Enslave Me Sweetly (Alien Huntress #2)(19)
Author: Gena Showalter

His arms felt like steel bands as they wrapped around me. His palms splayed out over my back and dipped lower…and lower…cupping my butt and pressing me into his erection. I spread my legs for better contact. Even through his clothing I could feel the long length of him, the thickness.

I’d never craved a man like I craved him.You don’t like him, remember?

So what,my body responded. I’d have him and get him out of my system. Out of my mind.

The fragrance of honey and flowers seeped from me, surrounding us as surely as the trees, billowing sweetly in the wind. I didn’t panic at the telltale sign this time. I welcomed it. The intoxicating scent blended with the pine soap scent of Lucius, creating an intoxicating aphrodisiac.

With his hands still cupping me, he lifted me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he backed me up against a thick tree trunk. The bark bit past my shirt, but I didn’t care.

“You’ve been driving me crazy, cookie.” His voice whispered huskily along the column of my neck, making the nickname sound like an endearment.

I didn’t comment. I was incapable of speech. All I could think about was stripping him naked and impaling myself on him. Riding him hard and fast. And often.

“It’s that mouth of yours,” he continued. He nipped at my jaw, ran his teeth along my earlobe. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I hate it. Ishould hate it.”

As I panted, I forced myself to find my voice. “Do you like my mouth better when it tells you to kiss me again?” I said rawly. “When it tells you to take off your clothes because I want to see you naked?”

He groaned.

My ni**les pebbled, and I rubbed them against his chest, wishing we were already naked, wishing he was already inside me. It wasn’t him I needed, I assured myself. Just sex. Only sex.

Instead of stripping me, he whipped away from me. My legs dropped to the ground. “Damn it,” he growled, tangling a hand in his hair. “This isn’t the time or place.”

Several seconds passed before I found my equilibrium. When I did, his rejection nearly gouged me. More than his rejection, however, I resented his ability to stop what he’d started when I would have eagerly gone the rest of the way. Even though he was right. We both had jobs to do, and getting sexually involved right now was foolish.

My eyes narrowed as fury rained through my blood, fury with myself for allowing him to distract me. “Touch me again, and Michael will have one less employee. Do you understand?”

Lucius remained silent for a long while, watching me, studying my face. Obviously, he didn’t like my threat. Very deliberately, he reached out and palmed one of my br**sts, tracing his fingertips around the nipple.

I didn’t stop him, but I wouldn’t back down or show weakness.

“Why?” he said, his eyes slitting to match mine. “You fear you’ll die from pleasure?”

“No. You’ll die. And not from pleasure. See, I’ll take this knife,” I patted the blade strapped next to his pride and joy, “and play a little pocket pool.”

He disengaged from me completely and frowned. The lines around his mouth went taut, and a fire kindled in his usually arctic eyes. “That’s the second threat you’ve made against my dick.”

“Threat?” I laughed, the sound hollow. “Oh, no, Sparkie. It’s a promise. And will be a pleasure.”

“Just so long as you’ll play with it, I guess I don’t care what you do. But you’ll have to be patient and wait until after the mission.”

My hand twitched with the urge to blacken his eye. Maybe break his nose. “I usually don’t have a temper,” I said, “but you push me past every boundary.”

“Two weeks,” he said gutturally, as if I’d never spoken. “I want you back here in two weeks.”

“You said three earlier.”

“Two weeks,” he repeated. “Or I’ll hunt you down, and we’ll finish this.”

Threat or promise?

God help me, but I foolishly hoped the latter.

Chapter 7

Sharp, agonizing pain consumed me.

My body tensed against the assault it was even now enduring. Oh, God. I’d survived the extraction of copper bullets. I’d survived grenade blasts and C4 explosions. But this…

The pain was too sharp, too acute, spreading from one section of my body to another.

Fists clenched, eyes squeezed shut, I screamed, emitting a raspy sound more animal than human. My throat had already endured several similar screams in the past half-hour and now felt raw, aching.

If only my knives were nearby. My guns. Anything! But I was unarmed. I lay on a flat, white table, gripping the edges. I was vulnerable, exposed.

“I’m ready to do the other leg,” the woman responsible for my torment said. The diabolical, evil devil incarnate herself: the esthetician.

“No,” I gritted out. “Like hell you are.” Years ago, I’d had this done every month. I’d worn nothing but designer clothes, had always looked expensive and sophisticated. What a lifetime ago that seemed. “Getting one leg waxed was bad enough. You’re not touching my other leg.”

“Big baby,” she mumbled, gathering her supplies. Long blond hair cascaded down her shoulders, framing a delicate, elfin face. She was a wisp of a woman, just under five feet, with fragile bones and a tiny frame. Her angel face hid the beast inside.

I could snap her neck like a twig—and laugh joyously while doing so. Over the years I’d killed more people than I could count. Big baby? Me? I don’t think so.

“Better be careful what you say to me, sweetheart,” I warned. Before she could respond, however, I added darkly, “Just do it. Finish. And hurry.”

My tormentor’s rose-petal mouth twitched. If the bad guys learned about waxing, they’d be able to take torture to a whole new level.

“I expected more from you,” she said with a chuckle, applying warm, oozing, sticky wax to my right leg.

In the wake of laser treatments and follicle-killing creams, waxing had become obsolete for humans long ago. Unfortunately, such treatments permanently damaged Raka skin cells, forcing me to revert to these archaic practices.

As my tormentor jerked a strip of tape from my leg, quickly followed by another, and another, I pounded my fist against the table. I forced my thoughts elsewhere. Michael had already purchased and furnished an apartment for me in New Dallas, though I had yet to see it. I’d wondered, though—more often than I should have—if Lucius had sneaked inside and found the best escape routes and secured any weakened point of entry.