he said. “We are two of a kind.”
The low, gentle vibration of his voice was the magic touch that slid through her defenses. She stopped fighting him, and herself. Her body ached for contact. Her nails dug into his forearms and her breath hitched with each slow, skillful stroke over her skin.
He slid his hand down between her legs, stroking the damp seam of her labia with a fingertip, in no hurry to penetrate. It was just an invitation, a gentle call to all her nerves to get ready, to work themselves into tingling awareness. He rubbed her clit, a lazy, undemanding swirl around…around. Reminding her that he was thinking about it, that he had big plans for it…and oh…
God. A shudder arced through her body. The accumulated tension of years, violently unwound by his light touch, throbbing through her.
Tears shimmered in her eyes. She squeezed them shut.
“I barely touch you, and you come apart,” he murmured. “Beautiful.”
But it didn’t make her feel beautiful. It made her feel like she had no skin. Foolish and needy. And so goddamn stupid.
She couldn’t bear to play the fool again so soon. She couldn’t push him away, either.
So she chose another path.
Instinctively, she threw a switch inside her brain. A technique she’d learned when she was very young, and it had served her well. Her seductive siren persona, the part of her that could drive men mad with pleasure while mentally composing a grocery list. A part of herself she had never intended to use again after the Novak debacle. It was ready to do its job, though, and it was a blessed relief to feel that power rise, bolstered by her confidence in her own beauty, her practiced skill at giving pleasure.
It had never failed her, except with Kurt Novak. And he’d been a special case, being something both less and more than human.
But Janos was wonderfully human. It would flatten him to the ground, just as he had done to her. Yes. She couldn’t wait.
She turned and shoved him back against the wall. He looked startled by her sudden aggression. She splayed her hands over his hot, hard chest. Her palms crackled with the hot polarity between them.
His eyes narrowed at the change in her. She sought out every tiny detail of him with her fingertips, then her lips. She trailed hot, moist kisses down his chest, feeling him shiver and gasp as she kissed and tongued the tight, dark nubs of his nipples, perched on the flat, hard shelf of his pecs. Tasting his sharp salt flavor. She slid her hands down over the rippled belly muscles, the silken grain of dark hair arrowing down to his waistband. She wrenched the buttons of his jeans open, yanked them down his thighs, combed that arrow of hair with her fingertips down to where it swelled again to a springy tuft at his groin.
And his cock. So thick and broad, filling her hand. The slit at the tip was gleaming with slippery pre-come. She anointed her hand with it and stroked, pulled, gripped, milked him. His eyes closed, and he flung his head back. His breath rasped harshly.
Ah, yes. This was much better. She was in control. Disposed to make his wildest dreams come true, to be his nympho siren, blow his mind, rock his world. She sank to her knees with theatrical slowness, breathing in the salt tang of his skin, the hot musk of his groin.
His cock jutted out so far she had to scoot back to accommodate him. She stroked the whole throbbing, empurpled length of his broad, veined stalk with her tongue, swirling it all around the crimson head. She took him into her mouth, creating the wet, silken suction that all men dreamed of with her lips and her tongue, varying it with luscious lapping, teasing flutters, deep and bold and hungry. She caressed the dips and swells and hollows of his naked hips.
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 fuck 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 fucking 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
