Page 10

His cheeks flutter, maybe suppressing a laugh. At me. At my expense, at my bruised and chilled body.

“Come.” He pulls me along with his backward steps.

“I need clothes.” I wrench my arm away.

“Are you sure?”

My face scrunches in disbelief. “Yes, I’m sure.”

He steps back, the harsh fingers that gripped my ear so tight now fiddling with the top button of his jumpsuit.

“I’ll share,” he says, sealing his lips to smother a smile.

The button pops open, exposing a triangle of light brown skin with an amber glow, pointing downward, hinting at what lies below. He moves to the next one and the next, the triangle growing, extending lower and lower.

I panic. He was serious. He’s not all talk. This is why I don’t have clothes. He wants easy access. To me.

Another button.

I flatten myself against the cold wall. Shit. Maybe he’d like it against a wall. Even worse—maybe I would too. But not with him. Not in this room.Focus, dammit.I need to stay alive.

“I have to warn you though”—he pushes a fifth button through its hole—“rumor has it I don’t wear anything under my jumpsuit.” Six buttons, and he slips the fabric off one shoulder.

I slide down the stone at my back and drop to my knees.No, he’d like that even more.

“You’re an eager little one. I haven’t even gotten an arm free yet,” he says.

I stand, chin up. “I don’t want your foul man clothes. Bring me my own.”

“You give orders now?” His eyes laugh at me.

Screw him. “I do.”

“Not in here, not to me.” He backs clear across the room. “Either you stay like that and come get your dinner”—he pulls something from his pocket and throws it to the floor—“or you’re finding out if the rumor is true.”

My “dinner” looks up at me from the floor, a brown bar split in two, crumbs all about. I cross my arms. “I’m not eating your nasty pocket food.”

He pops another button and works his arm out of the sleeve.

“Stop!” My heart slams into the walls of my chest. “I want out of this room.”

Lightning flashes, followed by the roar of thunder, and I slap a hand over the nape of my neck to stop the sensation of fingers rippling over my skin.What is that?

He grins and points at the bar. “Eat. You’re not going anywhere.”

“So I’m a prisoner?” My voice wobbles despite the steel I thread through the words.

“Did you not notice the crowd of people who wanted to kill you?” He stalks back to me, smashing my dinner flat under his boot as he closes the space between us.

I press my back to the stone. “Better company than you.”

“Before you decide, get this through your lovely little head—I’m the only one in the entire realm who wants you alive.” This asshole of a man plants his hands on the wall above me and leans down—in—a breath away. “Outside this room, you’re everyone’s prisoner. In here, you’re only mine.”

I swallow, left with no choice but to gulp down his intensity, his scent. “Yourprisoner? What does that mean?”

His lips stretch into a closed smile, from one sculpted cheek to the other. “That I give the orders…and you follow them.” He pulls one hand off the wall and traces a finger across the slice in my neck, sucking in a breath. Then he tugs on the shoulder strap of my camisole, lifting it an inch before releasing it and flattening my shoulder against the wall. “Or I make you.”

“You can’t make me do shit. Who do you think you are?”