As Amber paled and scooted her ass away inch by inch, Van questioned the brilliance of telling her who he was. He put his elbows on the kitchen table and rubbed his aching head. Despite how familiar he'd become with her strained fearful look, she now stared at him through new eyes. He already told her he'd trafficked slaves. Apparently, connecting him to the infamous Eli Eary had sent her over the edge. Literally.
She'd scooted so far, she fell over the side of the chair and crashed to the floor, giving him a glorious view of all her taut little lines and curves beneath the splayed towel. He bit his lip, halting his grin. Her clumsiness in these frazzled moments was such a contrast to the image of her decorously posed on a stage.
With a huff, she jumped to her feet and retied the knot at her chest. “What do you mean, you don't exist?”
Here we go. He'd opened the door. Might as well give her a tour of the shit hole. He dug a toothpick from his pocket and slid it between his teeth. “Eli Eary—we called him Mr. E—never mentioned me to anyone in his lawful life.”
“Why not? You're his son.”
“The bastard son of his first slave. Not something you brag about over donuts at the police station.” He gnawed on the toothpick. “And in his criminal life, I only existed to the slave buyers—who don't talk because they're dead. And the slaves—who don't talk because they killed the buyers.”
She touched her throat, her voice disbelieving. “That's how the others got away?”
Should he worry about her connecting Liv's escape with hope for her own way out? Nah. She couldn't even look at the windows, let alone step outside. And by the time she overcame the agoraphobia, she would be too attached to him to leave. “Yep.” Liv had been a very naughty girl, but her ability to outsmart him and Mr. E lifted his chest with pride. “I didn't know Liv had freed the others until I started watching her.”
“Stalking her.” She flashed him a reproving glower. For long moments, she didn't move, but she seemed to be calming herself. It was a fascinating thing to watch. The heave of her torso slowed, and her hands loosened around the knot of the towel. She had no idea how strong she was. “You said you were twenty-five when he brought you into the...business. Does that mean you and your mom had escaped before that?”
Not quite. He smiled as his acidic existence burned him from the inside out. “Mr. E took my mother from a US-Mexican border ghetto when she was sixteen. He broke her, impregnated her, and returned her where he'd found her.” She'd been his first, after all. His guinea pig. And a pregnant slave, so far beyond mentally ruined, had no value on the market. So he'd thrown her away like a used condom.
She stepped toward the kitchen table and sat two chairs away. “And you went with her?”
“Yeah.” The unwanted spawn. He rolled the toothpick with his tongue and relaxed against the chair back as every organ inside him twisted and turned. He'd only ever shared this with Liv, and he'd been weak from her bullet when the truth spilled out with his blood.
Her slim eyebrows pulled in, her face pinched in thought. “What did her family do when she returned? Wasn't there retaliation? An investigation?”
He laughed and shook his head. “My mother was a run away, and we lived in a colonia. The dumping grounds for America's uneducated, discarded waste. No drinking water, no working sewers, no law, and certainly no care for someone else's problems.” A wave of bitterness tightened his muscles. It was no wonder he took pleasure in human suffering.
She gripped the knuckles of one hand. He waited for the four cracking pops, a mechanism he'd noticed she turned to when she was upset. But they never came. She flattened her palms over her thighs, staring at them, and spoke quietly. “You were cursed at birth to be fucked-up. Just like me.” A ragged inhale. “Honestly, I'm surprised you're so...” She closed her eyes.
He leaned toward her, his heart knocking at his ribs with anticipation to hear the rest of that thought. “I'm so...what?”
Her eyes cut to his, and she shrugged. “You're smart.”
The compliment curled through him, loosening his shoulders and thickening his tongue. He'd never considered himself smart. He researched anything and everything that interested him, but he certainly wasn't educated in the traditional sense. “Mr. E taught me what I needed to know.” How to read expressions, lure the unsuspecting, calculate human reaction, and how to break the strongest will. “But I couldn't tell you what the square root of sixteen is.”
She moved her mouth as if tasting her precious number. Then her eyes glimmered. “Liar.”
True, but that was the extent of his math skills. Feeling playful, he smirked. “You know what the square root of us is?”
She cocked her head and wrinkled her nose. Then her lips curved, dimpling her cheeks. “Fucked-up.” The strength of her brilliant smile hit him smack in the chest with a shimmering burst of warmth and connection.
He was so fucking tempted to grab his chest and trap the feeling there, that strange exuberant joy. Whatever his expression held made her lips soften. The seam of her mouth slowly separated, the rosy flesh clinging together then letting go. Something was inching its way into the air, energizing the space between them, and she was two chairs too far away.
Carefully, he slid back from the table. Her shoulders tightened, and her chest expanded on an inhale. He stood and covered the distance between them with lazy deliberate steps, marking her subtle breaths. When he reached her, he lowered to his knees.
Her gaze dipped to his mouth, and her tongue darted out to tap her upper lip. “What's with the toothpicks?”
The question stiffened his back. He'd acquired the habit as a means to intimidate. Nothing conveyed scary motherfucker like removing something from his mouth, something he would've appeared to be concentrating on, to focus all of his attention on a frightened little slave.
No way would he remind her what he was and ruin the moment. “It used to be a tree trunk. I'm so badass I chewed it down to a toothpick.”
She shook her head, gifting him with another sweeping smile.
His dick swelled. He flexed his thighs but couldn't shake the grip of his arousal. It surged blood down the length of his cock and lowered his voice to a gruff rumble. “Admit it. Ain't nothing sexier than me on your ass, gnawing a toothpick.”
She reached up and flicked the protruding end, making it quiver like an arrow. Then she exploded with laughter. “Yeah, you're soooo hot when you have wood in your mouth.”
Aw God, the husky rhythm of her laugh could light a fire in a cold dead heart. “I'd rather have you in my mouth. Specifically, your perfect, tight cunt.”
A flush crept across her cheeks, but her touch lingered, brushing against the toothpick and slipping to the corner of his lips. Her fingernails scraped the stubble on his cheek, and her eyes followed the moveme
nt, lashes heavy and dark against her glowing skin.
This tenderness...it was like nothing he'd ever experienced. It made his heart race and his fingers shake. It both alarmed and invigorated him. He didn't want it to end.
He held still, aching for her kiss. Not to take her lips but to give her his, just to experience a moment of surrender, to be at her mercy. Throughout the toxic span of his sexual history, he'd only had one relationship, and Liv had fought him through every damned interaction. He'd never allowed another to initiate a kiss, not even when he was used as a boy or later as a whore. What would it feel like to receive genuine affection?
Her face neared, perhaps an unconscious movement, and her exhales caressed his chin. He knew what this was. Stockholm Syndrome was a foregone conclusion, a symptom of being captured. But that didn't stop him from parting his mouth, hoping for something that couldn't be explained away by a criminal psychologist. The toothpick dangled between his teeth, seconds from falling. She plucked it away and replaced it with her lips.
Every cell in his body zeroed in on the soft glide of her mouth, the gentle suckle of his lower lip, and the taste of spices and honey swirling over his tongue. His entire fucking world flipped inside out, everything he knew about intimacy crumbling away to be replaced by something softer, farther-reaching, and intensely terrifying.
He tried not to fall, told himself it was dangerous, but her kiss grew in confidence, demanding more, stretching so fucking deep she was swallowing him whole. If she reached his soul, he would've given it to her. If the cabin burned down around him, he wouldn't have noticed. He was a goner.
Her jaw stretched wider, and he opened his, letting her explore his mouth with licks and nibbles. Her little bites stroked a feverish heat over his skin, and his brain melted into useless mush. Soon, he couldn't feel his body at all, didn't know where he was, as every sensation concentrated on the warmth of her lips, the dance of her tongue, the beat of her pulse beneath his palm.