Page 16 of Capture
I struck his trigger point, so it might be safer if I changed the subject. “You could use me as a spy down on the floor to find out who let the rats in, even though I’m pretty sure Betty had something to do with it.” The words fell from my lips hastily and with little effort. As if a spell had come over me, forcing me to say whatever was on my mind, regardless of the consequence.
“I don’t know if I could trust you,” he asserted. “Once we let you out of here, the first thing you’d do is go running back to the blond cop from Larsson.”
“What have you got to lose, though? Send me down there as your mole, Mikael,” I tested him again, and he shot me a dark scowl.
“You refer to me as Mr. Kaiser,” he corrected me in a sinister tone. “We’re not friends or family, so we’re not on a first-name basis, Annika. And we have everything to lose. There’s no way in hell I’m going back to prison.”
“If you’re innocent, then you have nothing to worry about,” I argued.
The rage was all over his face, yet he kept his cool, a man in control, no matter how many buttons I pushed. “Iwasinn-o-cent,” he seethed, clenching his jaw.
“Oh yeah, but you’re still not the most innocent type of person, are you, I mean…” I trailed off as his frightening frame was now standing right over me. In two strides, he was here before me, thunder radiating from every pore.
He leaned down, so our faces were only an inch apart as his warm breath tickled my nose, and I saw the pattern of his iris. “Annika,” his voice was low and gritty, provoking a shiver to run across my forearms.
Without touching me, he caged me under his powerful enchantment, frozen to the spot, muscles stiffened, jaw locked, breath hitched. I couldn’t move, even if I tried.
His hand came out of nowhere and claimed my mouth, fingers and thumb pressing into my cheeks, while his palm seemed to burn my lips. I swallowed nervously, and it occurred to me that maybe I did want to live. Only moments ago, I didn’t care if he pulled a gun and shot me, but at this moment, every part of my body screamed at me to survive whatever he was about to do.
“I wasinnocent,” his lips barely moved as he spoke, as his dark eyes drilled into my skull.
I swallowed and wrapped my hand around his wrist, touching his skin for the first time and finding him warm, not the damp, cold aura he normally exuded—the Smoldering Fall.
“O-kay,” I breathed, barely able to move my mouth due to his grip on my face.
He lifted my face upwards, forcing my gaze to meet his as my nerves coiled about in my stomach. The heat of anger and desire flashed behind those eyes as his intense stare traveled down to my lips, and his demeanor changed.
He narrowed the small space between us and pressed his lips against mine as my hand clung tighter to his wrist, holding on for life. He loosened his grasp on my face, lowering his hand as his other hand found the back of my neck, pushing me toward him as he possessed my mouth, slipping his tongue inside as I gasped for breath. The entire room spun about me as I tried to digest what was going on here. I thought he hated me. A man didn’t kiss a woman like that if he hated her, unless I was mistaken. Maybe he rose above his abhorrence of me to find out what I tasted like.
Confusion spun in dizzying circles within me as my body trembled in both terror and horniness. My panties quickly became sodden as my clit throbbed in a desperate need for those fingers to touch me down there.
His tongue continued to torture my mouth in a dangerous dance with my tongue, forcing further into my mouth as if he wanted to fuck my throat. My body melted under a heady mix of his cologne, intense body heat, and his blistering touch.
The man who had a seething hatred toward me was kissing me like I was special, wanted, and desired. It was challenging to keep my head above water as thoughts darted about in my mind, questioning and analyzing what was happening to me.
He broke the kiss, and I gasped, desperate to get air into my lungs. As he pulled away, my instant reaction was to increase mygrip on his forearms to keep him here. My heart raced as sighs escaped my lips, hungry for more, but he didn’t seem to want to give me more.
That incredible body walked back to this spot against the wall in those black pants as he licked his lips where my mouth had been only a moment ago.
Silence fell.
A strange anger came over him as he seemed to be annoyed about what he had just done.
I cleared my throat, and he glanced up at me under those dark eyelashes. “I don’t have germs, I swear,” I told him, and he said nothing. “Um, that was unexpected.”
“It was a mistake,” he replied sternly. “A stupid mistake.”
“We all make mistakes,” I tried to console him while my insides were doing somersaults, so I had to hug my stomach.
“Do you still hate me? I mean…that kiss wasn’t-”
“I’ll leave you alone,” he interrupted and turned his back to open the door. Obviously, he didn’t want to discuss the kiss and preferred to pretend that it hadn’t happened. That’s how much he was disgusted by me.
“Thanks for the chips and spring water,” I called after him as he shut the door on me, and silence and loneliness followed. The silence will remain until the workers with their clients arrive to pleasure them in the rooms, and my ears would be assaulted by their sexual noises.
I leaned over to the side table and grabbed the fancy bottle of spring water, twisting the lid as the bubbles rose to the top of the water. My mouth had become dry from that kiss and needed to be hydrated and relaxed.
A dark figure loomed over me that I hadn’t noticed was in the room. He’d returned silently, or when I was distracted by the bubbling spring water, with nothing but desire and repulsion on his handsome, chiseled face.
