“Isabel offers freedom,” she murmurs, her voice dropping lower, “but she can’t offer me you. She can’t offer the one man whose control is so absolute that nothing touches me unless he allows it. She thought I’d run from the monster, not understanding that I’d rather be owned by the monster I know… the one I’m drawn to… than be ‘free’ in a world full of them. She wants a partner. I don’t want a partner. I want a king.”
It’s a flawless performance. If it’s a performance.
Is it a lie?
The question is a venomous hook in my gut. The strategist in me screams trap. But the man—the one who craves her surrender, who wants to believe her brokenness binds her to him—accepts it as truth.
I close my hand over hers, my thumb pressing into the steady, maddeningly calm pulse at her wrist. No fear. Only conviction.
“The lessons are over,” I say, my voice rough.
“And the game?” she breathes back, a clear challenge.
I rise, pulling her up with me, flush against my body. “The game,” I murmur against her lips, “just became a great deal more interesting.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LEA
“The game...has just become a great deal more interesting.”
His words are a challenge wrapped in velvet. The intensity in his eyes, dark and consuming, sends a current through my body. This is my moment. My cue in our dangerous play.
I don’t think. I move.
Closing the last inch between us, I rise on my toes and press my lips to his. Not with the hesitation of a victim or the mechanical precision of someone performing a duty, but with the hunger of a woman starved. My hands slide up his chest, feeling the solid muscle beneath expensive fabric, and tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck.
For a heartbeat, he freezes. Surprise flickers across his face, a momentary crack in that impenetrable control. I’ve caught him off guard, and the victory sends a thrill of power through me. Then his hands are at my waist, gripping hard enough to bruise, pulling me against him as if he could absorb me into his skin.
The kiss deepens, turns savage. His tongue invades my mouth, not asking permission but claiming territory. I match his intensity, biting his lower lip hard enough to make him growl. The sound vibrates through me, igniting something primal and reckless.
“My bedroom,” he commands against my mouth, already walking me backward, his hands never leaving my body.
“No,” I counter, pushing him against the wall with a force that surprises us both. “Here.”
His eyes widen a fraction, that delicious shock again. He’s not used to being challenged, especially not like this. But then his mouth curves into a smile that’s all predator, all approval.
“My, my. The little journalist has teeth.”
I don’t give him time to regain the upper hand. My fingers attack his shirt buttons, tearing one in my haste. I press open-mouthed kisses to the exposed skin of his neck, his collarbone, the hollow of his throat where I can feel his pulse hammering. Like mine.
He allows me this control—for now. His hands roam my body, not roughly as they have before, but with a searing deliberation that makes me gasp. He finds the hem of my sweater and pulls it over my head in one fluid motion. The cool air hits my skin, raising goosebumps that his warm palms smooth away.
“Look at me,” he demands, and I do, meeting his gaze without flinching. What he sees there must satisfy him because something shifts in his eyes, giving way to raw need. “Tell me what you want.”
The question is a test. In our past encounters, what I wanted never mattered. He took. I endured. This is different. This is him acknowledging me as a player, not just a piece.
“I want to forget everything but this,” I say, the truth slipping out before I can filter it through my strategic mind. “I want you to make me forget my name.”
His response is physical. He lifts me, my legs wrapping around his waist, and carries me not to the bedroom but to the massive dining table. With one sweep of his arm, he clears it of its decorative bowl and place settings. The crash of shattering ceramics punctuates my racing heartbeat.
He lays me down on the cold, polished wood, his body covering mine like a living shadow. His mouth reclaims mine, and his hands—those dangerous, skilled hands—work at the fastening of my jeans. I arch into his touch, helping him strip away the layers between us. My hands are just as urgent on his belt, his zipper.
There’s a franticness to our movements now, a mutual desperation that feels nothing like the calculated seduction I’d planned. This is supposed to be strategy—my body a weapon to cement his belief in my surrender. But as his mouth travels down my throat, my breasts, my stomach, leaving a trail of fire in its wake, the line between performance and reality blurs.
When his fingers find me, already wet and wanting, I cry out, my body arching off the table. My reaction isn’t fabricated. It’s raw, visceral, undeniable. His eyes lock with mine as he touches me, reading every flicker of pleasure that crosses my face.
“Is this what you imagined when you decided to play this game?” he murmurs against the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. “Did you think you could control this?”
