Beneath the Secrets, Part Two (Tall, Dark & Deadly)(9)

“I guess you’re afraid to let me cuff you?” she challenged.

“Afraid?” he asked, laughing. “Hmmm. Maybe I am.” His hand, still laced in her hair, forced her gaze to his, his eyes meeting hers. His voice softened. “In fact, Kara, you scare the shit out of me.”

Her chest tightened with the raw quality to his words. “I don’t know what that means.”

“I think you do.” He shackled her wrist and slid the cuff over it before she could stop him. “I think you completely understand.”

“No,” she whispered, tugging on her arm when he lifted it to the bar behind her and attached it. “Don’t cuff me to the bed.” Her free hand went to his shoulder, and she meant to push but she didn’t. Damn it, why wasn’t she pushing him away? “Don’t, Blake.” He cuffed her other hand and settled back to stare at her. She swallowed hard, feeling helpless and vulnerable with her hands over her head, her breasts thrust forward. “Is this where you torture me for information I don’t have?”

“With pleasure, sweetheart. It’ll hurt so good, I promise.” He rose up and tugged his shirt over his head.

“You promise,” she repeated, her words rasping in her dry throat as he tossed his shirt away and exposed his impressive, muscular chest. His hair fell from its clasp, in long, dark strands to brush his broad shoulders. “You promise until you decide to kill me.”

He went completely still, his eyes steady on her face, never shifting to her naked, exposed body. “I’ve given you no reason to believe I’d kill you.”

“You said you’d kill me if you had to.”

“And with the way you handle a gun I’m pretty sure you’d kill me if you had to, too.”

“With good reason.”

“I’m no different than you, sweetheart.”

“Ignacio would kill me for looking at him the wrong way. How do I know you aren’t the same?”

“I didn’t kill you for drugging me.”

“You thought about it.”

“No,” he said solemnly. “I didn’t. I just wanted to f*ck you again. You seem to have that effect on me.”

Her skin flushed with the bold statement she knew was meant to distract her from what was important. “You work for the cartel. Problems get solved by killing people.”

“You work for the cartel. I’m a contractor with loyalty only to my paycheck. I’d turn around after this job and help destroy Mendez if the money was right. And feel free to tell Mendez as much. I’d say that to his face.”

Her mind was reeling, and her emotions, too, none of which made any sense to her. He made no sense to her. “Then why are you pushing me so hard?”

“What are you so afraid of me finding out?” he asked instead of answering her question.

“I’m not afraid.”

“You said you were.”

“So did you.” She tried to turn the tables. “Of me.”

“I said you scared the shit out of me.” His eyes flickered with shadows, and she saw the torment in their depths, heard it as he spoke. “And you do. And you know why? Because I have to know whatever it is you’re hiding and I dread finding out what it is. I shouldn’t feel that way. I shouldn’t care.”

“Because it’ll make killing me harder,” she whispered, taking only small comfort in his torment being a sign he didn’t really want to, that he actually felt this connection to her that she felt to him.

He opened his mouth to reply and she shook her head, suddenly overwhelmed with unexplainable emotions. “Don’t answer. Please. I don’t want to know what you’ll say. We all have secrets. Mine are personal. They don’t affect you.”

“I need to decide that.”

“No.” Her fingers curled into her palms. “No damn it, you don’t.” Frustration filtered into her voice. “Stop pushing me.”

“You know I can’t.”

“You can. You say you aren’t loyal to Mendez. I’m helping you do what you were hired to do. That’s what matters. You know all you need to know.”

He framed her face and the touch was like sweet bliss, a relief. She didn’t understand why, but she’d needed him to touch her. “I don’t know what I need to know,” he said, “until I know everything.” His thumb stroked her cheek, a soft caress that sent a shiver down her spine and tightened her nipples. “Everything, Kara. I have to know everything. I want everything.”

The way he said the words, like he had to own her, like he did own her, shook her to the core. She’d never wanted to be owned. She never considered that any man could own her, but she feared this one could, and would, if she let him. “You can’t have everything.”

He answered by leaning in, his mouth slanting over hers, his tongue delving past her teeth, doing a sensual slide into her mouth that sent a wave of heat through her body. “What you tell me stays with me,” he vowed. “Trust me, Kara.”

Her chest tightened uncomfortably, emotion welling inside her. Trust him? Was he serious? And why why why did she want to? This was how people got killed in this world. They fell for this kind of man, these kinds of promises. “I barely know you.”

He settled his cheek against hers, his lips against her ear. “You know me,” he said. “I see it in your eyes when you look at me.” He palmed her breasts and molded them together, teasing her nipples with his thumbs, and her thighs burned, the urge to clamp them around his hips impossible to suppress. “And I feel it in the way you respond to me.”