The Annihilator (Dark Verse #5)(12)

Before she could respond, a voice, his voice, dryly inserted a sharp comment. “Your heart won’t be able to handle more than one, Landon.”
The older man, Landon, chuckled, evidently the sharpness going over his head. “You’re right. Sweetheart, why don’t you entertain Mr. Blackthorn instead?”
Mr. Blackthorne.
Was that even his actual name or an alias? Whatever it was, it was fitting.
Breaths becoming rapid, she turned to the man on the couch, aware of the way his eyes dissected her barely-there golden sequin dress.
Putting one leg on each side of his, close enough to feel the heat of his body for the first time, she straddled him as she did any man about to get a lap dance. But her heart never pounded the way it did as she straddled him, her hands finding his broad shoulders, tentatively steadying herself as she began to move her hips to the music.
Their gazes locked.
Her eyes drifted to his mouth, the slash of pressed lips as he simply sat, appearing unbothered.
But she could see the darkening of his pupil in his lighter eye, could feel the solid bulge in his pants, getting harder the more she moved.
She ground against him, and suddenly, both her arms were behind her, held tightly in a steel grip, his other hand holding her jaw, reminiscent of the way he'd held her in the maze that first time. Breathing heavily, her breasts heaving, almost falling out of her minuscule dress, she watched him as a male singer's vocals crooned in the background.
The hand holding her jaw moved to her mouth.
Gloves. He was wearing leather gloves. So odd, but again so fitting with him.
His fingers traced her lips, and her mouth parted. She didn’t kiss, had never wanted to kiss anyone and thankfully no one had forced her to. That was something that was only hers, no one else’s. If someone tried to get her mouth, she simply distracted them. She didn’t know why she held onto that, maybe because it was the only thing she could hold onto that left her with any semblance of control in a world spinning out of it. Whatever it was, it was just hers. And she’d never wanted to give it away more.
He leaned forward, his lips moving to her ear, and she held her breath. “I have plans for tonight and you’re ruining them, flamma.”
The heat that had been simmering in her body suddenly died a cold death.
His plans.
Of course.
She closed her eyes, calling on her strength. How could she have forgotten who he was, how he toyed with her for his own purpose?
Although embarrassment wasn’t an emotion she felt often—with the kind of life she had, there wasn’t really any room for it—she felt the flush heating her face as she struggled to get up and walk away.
He held her still, her hands behind her back, her breasts thrust into his chest, her neck tilted for his nose. She had been trying to... she didn’t know what she’d been trying to do. She hadn’t wanted to seduce him, not really, but she’d wanted to be close to him, to feel him against herself, but not necessarily in a sexual way. Though she was aroused, it had been the... safety she’d been enjoying. Even as he held her immobile, she didn’t feel the familiar panic she would’ve been feeling had it been another man.
She’d been trying to create intimacy, and he had been thinking about his plans.
Not good for any girl’s morale.
She’d promised him he wouldn’t hear her voice again, so she kept quiet, focusing on the light at the back, steadying her breaths.
“Are you angry, flamma?” he asked into her neck. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was amused. But she did know better, and she knew he didn’t feel things like she did. Amusement was beyond his range of emotion, probably. Maybe not. She didn't know.
She stayed silent and tried to pull away.
His grip on her wrists tightened. “Your emotions will get you killed here.”
He said that as though she was afraid of dying. If someone pointed a gun at her head, she would probably welcome the bullet.
And the devil that he was, he knew her thoughts. “How will you find your answers if you don’t live, hmmm?”
Fucking bastard.
He was holding answers hostage over her head, forcing her to continue to live. He had been doing it for years. Every time she’d asked him about that night, he told her she would get the answer one day if she continued to live. The last time she’d asked him had been a year ago, and absolutely done with his bullshit, she had taken the one thing from him she knew he enjoyed in their limited encounters—her voice.
But he knew she wouldn’t let go without knowing, and he used it mercilessly, forcing her to shake off dark thoughts, forcing her to see another night, forcing her to live another day. She hated him for it.
His breath fell over her neck, slowly on her pulse, before he pulled back, locking their gazes together.
“The world isn’t ready to see who I would become if this—” his thumb pressed on her pounding pulse “—ever stops.”
Lyla stared at him, and once again, marveled at how she would never understand him.
She wasn’t important, and he was mistaken. If her heartbeat ever stopped, it wouldn’t change a thing.

***
The next week, he was there again, the closest she'd come to seeing him in the span of a few days. He was there, and this time, a blonde half-naked girl was sitting on his lap.
Lyla froze in her step, the tray in her hand she was using as a server jostling with the sudden movement.
Something ugly, nasty swirled in her chest at the sight.
No.
She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath in before opening them again. The blonde was still there and the ugliness in her chest deepened. She knew it didn’t make sense, that she had no rights and worse, no claims on this man. But he was hers. Whatever games he played, he played with her. It was she who was the object of his obsessions. She didn’t want there to be another he was fixating on, another he was holding and worse, looking for with those eyes of his.