Vanquish (20 page)

Should he worry about her connecting Liv's escape with hope for her own way out? Nah. She couldn't even look at the windows, let alone step outside. And by the time she overcame the agoraphobia, she would be too attached to him to leave. “Yep.” Liv had been a very naughty girl, but her ability to outsmart him and Mr. E lifted his chest with pride. “I didn't know Liv had freed the others until I started watching her.”

“Stalking
her.” She flashed him a reproving glower. For long moments, she didn't move, but she seemed to be calming herself. It was a fascinating thing to watch. The heave of her torso slowed, and her hands loosened around the knot of the towel. She had no idea how strong she was. “You said you were twenty-five when he brought you into the...business. Does that mean you and your mom had escaped before that?”

Not quite. He smiled as his acidic existence burned him from the inside out. “Mr. E took my mother from a US-Mexican border ghetto when she was sixteen. He broke her, impregnated her, and returned her where he'd found her.” She'd been his first, after all. His guinea pig. And a pregnant slave, so far beyond mentally ruined, had no value on the market. So he'd thrown her away like a used condom.

She stepped toward the kitchen table and sat two chairs away. “And you went with her?”

“Yeah.” The unwanted spawn. He rolled the toothpick with his tongue and relaxed against the chair back as every organ inside him twisted and turned. He'd only ever shared this with Liv, and he'd been weak from her bullet when the truth spilled out with his blood.

Her slim eyebrows pulled in, her face pinched in thought. “What did her family do when she returned? Wasn't there retaliation? An investigation?”

He laughed and shook his head. “My mother was a run away, and we lived in a
colonia
. The dumping grounds for America's uneducated, discarded waste. No drinking water, no working sewers, no
law
, and certainly no care for someone else's problems.” A wave of bitterness tightened his muscles. It was no wonder he took pleasure in human suffering.

She gripped the knuckles of one hand. He waited for the four cracking pops, a mechanism he'd noticed she turned to when she was upset. But they never came. She flattened her palms over her thighs, staring at them, and spoke quietly. “You were cursed at birth to be fucked-up. Just like me.” A ragged inhale. “Honestly, I'm surprised you're so...” She closed her eyes.

He leaned toward her, his heart knocking at his ribs with anticipation to hear the rest of that thought. “I'm so...what?”

Her eyes cut to his, and she shrugged. “You're smart.”

The compliment curled through him, loosening his shoulders and thickening his tongue. He'd never considered himself smart. He researched anything and everything that interested him, but he certainly wasn't educated in the traditional sense. “Mr. E taught me what I needed to know.” How to read expressions, lure the unsuspecting, calculate human reaction, and how to break the strongest will. “But I couldn't tell you what the square root of sixteen is.”

She moved her mouth as if tasting her precious number. Then her eyes glimmered. “Liar.”

True, but that was the extent of his math skills. Feeling playful, he smirked. “You know what the square root of
us
is?”

She cocked her head and wrinkled her nose. Then her lips curved, dimpling her cheeks. “Fucked-up.” The strength of her brilliant smile hit him smack in the chest with a shimmering burst of warmth and connection.

He was so fucking tempted to grab his chest and trap the feeling there, that strange exuberant joy. Whatever his expression held made her lips soften. The seam of her mouth slowly separated, the rosy flesh clinging together then letting go. Something was inching its way into the air, energizing the space between them, and she was two chairs too far away.

Carefully, he slid back from the table. Her shoulders tightened, and her chest expanded on an inhale. He stood and covered the distance between them with lazy deliberate steps, marking her subtle breaths. When he reached her, he lowered to his knees.

Her gaze dipped to his mouth, and her tongue darted out to tap her upper lip. “What's with the toothpicks?”

The question stiffened his back. He'd acquired the habit as a means to intimidate. Nothing conveyed
scary motherfucker
like removing something from his mouth, something he would've appeared to be concentrating on, to focus all of his attention on a frightened little slave.

No way would he remind her what he was and ruin the moment. “It used to be a tree trunk. I'm so badass I chewed it down to a toothpick.”

She shook her head, gifting him with another sweeping smile.

His dick swelled. He flexed his thighs but couldn't shake the grip of his arousal. It surged blood down the length of his cock and lowered his voice to a gruff rumble. “Admit it. Ain't nothing sexier than me on your ass, gnawing a toothpick.”

She reached up and flicked the protruding end, making it quiver like an arrow. Then she exploded with laughter. “Yeah, you're soooo hot when you have wood in your mouth.”

Aw God, the husky rhythm of her laugh could light a fire in a cold dead heart. “I'd rather have
you
in my mouth. Specifically, your perfect, tight cunt.”

A flush crept across her cheeks, but her touch lingered, brushing against the toothpick and slipping to the corner of his lips. Her fingernails scraped the stubble on his cheek, and her eyes followed the movement, lashes heavy and dark against her glowing skin.

This tenderness...it was like nothing he'd ever experienced. It made his heart race and his fingers shake. It both alarmed and invigorated him. He didn't want it to end.

He held still, aching for her kiss. Not to take her lips but to give her his, just to experience a moment of surrender, to be at her mercy. Throughout the toxic span of his sexual history, he'd only had one relationship, and Liv had fought him through every damned interaction. He'd never allowed another to initiate a kiss, not even when he was used as a boy or later as a whore. What would it feel like to receive genuine affection?

Her face neared, perhaps an unconscious movement, and her exhales caressed his chin. He knew what this was. Stockholm Syndrome was a foregone conclusion, a symptom of being captured. But that didn't stop him from parting his mouth, hoping for something that couldn't be explained away by a criminal psychologist. The toothpick dangled between his teeth, seconds from falling. She plucked it away and replaced it with her lips.

Every cell in his body zeroed in on the soft glide of her mouth, the gentle suckle of his lower lip, and the taste of spices and honey swirling over his tongue. His entire fucking world flipped inside out, everything he knew about intimacy crumbling away to be replaced by something softer, farther-reaching, and intensely terrifying.

He tried not to fall, told himself it was dangerous, but her kiss grew in confidence, demanding more, stretching so fucking deep she was swallowing him whole. If she reached his soul, he would've given it to her. If the cabin burned down around him, he wouldn't have noticed. He was a goner.

Her jaw stretched wider, and he opened his, letting her explore his mouth with licks and nibbles. Her little bites stroked a feverish heat over his skin, and his brain melted into useless mush. Soon, he couldn't feel his body at all, didn't know where he was, as every sensation concentrated on the warmth of her lips, the dance of her tongue, the beat of her pulse beneath his palm.

Ah, there were his hands, wrapped around her neck, his fingers a restraint made of flesh and bone. He savored the acceleration of blood pumping through her carotid, the delicate sinews yielding to his will, his grip immovable yet soft and cherishing.

His experiment in surrender over, he moved on autopilot, reclining back and taking her with him. As he wrapped her legs around his waist, she tried to break the kiss, but he was in charge now. His mouth was insistent, his tongue holding hers down. His hands found her ass beneath the towel, and his fingers curled into hard, hot muscle.

No doubt she would fight him. Her muscles would go rigid, her jaw would stiffen, and—

Whoa. Her body liquefied against his chest, her arms folding around his shoulders. Her tongue followed his, and a quiet moan vibrated in her throat.

Fuck him, but her submissiveness was her most powerful compulsion, one that would haunt him and possess him until he owned her body, soul, and tangled mind. He ground his hips against the bared apex of her thighs, dragging her closer with his hands on her hips.

They kissed for a delirious eternity, their breaths fusing in a caress of wet licks over heated flesh. He wanted more, his cock wanted in her, and his groan vocalized his need. He flexed his ass and rocked his erection against his zipper, against her cunt, his jeans too damned itchy and tight.

She wriggled in his lap and sucked on his tongue, seemingly as lost as he was. Until she tensed, silencing their smacking sounds.

No telling where her mind just went. His thoughts floated somewhere between
Fuck her now
and
Don't fuck her up
. He let her pull back and grimaced as she shifted on his aching, swollen cock.

Her lips, glistening and swollen, taunted him as she spoke. “What are your plans for Liv and Joshua?”

A sour taste hit the back of his throat. He stalked them because he was sick. Obsessed. Lonely. But more than that, because they had access to a life he wanted.
Sweet, round face. Brown curls. Precious. Innocent. His only living blood
.

He couldn't admit to Amber how much a relationship with his daughter meant to him, how Livana was the only pure thing that had come from his miserable life. Maybe Amber wouldn't say anything out loud, but he didn't want to see the doubt in her eyes, the glaring rebuttal.
You're just like Mr. E. You're not good enough to be a father.

A fission of pain ripped open behind his eyes. “I wasn't going to take them. Or hurt them.” He hated the desperate edge in his voice, the frantic need for her to believe him. He gripped her neck. “I told you I'm out of the slave business.”

“Then what am I?”

What
was
she? Broken like him but better, brighter, an unexpected discovery, like the gems in her shattered crowns. “The greater half of fucked-up squared.”

She sighed. “I think your math needs some work.” She glanced down at the flat expanse of her tummy where it lay bare beneath the separation of the towel.

The cleft of her pussy pressed so seductively against the ridge of his strained jeans. She ran a hand down her torso, and her shoulders bunched. A frown gripped her face, the only warning he had, before she shoved off his lap and stumbled back.

What the fuck just happened? “What's wrong with you?”

Her face twisted, and she hugged herself. “My stomach hurts.”

He studied her tightening posture, bent spine, and defensive tuck of her arms. “Maybe you need to take a shit.”

She cringed. “You did
not
just say that.”

He'd bet his right testicle she'd never so much as farted in front of her ex, let alone discussed her bowel movements with him. He shrugged. “A good dump always makes me feel better.”

“You seriously don't have any boundaries.”

Boundaries were for the scared and weak. “At least I'm not constipated. Want a laxative?”

“I'm not—” She stomped a bare foot on the floor four times and squeezed her arms around her abdomen. “You're right. I need to go to the restroom.”

Because he didn't have an iota of desire to watch her shit, he stood outside the closed bathroom door and gave her some privacy—the
only
privacy he would ever allow her. Hands in his pockets, mind at peace, he marveled at how much warmer the cabin felt with her presence. Someday, she might consider it her home, her safe place, with him. But it would take time to trust her not to hurt herself, to not harm him.

As he waited, that thought began to niggle. Nothing in the bathroom could be used as a weapon, and the door didn't have a lock, but something didn't feel right. She hadn't just asked to use the bathroom. She'd scowled at her body and triggered some thought that had her hugging her belly.

He grabbed the knob and hit the door open with his hip.

She was bent over the toilet, hacking quietly, too softly, as if she'd invented the art of graceful barfing. Even then, he might've blamed his cooking if she hadn't lowered her eyes to the floor and pawed at her hair with anxious hands. If she were truly sick, she would've ignored him, too focused on the pain.

She solidified his suspicion when she opened her mouth. “You trying to poison me?”

Her tone was too inwardly focused, too ashamed. If she thought he'd put something in the food, she would've gone at him with fire in her eyes.

His hands clenched and unclenched. He should've known. She was too fucking thin. “You're a puker.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said to the floor, “I never asked you to take me.” She looked up and shouted, “Or my fucked-up problems!”

Fuck that. She was
his
to care for, to revere and keep safe. He didn't care what her
problems
were. He wouldn't allow her to treat her body this way. “Where is the girl who had enough pride in herself to stand on a stage and invite judgment? I
demand
more from you.”

“Let me give you a quick lesson on vanity.” She seethed through her teeth. “It's sensitive and shallow. If you overfeed it, you'll make it puke.”

That mouth would get her nowhere. If she was going to behave like a brat, he'd treat her like one. He released a frustrated breath, calming himself, and removed her toothbrush from the drawer. “Brush your teeth.”

She gave him a nasty little glare then did as she was told. She must've been counting in her head, because she muttered “Four” around the foam of toothpaste each time she moved the bristles to a new tooth.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. She was fucking exhausting, and he hadn't even begun the discipline that was coming for her unacceptable behavior.

When she finished rinsing, he yanked the towel from her body. Before she could protest, he threw her over his shoulder and hauled her out of the bathroom with a firm grip on her ass and thigh. She kicked and punched as he carried her through the sitting room. Her tiny fists hammered his back, propelling him through the kitchen and into the mudroom.