “I could say the word.”

“You could. But then you wouldn't get what you wanted either. We'd both go away hungry.”

“Assuming I'm actually hungry of course.”

Fuck, enough of this. It was time to reeducate her about the rules.

He wrapped an arm tightly around her, trapping her arms at her sides. Then he pushed his free hand down between her thighs, his fingers sliding over the soft folds of her pussy. She jerked, gasping as he found her clit and began to rub his thumb around and around it, sliding two fingers deeply inside her. Tight. Hot. And yes, wet.

Eva groaned, arching back, trying to pull her arms away. But he only held her tighter, trapping her against his chest. Playing with her pussy until she began to pant, her skin becoming deeply flushed. Until she was slick beneath his fingers.

Zac bent his head. “So you're not hungry hmmm?” he breathed against her ear. “In that case, perhaps you'd better say the word now.”

“Bastard.” She gave a soft moan. “You complete prick.”

“That's not the word, Eva.” He slowed the movement of his fingers inside her.

She shuddered, her mouth open, her breathing harsh. “‘Void', Zac. Fucking ‘void.'”

It would have always come down to this, when he thought about it afterwards. Eva King was the one person who wouldn't follow his orders and never had done so. She had a will of her own and it was, in many ways, just as strong as his.

Which was why he couldn't let her have this victory. She would push and push and push. Challenge him, goad him in the way she'd always done. But it was different now. He wasn't safe in the way he had been before, now that he knew what it was like to be inside her, to taste her. Hear the sound of her cries when she came.

He liked all those things far too much. Craved them like that drug that had destroyed his parents. She was the weak point in his control and he couldn't allow her any more power over him than she already had.

There had once been a woman who'd had that power. He would never give it willingly again.

Zac removed his hand from between her thighs and eased her out of his arms.

Perhaps she knew what she'd done. Perhaps she didn't. Perhaps she'd only come to understand later, in her bedroom, going over and over what they'd done together, her body aching for him.

Or maybe she wouldn't think about him at all. With Eva it was impossible to tell.

He
wanted
her to think about it though. Wanted her to burn for him, the way he'd burned for her. Wanted her to regret that she'd said it. Wanted her to wish she could turn back time so she could change it.

Because one thing was for certain: it could never happen again.

He rose to his feet. “I'll give you a quarter of an hour to get yourself together. Then I'll let Temple know you're ready to go home.”

She sat there for a second, still panting. Then she jerked the blindfold up, squinting at the sudden influx of light. “What?”

“You said the safeword. It's over.”

She was scowling now. “What do you mean ‘over'? What's ‘over'?”

“Tonight. You and I.”

Shock crept over her face. “I didn't mean completely. For fuck's sake!”

“I told you I take that word seriously. That if you used it when you shouldn't, I'd walk away.” He turned and began heading toward the door. “I'm a man of my word. You should know that by now.”

“Is this one of those ‘consequences' you mentioned then?”

He paused, turned back to her. “Of course it is. You do not fuck with me, Eva. I thought you'd have learned that lesson.”

The shock had gone, anger twisting her features. She was naked and flushed, and he wanted more than anything to go back over there and teach her a lesson in another way. One that would leave them both sated, not famished.

“Are you scared?” she demanded. “Did I frighten you or something?”

She was trying to goad him again, little warrior that she was. But it was too late for that.

Fuck, he'd been a fool. Even one night was one night too many.

“Fifteen minutes, angel,” he said.

Then he turned and walked out the door.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Eva sat on one of the purple-velvet-covered sofas in the lounge of Alex's penthouse apartment and frowned at the photo album that lay on the coffee table in front of her.

“There,” Alex said, pointing to one photo in particular. He was standing beside the coffee table, Honor at the opposite end. The album was their mother's, and Honor had bought it over for Alex to look at just in case the photos might reveal anything new about the Seven Devils.

Eva had woken up that morning to find a text from him asking her to come over and look too, since there would be more pictures of Fitzgerald. She didn't particularly want to see any more pictures of him but since concentrating on something else was preferable to thinking about Zac and what had gone down between them, she went.

The picture Alex had pointed to was a group shot of seven young men, sitting on or standing around a couch and laughing at the camera. They were all holding whisky tumblers and looked like they'd had more than one.

“That's him.” Alex tapped the face of one of the men standing behind the couch. Tall and blond and handsome. The quintessential, clean-cut WASP college student. He had one hand on the shoulder of the young man sitting in the middle of the couch, whose blue eyes were discernible even in the horrible flash of the camera.

Fitzgerald. And Alex and Honor's father.

“There's Guy too,” Honor added softly, nodding at one of the men sitting on the arm of the couch, another blandly handsome blond.

“And fucking Conrad.” Alex sighed. “I can't believe we haven't gotten anything on any of these pricks.” He turned and looked down at Eva. “You haven't had any visitations from our friendly neighborhood mercenary?”

“If you're meaning this Elijah guy then no. But then I've been covering my tracks online. It'll look like I've dropped all investigations into the Devils.”

“What about Zac?”

A small jolt of electricity went through her. It had been two days since she'd left his house, going home by herself in her limo, her body aching with unfulfilled sexual hunger. She'd never thought it would actually physically hurt, but it did. It also left a strange hollowness in her chest and a furious kind of anger in her blood that she didn't understand.

All she'd wanted was to know him. Was that so fucking wrong? Yeah, she'd never asked him about himself, and that had been deliberate. Mainly because she didn't want to have to reciprocate.

Selfish much?

Well, yes, she was beginning to understand that. But there was also another reason.

If she didn't know his past, she wouldn't know him. He would remain an enigma, hardly even a person. And that made him safe. A wall to push against when she needed to push and to support her when she needed support.

He wasn't just a wall anymore though. And as she'd lain in his arms, drifting with the aftereffects of the orgasms he'd given her, his warmth and strength around her, she'd realized she didn't want him to remain an enigma any longer either.

She wanted to know him. What had made him who he was. What tragedies he'd experienced, because she'd sensed there had been some, perhaps many.

But she hadn't expected him to distance her so completely like that.

In retrospect, she should have predicted that when she'd said the safeword, he'd stop not only what he was doing, but everything else as well. Yet she hadn't.

The thought still made her angry.

“What about him?” she asked, staring at the picture of the young Fitzgerald.

“Well, has he found anything new?”

It was tempting to say she didn't have any fucking idea since Zac hadn't been in contact with her for two days, but that would prompt questions and she wasn't ready to answer those kinds of questions yet.

“I don't think so,” she replied instead.

“That's a shame,” Honor said. “Especially since Guy is still too sick to tell us anything.”

“Fuck,” Alex muttered.

Katya was sitting on the couch opposite Eva, quiet up until now. But at Alex's soft curse, she raised a hand toward him and he went over to her, taking her hand and threading his fingers through hers. A supportive, tender touch.

Eva couldn't stop looking at them. At their linked hands. At the look on Alex's face as he met Katya's green eyes. At the look on Katya's face as she stared at him in return.

It was like she'd learned a new language, a language she'd never even noticed before and was only now realizing how many people spoke it. Only now realizing that she was beginning to understand it. The wordless communication, the touches, the looks. All the emotional cues she'd been missing.

A burst of salty flavor in her mouth. Then something richer, creamier. “I appreciate good food when I have it. And so should you.”

That night hadn't only been about fear and sex and confrontation. Zac had held her, fed her. Had he been trying to teach her more of that language? And had she not understood? What more could there have been if she hadn't said the safeword?

But there was no point thinking about that, was there? She
had
said it. And he'd thrown her out.

Eva tore her gaze away from Alex and Katya, staring at the photo instead. Staring but not seeing.

She'd only wanted to push him for more and she hadn't known how else to do it but goad him. It had been her modus operandi for seven years and it had worked very well … until now.

If you want more, you'll need a new strategy.

But did she want more?

His mouth on her, his fingers touching her. Intense pleasure. Arms around her, so warm. Saltiness against her tongue. Then a rich, dark sweetness that somehow reminded her of his voice. “You could. But then you wouldn't get what you wanted. We'd both go away hungry…”

He'd been right. She had gone away hungry. And she'd been hungry, been cold for too goddamn long.

She
did
want more.

“Eva?”

Her head jerked up.

Alex, Katya, and Honor were all staring at her.

She could feel her cheeks heating. How stupid. “Sorry. Thinking of some … other stuff.”

“I just wanted to know whether you need any help with preparing for the party tomorrow night?” Honor asked.

Holy shit. It was tomorrow night, wasn't it? A reflexive fear slithered uncomfortably down her back, stealing her breath.

No. He can't touch you, not anymore.

Something inside her shifted, firmed. Lifting her chin, she met Honor's blue eyes. “What kind of help?”

“Well…” Honor gave a delicate pause. “You probably don't have anything suitable to wear, do you?”

Eva snorted. “Do I look like I own a fucking gown?”

“Admittedly not,” the other woman allowed. “But it is black tie. Which means turning up in Docs and jeans isn't really the done thing.”

“I don't need a dress,” she said reflexively. “I can wear whatever the hell I want.”

“Wearing a gown doesn't have to imply a weakness.” Katya's lightly accented words were quiet but firm. She'd sat forward, her blonde braid falling over her shoulder, green eyes very direct. “It can be a show of strength.”

Surprised, Eva stared at the other woman. Katya was a bodyguard who customarily wore black suits and shoulder holsters. What would she know about gowns? And what did putting on a dress have to do with strength?