Brutal Game (Flynn and Laurel #2)(3)
“No, thanks. It’s really late.”
“Stay, then. I’ll take you home in the morning.” He sat on the edge of the mattress, and she caught a spark strike in those hazel-blue eyes when she scooted a little farther away—he was a wolf, and she the deer who’d just twitched. He craved a chase. She craved the weight of this beast crashing down on her when he got his way.
“I can’t,” she said. “Thank you, really, but I should get home. I could call a cab—”
“Why would you do that?” He came closer and his hand closed around her wrist, not tight, but rigid as steel—the cuff of a man who scoffed at bondage props.
“You don’t have to drive me if you don’t want,” she said, channeling a woman too timid to call a man on his shit—the woman she’d been eight months ago, likely. It could be scary sometimes, the way the chemical rush of this role-playing so closely resembled true fear. Scary and exhilarating, and strangely freeing.
“I wouldn’t offer to drive you if I didn’t want to.”
“It’s late,” she said again, letting those words fall flat and tinny with false worry.
His eyes narrowed. “You’ve watched me fight the past, what? Three weeks, four?”
“Not just you. I watch all the matches.”
“I’m not blind, sweetheart. I see how you look at me.”
She conjured the smile of a woman more anxious than amused. “You’re one of the best.”
“One of?”
She swallowed again. “You’re the best, as far as I can tell.”
“That excite you?”
“It… I don’t know. Look, I think you’re an amazing fighter. I’m a little drunk. I probably have some kind of crush on you, but I’m not looking to act on it. Thanks for the ride, but I need to get home.”
“I asked if you wanted to see my place. You said you did. I think we both knew what that really meant.”
She made to leave the bed but that hand around her wrist bit down hard, feeling like the steel it stood in for.
He said, “Don’t.” The word gave her chills, because she knew it’d be her uttering it soon enough. “I don’t bite.”
You do. “I need to go.”
“A few more minutes won’t hurt. Just a kiss, then we’ll go. Promise.”
“It’s really late—” She was cut off by her own gasp, her surprise real as his hand twisted, wrenching her arm with a twinge. It lit something up inside her, a cocktail of fear and anger and frustration, and she wrestled her wrist free and made it to her feet. He liked a struggle. She’d give him one.
“I scare you?” he asked, tone eerie and casual, as chilling as if there were a jeer coloring that question.
She held her tweaked wrist. “A little.”
“You came after me, you know. Maybe you like the way I scare you.”
She didn’t reply, letting her gaze move meaningfully to the door.
“You like watchin’ me fight?” he demanded.
She met his stare. “Yes.”
“What else do you wanna watch me do?”
She held her tongue and let that dirty, twisted hybrid of fear and excitement work through her body and settle across her features. She watched his expression darken and heat in response.
“You like watchin’ me fight,” he repeated, stepping close, forcing her backward until her calves found the mattress, then her ass. “What else do you wanna watch? You wanna watch me f*ck?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“You like watchin’ me bleed,” he said, speaking low, intimate, more threat than flirtation, now. “You wanna watch me come, girl?”
Her only reply was a gasp as that powerful hand grabbed her again, clamping tight to her forearm. “Stand up.”
She didn’t have much choice; he all but yanked her to her feet. He was six-three and change and she was nine inches shorter, and in moments like this he seemed to loom a mile above her, godlike and terrifying.
Not a god. A monster.
“Kiss me.” He said it quietly, not tenderly.
She whispered, “Okay.”
His free arm circled her shoulder and he wound her long hair around his fist. Laurel shivered. That sensation did something to her, something not every rough act did. Some submissive women loved getting spanked, or held down, or blindfolded. Whatever the f*ck it said about her, Laurel liked getting her hair pulled. Just feeling his hand tighten had her wishing for the pressure, the promise of domination.
He forced her chin up with a sharp yank, stared hard into her eyes with his cold ones before bringing his mouth down to hers.
It was less a kiss than an assault, but there was heat in it, too, her excitement spurred not by the smooth execution of the act but from knowing what was coming, what this promised. And knowing that Flynn was burning up inside his skin, out-of-his-mind aroused, and all because of her. The gifts she gave him weren’t wrapped in satin. They were harsh and strange and not for the faint of heart. But what they did to him made her feel as powerful as the woman she played felt helpless.
She pushed at his chest with her forearms, tried to wrest her mouth away, only to feel the bite of his fist in her hair. When he spoke, his lips moved against her cheek, breath hot.