Page 37 of Beautiful Vengeance
“Sloan.”
Her name.Not sunshine.She yanked on his hold, but she might as well have tried to fight a tidal wave.“Let go.”
“Are you pissed I was gone so long, or that I didn’t come crawl into your bed like a whipped dog the second I hit the town limits?”Nothing on his face but a faint smirk.Nothing.Not a hint of the feeling she’d gotten from him before.
She hated how controlled he was, hated even more howoutof control he made her feel.I know what to do to crack that mask.She squared her shoulders and met his dark eyes.“I kept myself plentyoccupiedwhile you were gone.”She enjoyed throwing that word back into his face.
“Is that so?”He pulled her toward him, inch by inch, closing the distance between them.“Because I think you went out of your fucking mind without my cock to keep you happy.”
“Oh please.”She rolled her eyes even as her body sparked at his words.“I lived my entire life without you and your dick.A week of sex isn’t enough to ruin me for anyone else, no matter how highly you think of yourself.”
His brows slanted down, and he looked downright murderous for the first time since they’d first met.“You know damn well that I’ve ruined you for any other man.”He stepped into the house, towing her behind him, ignoring her gasp of outrage.“I think you stroked yourself to the memory of me a couple times a day the entire time I was gone.In fact, I don’t think—I know.”
She wanted to spit and claw and sayanythingto bring him down a notch, but fury stole her wits.“You have a high opinion of yourself.”
“Nah, I know the truth.”He sat down on his couch, yanking her forward to sprawl on his chest.His hands hit her waist the same time his lips brushed her ear.“And, sunshine, what you were doing before wasn’t fucking living and you know it.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jude had waited all goddamn day for Sloan to finish her shift at the diner—and even then he’d only gone home after checking to make sure she was there and okay.It had driven him out of his fucking mind not to walk in there and toss her over his shoulder, marking her as his for all to see.
His.
She wasn’t.Not really.She couldn’t be.
He’d worked too hard to extract any and all weaknesses that potential enemies could use against him.After his mother passed, he had nothing to lose—nothing that could be taken to hurt him.He’d liked his life that way.There was no room for anything beyond his mission, which he’d possibly just sidelined by allowing Dmitri Romanov to leave his place alive.
The fact that there was a MacNamara alive—that he was hunting Sheridans—was knowledge without price in the game they all played.Romanov might be currently an ally, but that didn’t mean he’d stay that way.
And Jude just didn’t give a fuck right now.
Sloan was here, she was safe, and she was pissed enough at him for leaving in the first place that she was practically spitting fire.He skimmed his hands up her sides.“I like that you missed me.”
“Missed you?You must be out of your mind.”But she grabbed his hair, tilting his head back and rolling her hips as if just realizing he was as hard as a rock.“Stop talking.You’re just going to say something unforgivable and then I’ll have to leave on principle.”
“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”He grinned when she jerked on his hair.“I like you when you’ve missed me.”
“Stop.Saying.That.”She kissed him, her fury evident in every stroke of her tongue, in the way she drew back to bite his bottom lip hard enough to hurt.He enjoyed the hell out of it.
Jude growled when she did it again, then flipped them, using his body to hold her in place.“If you’re going to be mean, you’re going to get tied down.”
Her dark eyes flashed a challenge.“You wouldn’t dare.”
“You should know better.I think you’ll find that there isn’t a damn thing I wouldn’t dare to do when it comes to you.”He pinned her wrists with one hand and undid his belt with the other, his gaze never leaving her face.He watched her closely for something like fear or even that anxious little lip-biting thing she did when they first met.There was nothing but challenge written across her face.Good.
He whipped his belt through the loops and wound it around her wrists.Then he jerked the cushion off the couch and hooked the buckle to the bar of the fold-out bed inside it.The position left her head a little lower than the rest of her body, but that was just fine with him.
Sloan tugged on the belt, her eyes narrowing when she realized she couldn’t get free.“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”He sat back, appreciating the view.She’d worn a floral sundress today with a cardigan that would look at home on a kindergarten teacher.Innocent.Sweet.
Sexy as fuck.
“It’s been too long since I tasted you.”He pushed her dress up around her hips, revealing white panties.He didn’t think she had any other color, and on anyone else that would be like they were trying too hard.It was just the way Sloan was.He spread her thighs, growling.“I like you in white, sunshine.I can see how soaked your panties are, how much you want me.”
“Involuntary reaction.”
She was wicked pissed.It might not stop her from wanting him, but…Shit.He couldn’t take her like this, not with knowing what he knew and not with the current threat hanging over their heads—a threat he was solely responsible for.If he fucked her without talking to her about it, that would be as good as lying to her.
