Back to our daily interactions, unresolved sexual desire, and ceaseless mounting tension without consummation or fulfillment?
“Or?” I asked.
“Remove the towel. Show me your gorgeous body, and we’ll have a conversation about my past and our present.”
“If I do this…” Trembling, I clutched the knot of terrycloth between my breasts. “We’re crossing a line we can’t get back.”
“It’s only one line, not all of them. I’m choosing to cross this one. Now it’s up to you.”
Why now? Why on the night I was bleeding? Maybe my period was a deterrent to sex. But I knew that wasn’t true. After watching him play with my blood, Magnus would never be turned off by a woman’s menstrual cycle.
If I did this, if we got caught, it would bring deadly consequences. My mother would send Ronan to kill him. The henchman would probably show up in broad daylight, aim a gun at Magnus’s head, and shoot him. Just like that.
It would destroy me. I couldn’t even imagine it.
Was this one small risk worth it?
Every student and faculty member from both schools would be at the dance all night.
No one would know.
Whatever this was, whatever Magnus had planned, he didn’t believe I would comply. The truth vibrated in his rigid stance. The indifference in his expression didn’t eclipse the vulnerability he tried to hide in his eyes. He braced for my rejection.
I loosened the knot and dropped the towel.
Too late, I realized what I must look like to him. I was nothing like the women taken in those photos with him ten years ago. All sultry, voluptuous, long-legged models in their thirties, forties, and fifties. He clearly preferred ladies in their social, professional, and sexual prime. Not tiny, short, boobless eighteen-year-olds who were still trying to figure out life.
The thought sank like lead in my stomach, but I refused to let it deflate me.
I would never stand naked before a man and wilt. I wouldn’t cower for him. I wouldn’t disintegrate.
I steeled my shoulders.
He stared at my body, absorbing all my pale, feminine lines without reaction. Resting a hip against the vanity, he cradled his chin on his thumb, curled his fingers against his lips, and continued to assess me as if I were a paper he needed to grade.
He was truly a sadist.
“I had particular preferences when it came to sex and women.” He lowered his arm and slowly deleted the space between us, his voice a seductive caress. “Before I became a priest, I hurt women and got off on it. Only willing women. Only older women.” His eyebrows knitted, and his hands flattened on the wall on either side of my head. “I’ve never touched anyone younger than me. I’ve never been with a virgin.”
He surrounded my senses, smothered me with his heat. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, trying to alleviate the tension that chased my heartbeats into hysteria.
“Do I need to inflict pain to get off?” He watched my throat jog through a hard swallow, and his pupils dilated. A man aroused by fear and surrender. “I crave it. But I don’t need it. Not anymore.”
“Because you became a priest?”
“No. Because I found you. You’re a paradox. You don’t fit any of my predilections. You’re young, innocent, so delicately formed. You contradict every quality that used to arouse me.” He met my eyes. “I want you without cruelty and pain.”
“The welts you put on my ass disagree.”
“Oh, Tinsley.” A wolfish smirk. “A little breath play and some red marks are nothing compared to the brutality I inflicted on women. I can’t fathom the thought of hurting you the way I hurt them. I won’t. Every instinct inside me demands I protect you.” His mouth inched closer, coating my lips with the warm taste of whiskey. “I respect you.”
“You didn’t respect those other women?” I placed my palm on his hard chest. “The women you were with, the ones who let you hurt them?”
“No. I didn’t have an ounce of respect for anyone. I never felt possessive of a woman. Never cared about what they needed or who they fucked. I was never monogamous. Never emotionally available. I was a monster. Evil. Dead inside.”
Beneath taut muscles, his heart drummed wildly against my hand, a frantic rhythm that felt too alive for a man who believed he wasn’t.
“But with you?” He spoke against my throat. Lips like warm velvet. Voice like cold steel. “I am viciously, reprehensibly possessive of you.”
CHAPTER 25
MAGNUS
Tinsley in her glittery gold gown had been a jaw-dropping sight to behold. But Tinsley now? Standing before me in nothing but milky white skin?
God help me.
“You’re more exquisite than I ever imagined.”
She strained toward my raspy whisper, lifting on toes, fingers stretching across my shoulders.
I was a bastard, making her wait for that compliment. I wasn’t one to readily offer praise, but with her, I would spill the verities of my soul.