Page 41 of Rogue

Jaxson doesn’t simply lift up, he sits up, straddling my thighs with his own. Without missing a heartbeat, his gaze feasts on what I’m offering.

I keep my arms where he’s left them, high over my head. Exposing myself, offering myself to him.

“I might have been tempted by that beautiful body of yours once but now I’m immune. I feel nothing. You know why? You’re as good as dead.”

Reality crashes down and smashes my hopes at reconciliation to smithereens.

I spring to me feet, leaving the towel behind as I dive for the gun on the bedside table. But he’s too fast.

He wraps an arm around my chest and hauls me back. I jump when I feel his hand between my thighs, cupping my happy place as he lifts me high off my feet. Turning in his arms, I grab his earlobe between my teeth.

He growls deep in his throat. For a second, I think it’s him reacting to how sensitive his lobes are, remembering how I’ve done this very same thing before . . . foreplay, sex play, our aggressive way of getting down and dirty, while he was turning on the charm or deep inside me . . . but then I feel it, the tip of his finger sliding between my damp folds.

Sweet Jesus, help me.

“Draw blood. I dare you, sweetheart,” he says threateningly but without emotion.

Grrr. . . . so we’re back to this sweetheart crap?I bite down harder and am rewarded with a hiss.

He thrusts his finger deep inside me, and I immediately regret my antagonizing him. He pushes a second finger in, then tightening his hold around my body, rubs his thumb across my clit.

It’s like lightening’s struck me straight between the thighs.

“Fuck, you’re soaking wet.”

Yes.“No.”

“Always the liar.” He bounces me high against him and his fingers sink fully inside my slick channel. “This what you want, you deceitful bitch?”

Yes. “No. Put me down,” I whisper huskily. God, this is so screwed up. My wanting him this way.

He drags his fingers out until only the tips remain.

Long ago, he’d murmured sweet promises to me. “I’ll get up inside you fast and furiously, anyway I can.” But now?Evennow when there’s so much to be said? When he’s beyond furious. When he hates me?

“So what do you plan on doing?” I demand with false bravado. “Fingering me then killing me?”

He slams my back into the bathroom doorjamb. The heel of my foot presses against the arm of the expensive Louis XIV chair next to it and gives me leverage to arch back. The force of his actions drives his fingers deeper. My muscles contract around him as a climax builds up from some unfathomable place inside of me. “Jaxson,” I moan.

Everything is there in my tone. My needing him. Wanting him. My agony. My shame. Shattering any hopes at self-preservation.

“Damn you,” I hear him hiss. A warning, yet I’m too far gone to heed it.

He pressed his body into mine, pinning me to the doorjamb. With one hand he pumps his fingers into me and with the other, he grabs me by the throat. “Some women get off on pain.” His fingers tighten, and my eyes widen as the truth hits me full force. “What do you say, pleasure before pain?”

Jesus. What happened to the smug charmer I fell in love with? This isn’t the same smug man who never took much of anything seriously. This man is dangerous. Cruel. A stone-cold mercenary, like Declan.

“I’m sorry,” I manage to say.

He withdraws his fingers, then his body, releasing his hold on my throat.

I slip onto my feet, my knees shaking and my heart breaking.

He wipes his fingers on his pants with what can only be disgust written all over his face. “You can keep your sorry. Ever hear of the expressiononce bitten, twice shy? And that was one hell of a bite you pulled on me.”

“I didn’t . . .” I grit my teeth. Damn him. He’s not ready to listen. What the hell was I thinking? Seducing a man like him is like throwing rocks at a boulder.

We stare at each other.