Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood #11)(59)
Author: J.R. Ward

Now her blood ran with fear, and as he inhaled the scent, he hardened. Jerking her forward, he stared down at her, tracing her face.

"Be careful," he said in a low voice. "I take offense quite readily, and my temper is not easily assuaged."

Although he could think of at least one thing she could give him that would calm him.

Leaning in, he inhaled deeply. God, he loved that scent of hers.

But now was not the time to get distracted by all that. "I told Benloise to send people to my home at his own risk – and theirs. I’m surprised he didn’t inform you of those, shall we say, very clear property boundaries…."

From the corner of his eye, he caught a subtle bunching of her shoulder. She was going to go for a weapon with her right hand.

Assail put his cigar between his teeth and caught that slender wrist. Applying pressure, and stopping only when pain deepened her breath, he bowed her body back so that she was completely, utterly aware of the power he had – over himself, over her. Over everything.

And that was when the arousal happened for the woman.

It had been so long, perhaps too long, since Sola had wanted a man.

It was not that she didn’t find them desirable as a rule, or that there had been no offers for horizontal encounters from members of the opposite sex. Nothing had seemed worth the aggravation. And maybe, after that one relationship that hadn’t worked out, she had regressed back to her strict Brazilian upbringing – which would be ironic, considering what she did for a living.

This man, however, got her attention. In a big way.

The holds on her arm and her wrist were nothing polite, and more than that, there was no quarter given because she was a woman, his hands squeezing to such a degree that pain funneled into her heart, making it pound. Likewise, the angle he’d forced her back into was testing the limits of her spine’s ability to bend, and her thighs were burning.

To be turned on was…a gross dereliction of self-preservation. In fact, staring up into those black glasses, she was acutely aware that he could kill her right here. Snap her neck. Break her arms just to see her scream before suffocating her in the snow. Or maybe knock her out and throw her in the river.

Her grandmother’s heavily accented voice came into her mind: Why can you not meet a nice boy? A Catholic boy from a family we know? Marisol, you break my heart with this.

"I can only assume," that dark voice whispered with an accent and infliction she was unfamiliar with, "that the message was not passed on to you. Is that correct? Did Benloise simply fail to convey to you that information – and that is why, after I expressly indicated my intentions, you still showed up looking at my house? I think that’s what happened – mayhap a voice mail that has yet to be received. Or a text message – an e-mail. Yes, I believe that Benloise’s communication was lost, isn’t that right?"

The pressure on her was tightened even further, suggesting that he had strength to spare – which was a daunting prospect, to say the least.

"Isn’t that right," he growled.

"Yes," she bit out. "Yes, that’s right."

"So I can expect not to find you on your skis around here anymore. Isn’t that right."

He jerked her again, the pain making her eyes roll back a little. "Yes," she choked.

The man relented enough so that she could grab some breaths. Then he kept speaking, that voice strangely seductive. "Now, there is something I need before I let you go. You will tell me what you know about me – all of it."

Sola frowned, thinking that was silly. No doubt a man like this would be well aware of any information a third party could garner about him.

So it was a test.

Given that she very much wanted to see her grandmother again, Sola said, "I don’t know your name, but I can guess what you do, and also what you’ve done."

"And what’s that?"

"I think you are the one who has been shooting all those penny-ante dealers in town to secure territory and control."

"The papers and the news reports have labeled the deaths suicides."

She just continued on – there was, after all, no reason to argue. "I know that you live alone, as far as I can tell – and that your house is outfitted with some very strange window treatments. Camouflage designed to appear as the interior of the home, but…they are something else above and beyond that. I just don’t know what."

That face above her own remained utterly impassive. Calm. At peace. As if he wasn’t muscling her in place – or threatening bodily harm. The control was…erotic.

"And?" he prompted.

"That’s it."

He inhaled on the cigar in his mouth, the fat orange circle on the end glowing more brightly. "I’m only going to let you go once. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

He moved so quickly she had to swing her arms out to regain her balance on her own, her poles digging into the snow. Wait, where did he –

The man appeared right behind her, his feet planted on either side of the tracks her skis had made, a physical barricade to the path she had traveled from his house. As her left biceps and her right wrist burned from blood returning to the areas it had been squeezed out of, a warning tickled across the nape of her neck.

Get out of here, Sola, she told herself. Right now.

Unwilling to run the risk of another capture, she shot forward into the plowed road, the waxed, scaled bottoms of her skis struggling to find purchase on the packed, iced-over snow.

As she went, he followed her, walking slowly, inexorably, like a great cat who was tracking prey that he was content only to play with – for now.

Her hands shook as she used the tips of her poles to spring the bindings, and she struggled to get her skis back in the rack on her car. The whole time, he stood in the middle of the road and watched her, that cigar smoke drifting over his shoulder in the cold drafts that funneled toward the river.

Getting inside her car, she locked the doors, started the engine, and looked in the rearview mirror. In the glow from her brake lights, he appeared downright evil, a tall, black-haired man with a face as handsome as a prince’s, and as cruel as a blade.

Hitting the gas, she pulled off the shoulder and sped away, the car’s all-wheel drive system kicking in and giving her the traction she needed.

She glanced into the rearview again. He was still there –

Sola’s foot shifted onto the brake and nearly punched down.

He was gone.

Sure as if he had disappeared into thin air. One moment there in her sight…the next, invisible.

Shaking herself, she punched the gas again, and made the sign of the cross over her heavily beating heart.

With a crazy panic, she wondered, Just what the hell was he?