Dollars (Dollar #2)(88)

Get out of my way!

He stumbled but quickly righted himself. The air crackled with brutality.

“You seriously want to do this?” His voice wavered with violence.

Do what? Let me go?

Yes, let me go!

For all his perceptive patience and cruel understanding, he didn’t have a clue what I felt. Did he think he’d fixed me? That his cello was some magical pill and now I was normal?

It doesn’t work that way!

I don’t want to talk to you!

Nothing about the sudden switch from pickpocket flirting to destroying me with music made me want to open up and have a heart to heart.

He doesn’t need a heart to heart.

He read your secrets, remember?

More anger poured through me like hot wax.

All I wanted was to leave and get away from the lingering tingle in my blood from his heat and the sparking fear from his notes.

I advanced on him; my hands outstretched and ready for war.

He braced his legs, his jaw lowered. “Push me again and see what happens, Pim.”

The warning should’ve been enough to make me sit back on the bed and behave. To open my mouth and utter a single word. But he’d let me get away with other misdemeanours. What was to say he wouldn’t let me get away with this one?

I wasn’t pretending. I needed to go. Right now.

And you’re in my way.

Baring my teeth, I shoved him, putting all my power into the force behind my pummel.

He staggered back, his eyes widening only to go black as death as I darted toward the door.

Freedom.

He was no longer a roadblock. I’d done that. I’d turned the key. Now, all I had to do was cross the threshold and return to my room, and this could all be forgotten.

I took three steps before his hand lashed out, wrapping around my wrist. “I warned you, Pimlico. I f*cking warned you not to push me.”

He whirled me around, slamming me against his chest. “You pushed and pushed, and I can’t f*cking take it anymore.”

His lips came down on mine, tearing my mouth open and kissing me deep. My tummy tangled in horror and heat as I squirmed in his embrace.

This kiss was different.

This kiss was real.

His past kisses had been fakeries. Elder chose this moment—a moment when I was scattered and jittery—to reveal who he was beneath his masked decorum.

This kiss was utter violence.

Violence, I knew. Danger was what I’d been fed, and violence was what I’d drank for years. My body reacted. Shutting down, it turned stiff and unyielding even as something strange happened. The foreignness that’d been budding from seed to seedling ever since I’d woken in Elder’s domain flourished.

The wetness he’d caused in the streets of Morocco returned without permission.

I hated that two women lived inside me. Two personalities, two hopes and dreams and wishes.

The male tongue in her mouth appalled Pimlico. She wanted to bite it, run from it. She hurt with every lick and would forever remain just a little bit broken. She would never enjoy sex because her induction and life had been too traumatic to untangle.

But then there was Tasmin.

A girl who’d enjoyed late-night touches from incompetent boyfriends and was still a virgin to pleasure. A girl who was steadily learning to take back control. A girl who flickered into authority and felt Elder’s kiss rather than endured it.

My body stiffened then softened. Fought then floundered.

And Elder didn’t stop kissing me. His tongue didn’t stop dancing with mine, and I didn’t know if I licked him back in war or welcome.

His touch hurt but in two ways now instead of one. I was familiar with the bite of fear and unwillingness, but I was new to the heat and fire of his dominance.

His hand wrapped around my nape, kissing me harder.

Part of me wanted to run from his touch, the other wanted to have him collar me so I could feel safe in his control.

My lips bruised. My mind became a washed-up origami sail-boat.

“Fuck, Pim. I’m—I can’t stop.”

Sweeping me off my feet, he sank to his knees with me in his embrace. His mouth never stopped claiming mine, biting and nipping, forcing me to accept whatever passion he’d held back.

And he’d held back a lot.

I gasped as his hand tore at my robe, yanking it open to reveal my breast. The cool air licked around my nipple. It hardened.

Pim screamed.

Tasmin moaned.

The bondage in my mind reached snapping point.

His hand clamped on the sensitive flesh. Nightmares and flashbacks threatened to take me under. The terror that this was the moment Elder turned into Alrik begged me to cut loose and sink inside myself until it was over.

But Tasmin clung to sensations; she threw back her head and said yes to living.

That strange, unwelcome molten desire licked from his touch into my core, keeping me locked in his embrace. For the first time in my life, I felt a siphon of pleasure beneath the rage of being hurt.

Pim lost a smidgen of power; Tasmin snatched it.

Elder didn’t pay any attention to my internal battle. He didn’t know how much he affected me, how much he drugged and shredded my mind.

His thoughts weren’t on me for once. He didn’t watch me, judging how far to take me. He was utterly obsessed with his demons.

“Christ, I need you.” His words tipped into my mouth, pushed down my throat with his tongue. Sitting up on his knees, he ripped the terrycloth belt undone and spread the robe wide. The soft cotton had no power against whatever madness lived in his blood.