Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(76)



She deepened the strokes, pulling him as far as she could into her throat, suckling hard, fluttering her fingers under his heavy balls. He wound his fingers into her hair, urging her on with pleading tugs, now and again holding her still and drawing back to climax without ejaculating. Three times. The man had astonishing self-control.

She would make him lose his control, goddamnit. She would punish him for demolishing her life, for making her want him so badly. For being so strong, so difficult, so persistent. She would make him explode and weep and beg. She would show him who was boss.

He cupped her face in his hands and pulled it gently away from his body. “No,” he said unsteadily.

She looked up, confused, and wiped her mouth. “No, what? No, not yet? No, not in my mouth? Be specific.”

“Not with a sex toy,” he said. “I prefer the real woman.”

The rejection was a slap. Soul deep. Entirely unexpected. She stared, shocked to immobility, then rose and backed as far away as the small room would allow. “If you hate it, just f*ck off.”

He winced. “No. I did not hate it. You misunderstand me.”

She laughed bitterly. “That’s for sure. Ungrateful prick. I’ve never had any complaints before.”

“I am sure that you have not.” His eyes sharpened to that penetrating look she was beginning to dread. It made her feel too fragile. “You went to your comfort zone, no? I do not want to go there, where you have entertained all your other lovers.”

She gasped, at his outrageous nerve. “All my other…oh! Am I not good enough for you?”

“Do not be ridiculous,” he said. “It is only that I prefer you as you are.”

Yeah. As vulnerable and raw as the grief-stricken girl she had been. No.

“I can’t.” She was horrified to hear her voice breaking.

He reached out, brushed her hair off her face. “You can trust me,” he urged gently. “I will not hurt you.”

She flinched away from his touch and covered her shaking mouth. “You have,” she said. “If you don’t want me, then go.”

He blew out a fierce, frustrated breath. “I knew you would be like this. Sooner or later, something inside you would run away and hide, and I would be left with a beautiful doll in my arms.”

“Whore, you mean, not doll,” she hissed. “Go ahead, say it. It’s how you make me feel.”

He lifted a lock of her hair and pressed his lips to it, stroking it against his cheek. “I would be the last one to judge a whore,” he said quietly. “I know what it means to do what you must to survive.”

She jerked her hair back out of his grasp. “How could you know? Do you know how it feels to be used like a thing and tossed aside afterward like garbage? What you have to turn yourself into, just to survive?”

“Yes,” he said.

She stopped, mesmerized by his aura of tightly leashed power and his battered, inscrutably beautiful face. “You?” Her voice cracked. “Oh, please. Give me a f*cking break. Your job experience as a professional gigolo is irrelevant, Janos. Look at you. You’re a man, you’re six foot four, you’re at least two hundred and fifty pounds. No one could use you and toss you. You have no clue.”

“You are wrong.” He glanced down at his own body, and gave her an odd, lopsided smile that struck her as heartbreakingly sad. “You hate men too much to imagine that they could ever be vulnerable, no? I was not always this big.”

She closed her mouth and chewed her lip. “Oh,” she murmured.

“I was young when I…when it happened,” he said. “But it is not something that you forget.”

An awkward silence lengthened between them. He had cut her anger off neatly at the knees. He had a frightening talent for that.

It could be a lie. But something about the spareness of his words, the look on his face made her think that perhaps it was the truth.

Truth. There it was again. That volatile, changeable, dangerous word. Dogging her at every turn. At the center of everything.

“So…now you’re fine?” she asked. “You’re all over it?”

He shrugged. “You find ways to take your power back.”

“Yes, that’s exactly it. Taking my power back,” she muttered. “That’s exactly what I was trying to do.”

He frowned. “I don’t want to play games with you.”

“So what the f*ck do you want? I was giving you the benefit of everything I have to give a man, everything I know, and you reject it, you ungrateful son of a bitch. So what do you want? Spell it out for me!”

He opened his hands, looking bewildered. “It is…a feeling. I do not know how to explain it. I never felt it before. It is like seeing without eyes. Something beyond the senses. But it was amazing.”

The desire to believe every word he said, to fall into this honey-baited trap, was so strong, it almost swept her away. But he was too damn smart. Sharp enough to read her mind, to know exactly what would tempt her, what would melt her.

She wiped angry tears away. Gave him a hollow laugh. “You want something that doesn’t exist, Janos. Or something that’s long dead.”

His face turned obstinate. “I felt it before you took me in your mouth. You were there with me, and suddenly you were not, and I was being fellated by a beautiful cortigiana, her mind and heart a million miles away from me. I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt your feelings. But it made me feel lonely.” He gave her a rueful shrug.

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