The scent I was so eager to wash off me assaults me all over again—body wash and animal and sweat and hay and man and sun. That’s not the reason I’m holding my breath when he backs me into the wall I was just hiding against, though.
“Watching out for the Big Bad Wolf, little pet?” He presses his sweaty, glistening chest against my breasts and almost immediately I can feel his thickening erection through his work pants.
I close my eyes against the hundred sensations his touch immediately evokes. The mint of his breath that’s combining with his scent and the pressure of his body—all of it drives my senses wild for some stupid reason.
And he can tell. Goddamn him, he knows.
“If I reach between those pretty little thighs, I’d find you drenched for me, wouldn’t I?” he rasps, rubbing his stubbled chin over my trembling lips.
And then, him being him, he drops his hand beneath the skirt of my peach, floral print dress. He easily pushes past my tiny excuse for panties and plunges his thick finger inside me.
He hisses low when he feels exactly how wet for him I am, and I drop my head back to the wall in shame.
“Come join me in the shower,” he demands, pulling his finger out and withdrawing from me. I blink my eyes open at him and set my jaw.
The nerve of this bastard. “Unlock the kitchen.”
He grins at me and it’s a dazzling sight. I’m so shocked by it, I forget to breathe for a moment. It’s then that I realize that even though it’s been just four days, I’m already becoming accustomed to the ruined upper half of his face. After getting over the shock of it, it’s not actually that gruesome. The skin is just kind of flat and smooth. Yes, his eye droops and while the top half of his ear is missing, his hair mostly covers it.
After realizing how good looking he actually is earlier and with the brilliant smile he just flashed me, my brain almost automatically maps out the corresponding structures on the other side of his face underneath the burned part. Though, is it a burn? Is that what happened? What about those streaky bits that extend down his cheek where his stubbly beard won’t grow. Maybe some kind of explosion or shrapnel?
“I’ll unlock the kitchen later for dinner when you show me you can be a good pet who submits and takes food from my hand. In the meantime, I suggest you come with me now to take a shower and be fucked like you’ve never been fucked before.”
Oh right. It doesn’t matter what he looks like. He’s still an asshole.
My mouth, probably perpetually half-open in a state of shock around this man, drops open even wider.
Eventually, I find my voice again. “You can’t just starve me.”
He shrugs and as he pulls back, his face goes neutral like he’s indifferent on the subject one way or the other.
Outrage wins again. “You brought me here to pop out a baby for you. I didn’t agree to the rest of this bullshit. We’ve already had sex. I could be pregnant right now.” God, even the thought makes me want to run screaming out the door, but dammit, I have a point to make here. “And what—you’re going to starve the mother of your child? You’re really willing to risk harming—”
In a millisecond, he’s got me pinned up against the wall again, his body flush against mine. “Don’t you ever dare accuse me of risking the health of the baby.” His voice is dangerous.
“I’m doing all of this for the baby. You will be walking around with my son or daughter in your belly for nine months but you’re unruly, undisciplined, and untrained. I won’t stand for it. A few days without food won’t hurt you as long as you have liquids and vitamins. There’s something far more important at stake. The woman bearing my child will obey and submit to me in all things.”
“Obey you!?” My head is literally going to explode.
“Yes.” He nods decisively. “Obey.”
“Let me tell you something, buddy,” I pound his rock-hard chest with my pointer finger. “I am a woman in the twenty-first century. We don’t have to meekly submit and obey anymore.”
“Oh really? Haven’t you figured out by now how pleasurable obedience can be?” His good eyebrow arches imperiously and the next thing I know, I’m on my back on the library floor carpet. My lace panties are yanked to my ankles and Xavier’s head is buried between my legs.
I want to stomp my foot and scream, “no fair!” But at the same time, I don’t dare do anything that might make him stop.
Because in a few days, he’s apparently turned me into a sex maniac.
It’s just that, when his mouth latches onto the bud at the top of my sex, I can’t even— It feels so…