The dagger flew, bounced. She was spun and flipped. Pain flashed white hot through her body, and oof, her breath was knocked out and her head hit the floor, painfully hard.
She was flat on her back, staring up at the bottom of the table, at the carved leg of his overturned chair, seeing stars.
Janos pinned her, blocking every point of leverage. Her arms were stretched high, both wrists clamped in the manacle of one of his enormous hands. His steely forearm pressed her chin up and put intense pressure on her windpipe.
How…? God, he was fast! No one had gotten the better of her like that in years, not since she’d learned to fight like a hellion. She fought the panic, the fury. “What happened to your death wish, you lying snake bastard?”
His face was inches from hers, a taut mask of fury. “I reconsidered it. I do not like a poisoned blade at my throat.”
His forearm lifted, enough to let a stream of air rush through her bruised throat. It rasped, making her cough. Their eyes were locked.
“Let me go,” she coughed out, without much hope. “Get off me.”
“Ten seconds ago you were about to kill me. Why should I?” he asked. “Do I look that stupid?”
She coughed again. “Who are you?”
“You are in no position to ask the questions. Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. Turnabout is fair play, no?”
Panic swelled inside her. Spots danced before her eyes. Being pinned reminded her of…no. She would not think of it.
She struggled harder. “Let…me…go!”
“No.” He countered every move, keeping her flat to the floor. “Where to begin? I am a more ordinary man than you gave me credit for being, so I will start from the obvious place. Your beauty.”
“Oh, shut up. I’m not interested in your bullshit—”
“Too bad. You are afraid of your beauty?”
She snorted. “Wrong.”
He ignored her. “You are too afraid to destroy it, in case you might need it. Too vain to hide it completely. But you are afraid to use it as you could if you wished. Look at you, all in black, every inch covered. Hair dragged back, face bare of cosmetics. You hate men. You love to confuse them, attack them. Punish them for treating you like a thing—”
She convulsed. “Let go of me, you twisted son of a bitch!”
He bore down, squashing her to breathless immobility. “You knock everyone who gets near you off balance,” he went on. “It is the only way you feel steady yourself. You are always braced for a blow, always angry, always afraid. You are too thin, with purple shadows under your eyes. You sleep badly, eat little. You weep secretly in the darkest part of the night.”
She stopped moving, chilled to her bones at his supernaturally good guesses. “Shut up,” she whispered. “Just…stop, Janos.”
He moved in smoothly for the kill. “Your jewelry says so much, I am amazed that you dare to make it. Sensuality clashing with violence, beauty clashing with paranoia. The contradiction is like a bleeding wound. For you are wounded, no? Mortally wounded, maybe. But you are taking your own sweet time to die, hmm?”
No. She mouthed the word. There was no breath behind it.
“Even the name you’ve chosen reflects this longing for hardness. You wish you were forged from steel, no? The only thing that gives you pleasure is working with metal. Sharp blades, needles, drugs and poisons. Secrets to armor you. You dream of invulnerability, but it is just that…a dream. You are curled around unhealed wounds.”
Her throat ground against the crushing pressure of his arm as she turned her head away. “No,” she croaked. “It’s not true. It’s not me. None of it. You asshole.”
His eyes narrowed. “You hide behind the child.” His voice took on a tone of discovery. “You need the child. What other reason do you have to keep living? Why else wake up in the morning, put food in your mouth? You need her to claw your way from one day to the next. No?”
“Leave her out of this.” Tam squeezed her eyes shut. With her hands confined, she couldn’t cover even her shaking mouth, her leaking eyes.
Nor could she reach the panic button strapped to her thigh, the one that would summon Nick and Davy, guns drawn. They had begged and urged and lectured her to mike the room so they could monitor the conversation, but know-it-all bitch that she was, she hadn’t wanted their noses that deep in her business.
“Poor little girl,” he murmured. “Too innocent to understand how she is being used. And still, in the middle of the night, you are terrified at what you have done to yourself. The vulnerability, the work, the time, the noise. The awful responsibility. Do you wonder if survival is even worth it? If death would be less frightening? Less effort?”
Her body shook in his hard grasp. “Fuck you,” she whispered.
“I would,” he said. “Right here, on the floor, until you whimper with delight. You like strength. You crave it, as much as you fear it. And I am strong enough for you. I would put it all at your service. Everything you fear, everything you hate, everything you fight so hard against dedicated to your pleasure.”
Her eyes popped open at that absurdity. “Oh, please. What a pile of melodramatic shit.”
“I could force you,” he said. “Part of me wants to. But you are so fragile. You would close up completely, and I would find myself fucking a beautiful doll.”
She laughed. “That’s enough for most men,” she muttered. “They never know the difference.”
He stared into her eyes. “I know the difference.”
She felt too weak to lift her ribcage beneath the weight of his body. But that was all right. She didn’t really want to breathe. Her chest felt too unstable. Pulling air in could ignite it like dry tinder, make it burst into flames. Her brain kept trying to form responses to what he said, but they didn’t make it as far as her shaking mouth. She could make no sound without air anyway. She was muddled, flushed with a strange, hot power that pumped up from some mysterious hidden spring inside her. Speeding her heart. Her skin felt weirdly sensitive. Hairs prickling up.
Almost as if she was…oh, dear God. Why, that sneaky bastard. How dare he. As if she had no clue, no defenses. He’d gotten so deep in her mind, fucking with her head, making her…
Hot. She shifted. He anticipated the movement, canting his hips so the whole hard, hot length of his cock was cradled in the cleft between her legs. His hips swiveled, a slow, rocking, grinding push.
She gasped. She was turned on. Out of nowhere, and like never before. She’d thought it was all burned out of her, after Novak.
But no. She was on fire. Hot and soft and shivering. He’d made her…wet. He was a sorcerer, a shaman.
His face was a mask of concentration. “You feel it,” he said.
She did. There was no point in lying. It took her a moment to reply. “And? So?” Her tone was ragged, wobbly. “What of it, Janos?
