Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(38)
Author: Kristen Ashley

“Bed play?” His voice was amused.

She sat up again and twisted around and Colin pulled away to avoid her crashing into him, settling on his back.

“Colin! This is serious!” she exclaimed, looking down at him.

“I’m taking it seriously. It’s my two months.”

“I’ll make it up to you in May,” she offered.

“If you want this, I’ll take all of May and three weeks in June.”

Sibyl gasped.

“That’s another,” she stopped to calculate it, “entire month!” she finished.

“Yes it is. And I’ll want to see you sometime during those two weeks in April.”

“That’s not possible and that’s not fair,” she returned sharply and a little desperately.

“That’s the only offer on the table,” Colin retorted firmly.

She realised she’d started shaking and this wasn’t a good kind of shaking or the scared or melancholy king, it was the angry kind.

He was heartless.

She didn’t think she could to it for another month. Not that “it” was that bad. In fact “it” was mind-bogglingly, earth-shatteringly good. One could even say it was otherworldly good.

And it was the best she’d ever had.

By far.

Although, she hadn’t had that much but this was something else. It made her toes curl just thinking about it.

How she could not really like him (at all) and still find him so amazingly attractive was beyond her. Though, she had to admit, sex with Colin was simply unbelievable.

But he’d still paid for it, which still made her his whore, which made her hate herself, so much, she could hardly bear it.

She plopped back on the pillows and closed her eyes again.

She had no choice and she hated that even more than she hated herself at that moment (which was saying something).

“Fine,” she snapped the word out so curtly it sounded like half a syllable.

“Nice to see you give in gracefully.”

She opened her eyes to see him looming over her.

His eyes were no longer warm but instead they were hard and glittering.

Even obviously angry, he was so damned handsome, she felt her breath catch even as she felt her temper unravel.

She had been wrong; Colin in her bedroom wasn’t laughable. It was seductive. He was so out of place he looked like a conquering avenger, enjoying the spoils of victory.

Which he was, in a way. She was spoils.

“Perhaps I should remind you what you’re giving in to.” This was said in a smooth, even tone that she was realising was his very-angry-but-controlling-it-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth voice.

His hand was under the covers, the warmth of it sliding across her ribs, down her belly making her muscles contract lusciously along its path.

In the face of his tone, she felt like throwing caution to the wind, one could say she’d had enough, “Trust me, I remember.”

“It certainly doesn’t seem like it to me.”

She turned toward him quickly, dislodging his hand, wanting him to understand (if he had it in him) at the same time as she completely lost her rather formidable temper.

“What do you want me to say? That it was good? Yes, it was good!”

He didn’t seem to like being interrupted in his task, his strong hands found her h*ps and he fell to his back, taking her with him.

She wasn’t finished, however, and she pressed her hands against his chest to lift herself which he allowed.

Slightly.

When he stopped allowing it by wrapping his arms around her, one tight at her waist, one forearm pressing up her spine, Sibyl kept talking. “Bottom line, you paid for me and that doesn’t feel good but I need the money. So I have no choice, you’re right, a deal’s a deal. But I love my parents and I’m not going to tell them I have to drop everything to go be some man’s whore. And you’ve given me no other options. So, if I’m a little pouty in the face of all of that, you’ll just have to get over it!”

His eyes, already hard, turned to stone.

“I have another rule,” was his response to this diatribe and, in a belated act of self-preservation, she pressed her hands against his chest to pull further away but his arm at her waist tightened and his hand slid up her spine until his fingers wrapped around the back of her neck and forced her to descend until she was but an inch away from his face. “If you call yourself my whore again, it becomes four months.”

Caution was not in the wind; caution was twirling around in a tornado.

“I’m your whore,” she repeated stubbornly.

“Do it again and it’s five months.”

“I’m… your… whore,” Sibyl gritted out between clenched teeth and Colin whipped her around to her back, him on top, and pried her legs apart with his knee. When he did, she goaded, “That’s it, Colin, prove me right.”

His h*ps settled between her legs but instead of doing what he’d started, he snarled, “Christ, you’re the most annoying woman I’ve ever met.”

“And you are the most heartless man I’ve ever met,” she returned.

They stared at each other and, even though they’d barely moved, both were breathing heavily.

Sibyl had the bizarre desire to scratch his eyes out and throw her arms around him and say she was sorry, both at the same time.

“You’re mine for five months,” he bit out, eyes blazing, face hard.

Gone was the desire to say she was sorry. Instead, she just glared.

“Is that understood?” he asked.

She continued to glare.

What would he do if she said no?

She really didn’t want to find out. Therefore, she nodded but she did it while still glaring.

Colin wasn’t finished. “And Sibyl, I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. Is that clear?”

She bit her bottom lip so hard, she tasted blood.

She wanted to say it, just because he hated it. Just because she needed to remind herself that it was true. Just because it made her feel she had a modicum of power, even though it was simply to goad him, even though she lost more every time the words left her mouth.

She counted to ten and struggled for control.

Then she nodded.

She was already in enough trouble as it was, all of her own doing and she hated that too.

“I’ll be back tonight at the same time,” he declared and then he was gone, shoving her off his body angrily, he left the bed and stalked, naked, out of the room.

The moment she lost sight of him, Mallory loped in and woofed.