he craved.
Julian turned her quickly around in his arms, giving himself the cushion of her rear for his hips as he curved an arm around her ribs under her breasts. He moved them both to the low, pulsing throb of the music almost as reflex. His full attention was elsewhere. His nose drifted down the line of her neck as he drew in that delicious verbena cleanliness. Feminine musk rose from her skin beneath her dress, the heat of the press of so many bodies making her warm considerably and creating the rich aroma in abundance. It was agonizing and gorgeous all at once. He longed to draw her away somewhere alone so he could indulge without all the harsh outside influences of smoke, alcohol, and overused synthetic perfumes worn by others.
“This is quite an argument,” she said with a flirtatious rubbing of her backside against his zipper. Julian’s hands swept down to her hips, holding her there against him as he let her warmth burn into him until he ached. She did not argue in the least, instead taunting him in seductive slides and wriggles.
Julian grabbed her around her slender throat, tipping her head back against his shoulder and engaging her ear with a rough-voiced warning. “Don’t think you will play me like this and then just walk away with a toss of these sweet shoulders and that tart attitude of yours.”
“I can do whatever I want. It’s a free country and I owe you nothing.” She turned in his hold, reaching down to flick a saucy finger up the length of his erection. “I think I’ve given you enough already.”
Then she tossed her shoulders and whirled out of his hold, making as if to walk away. Julian didn’t let her get that far before returning her with an almost elegant catch and spin back against him. He settled her firmly in place, his hand back over her bottom although quite a bit more blatantly this time.
“Tease,” he said gruffly against her ear. “Why are you being so purposely cruel to me? What have I done that so offends you?”
“Why would you think I am offended? Can’t stand some simple hard-to-get? Grow a thicker skin,” she advised. “Toughen up.”
“I am plenty tough enough. Hard as steel, in fact,” he hissed against her cheek. “More so than I have been for a very long time.”
“Mmm. Sure,” she scoffed. “Guy like you? You probably take home some airheaded tart every single night. Maybe I’m just not interested in being one of the crowd. Ever consider that?”
“You wouldn’t be. I can promise you that. You would be the very last woman I would ever bring to my home. There would be you and no other after you.”
Asia couldn’t decide if that was a threat or a deadly promise. Still, she had to force herself past her knowledge of the game he was playing with her. She was pushing him too hard. She needed to be his choice, just as he was promising. She needed him to take her with him, and she prayed he would try to do to her what he had done to Kenya. She didn’t have an exact plan per se because she didn’t know exactly what it was he had done, but she was not going to leave him until he told her where her sister was. He would pay, one way or another, but above all else she had to know what had happened to Kenya.
Large hands slid over her hips and waist, and she shuddered at the sensation. It was horrifying, how a caress could be so logically repulsive and yet physically compelling all at once. In truth, she felt the crawling of her skin because she knew what he had done, but it was almost as if…as if the rest of her body was disavowing that knowledge just so it could respond on a purely molecular level. Without her permission, she felt the draw of him that so many other women must have felt. But that was okay, she told herself. She wanted to feel everything exactly as they had. She wanted to do everything exactly as his other victims had.
She had already made mistakes, like avoidance and cringing when his touch had so sharply reviled her. When he had reached in offer to get her to dance, she had been flooded with the irrepressible rage of wanting to hurt him in an act of vengeance. Asia needed to control that fury. She wouldn’t allow herself to destroy her opportunity with wild emotion.
So now she took slow, even breaths and let him press his prodding erection against her pubic mound as they swayed in a rhythm contrary to the music around them. He seemed oddly out of control, like his patience was worn very thin. Was it because he was off schedule and he was eager for his latest kill? His words promised her he wasn’t just looking to get laid. He wanted to get it all off. Whatever it was, he wanted to use her completely to satisfy his needs—both carnal and homicidal, if that was his goal. She could feel it in the desperation of his touch and the way he wouldn’t let her move away from him again.
“That’s quite an unbelievable promise,” she whispered with a sly grin as she snaked two fingertips down the back of his neck in a meandering path of stimulation. “I could be the worst lay in town.”
His laugh of disbelief was flattering and resounding. He was convinced otherwise and he made no bones about it.
“If this was only about sex, I might be worried,” he conceded, “but it isn’t.”
A stupider girl would have taken that charmingly accented phrase as a promise of depth and romance. Many of them probably had. Thirteen of them at the very least. It disturbed her to think her sister had fallen so foolishly into such candied promises. Kenya was not so naïve to be swept away in such ways.
“Then what is it about?” she dared to ask.
“Oh, much more than the physical. Even beyond the spiritual. Once you learn the truth of that, perhaps you will not be as harsh and jaded as you are.”
“You call it jaded; I call it having my eyes wide open.”
“I call it a shame. The pain you American women suffer at the hands of your foolish men only proves to me how lacking they are as a sex and species.”
“You are of their sex and species,” she reminded him with a laugh.
“I am something very different than you have ever known before. This is another promise I can make. In my culture, you would be quite treasured. I would treasure you.”
Yes, of course you would. You would kill me, stuff me, and mount me, getting off on the memory of my screams and death throes again and again as you treasured some trophy from my body.
Asia smiled in contradiction to her poisoned thoughts. “You haven’t even asked me my name,” she noted.
“Nor have you asked mine. I imagined you would ask when you were interested, and you would give when you were ready. I am in no hurry. I don’t plan on losing track of you anytime soon.”
Asia suppressed a shiver and simply smiled up into his pine green eyes again, rather creeped out by her own morbid thoughts. She wasn’t afraid that she couldn’t handle him, it was just how wretchedly sincere he sounded just then. It made her want to scream inside and out. But Asia Callahan, renowned as one of the very best bounty hunters and martial artists in the biz, always got her man, and this one was the most important catch of her life.
Maybe even her sister’s life.
“Let’s go,” she said quite suddenly, her fingertips trailing slowly down the back of his neck in a sensual invitation. “If we’re going to party, I want to get started. Now.”
Julian raised a brow at her sudden and swift change of gears. There was no denying how genuine the invitation was—she did indeed want to get going—but he also sensed she had a not-so-hidden agenda, and it made him hesitate. Oh,
