no. This wasn’t about what I wanted and never had been.
Imogen took a soft breath, the fabric of her strapless white dress pulling tight across a pair of quite frankly beautiful little tits. The dress moulded to her generous hips too, outlining her rounded thighs.
Nice. Very nice. Not usually my type—tall, athletic women handled me better than small kittens like this one. But she was soft and strokeable, and undeniably sexy. What would she be like in bed?
Fucking wildfire.
Another pulse of heat burned through me, making my cock twitch.
‘So what does that mean exactly?’ She frowned. ‘Am I a threat or a tool for you?’
‘Both.’ I ignored the heat in my groin. ‘I want your father to leave Sydney. Only when he’s gone will I let you go.’
She glanced down at where her hands clutched at her seat belt, a lock of pale hair falling out from underneath the cap I’d put on her head and down over her shoulder. It gleamed like watered silk in the light coming through the windows. Pretty.
What would it feel like coiled around your finger?
Nothing. Because I wasn’t going to touch it.
‘That still doesn’t really explain this ruin thing,’ she said. ‘And you haven’t said what it involves exactly.’
‘What do you want? A fucking diagram?’
A flash of green glinted from underneath her pale lashes. ‘Actually, that would be super helpful. Especially since I don’t know anything about fucking.’
The heat I was trying to ignore burned a little hotter. Was she...flirting with me? Toying with me? If so, she was playing a dangerous game.
This wasn’t a date and I wasn’t some harmless boy desperate to kiss her hand. I was the oldest and most feared son of one of Sydney’s worst criminals, and I had things in my past that would wipe that expression off her face. That would make her look at me as if I was the devil himself.
Maybe it was time she learned that this wasn’t a fun night out and that I wasn’t some tame house cat she could stroke, who’d curl up in her lap. I was a wolf and I’d eat this Red Riding Hood alive.
‘You really want to know?’ I leaned right into her space, getting a kick out of the way she had to press herself against the window to keep the distance between us. ‘Are you sure?’
Her eyes went wide, her sulky, pouty mouth opening. And for a second I thought I saw fear there, but then it was gone and something else glittered in the green depths of her gaze.
Yet more excitement.
Shit.
‘Seriously, I am so sure.’ Her voice was on the edge of husky. ‘Tell me, Ajax. I’d really like to know how you’re going to ruin me.’
Imogen
HE WAS VERY CLOSE, inches away. His broad shoulders blocked out the streetlights coming through the opposite window of the van, his body in that pristine white shirt and black suit trousers, a hard wall of muscle in front of me.
And his eyes. Electric blue, so vivid against his olive skin. Fascinating in a way I couldn’t describe.
He was so compelling. He made my heart shudder behind my ribs for reasons I didn’t understand.
This talk of being ruined... It was all I could think about.
Since I’d been taught at home by tutors, I’d never gone to high school, never dated. I’d never had a teenage crush, except once, on a guy I’d seen through the window of the car while I was on my way somewhere. I’d constructed a whole set of dreamy fantasies around him for at least a week until I’d lost interest in the whole idea.
If I’d had any girlfriends I’d have discussed my lack of a sex life with them. But I didn’t even have girlfriends.
What I did have, though, was an insatiable curiosity about pretty much everything, including all the things I wasn’t allowed to have.
Such as sex.
I’d learned how to get around the blocks Dad had put on my Internet years ago and I’d looked stuff up. Sexy stuff. Enough to have an idea of what I might like when it came to men.
One thing I hadn’t realised, though, was that looking at sex on a computer screen was very different to having an actual man right in front of you, looking at you so intently it made you want to burst into flames.
Like me, right now, with him.
‘S-so,’ I stuttered, unable to keep quiet, my heart racing. ‘You know, how does it happen? Do I have to take my clothes off? Do you touch me or—’
‘I don’t have to touch you to ruin you, little one,’ he said in that dark, deep voice I felt right down low inside me.
Okay, wow. That was...intense.
My heartbeat ratcheted up another notch. ‘That’s a bit patronising, you know. The whole little one thing.’
God knows why I was arguing with him. Probably stupid given my situation and the fact that me not being afraid of him clearly annoyed him.
But too bad. I wasn’t afraid. He might think that all of this would frighten me, but what he didn’t understand was that I didn’t see this as a kidnapping. No, this was a rescue.
He’d bloody well saved me.
And, for all his talk of ruining me, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Not a man who’d carried me so gently; close to his chest; holding me as if I were precious.
He was scowling now, not liking that I was arguing, and maybe I was completely crazy but I loved how growly and fierce he was, though I didn’t really know why. Maybe it was simply the fact that I could get a reaction from him. Me. The sheltered virgin who could never sit still. Who was of no use to anyone except as a tool.
You’re Ajax’s tool now.
Yeah, but it felt different somehow. For a start, Ajax was a complete stranger. Unlike my dad, he wasn’t supposed to love me and I wasn’t supposed to love him. I could push back at him with impunity and it wouldn’t matter.
‘I don’t give a shit whether it’s patronising or not,’ he said. ‘You’re my prisoner and I’ll call you whatever the fuck I want.’ He paused, his gaze like a searchlight finding all my secrets, all my hidden desires. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I think you like it.’
I went red. Sadly, I did like it. I’d never had anyone refer to me as anything but Imogen and being called little one made me think of being curled up in his arms, safe.
Not
