Protests boiled in her blood. But there was no point in voicing any. She had no proof, as he’d said.
Even if she did, to whom would she submit it? To him? The mastermind of her misery?
Her shoulders slumped as the surge of aggression he’d provoked drained. “You have everything worked out, don’t you?”
“Very much so.”
She exhaled in resignation. “So you orchestrated everything, got the result you desired, while even Fate indulged you and gave you the bonus of a mark to enjoy sexually, huh? That must have made your mission of patiently milking me for all I had more palatable.”
His shrug was indifference incarnate. “More or less.” His gaze shifted to an expression that seemed to sear her marrow. “With one amendment. It wasn’t palatable. It was phenomenal.”
“I—it was?”
“Along with a dozen superlative adjectives. Being with you was the only true and absolute pleasure I ever had.”
He’d already said he’d wanted her. But the way he’d spelled it out now... His words fell on her like a punch, jogging her brain in her skull.
It had been what had most mutilated her, had left her feeling desecrated. Thinking she’d wanted him with every fiber of her being while he’d only reviled her even as he’d used her in every way. Learning that he’d wanted her had just begun to ameliorate her humiliation. But now his claim that it had been as unprecedented to him... It felt genuine. If it was, then at least their intimacies, which had been so profound to her, among all the lies and exploitation, had been real. She could at least cleanse those intensely intimate memories and have them back.
“And that’s why I want you to say it, Isabella.”
The hunger in his voice and eyes had her heart ramming against her ribs as if unable to bear their confinement.
“I want you to say you’ve craved having again what we had all those years ago. That every time you closed your eyes, I was there, in your mind, on your tongue, all over you and inside you, giving you everything only I could ever give you.”
Every word he said, soaked in hunger, seething with demand, brought a wave of wet heat surging in her core, her body readying itself for its master doing all the things she’d never stopped yearning for.
She still had to resist. Because of what he’d done to her. Past and present. Because of what he thought of her. What he was. For every reason that existed, really.
“What if I don’t say it?”
Those incredible eyes crinkled, those lips that made her every inch ache with the memory of what they could do to her twisted.
“You want me to force you to take what you’re dying to take, so you’d have it, and the moral high ground, too? No, my exquisite siren. If I take you now, it will be because you’ll tell me in no uncertain te
rms that you want me to. That you’re burning for me to. It’s that...or you can go.”
And it turned out every reason under the sun to tell him to go to hell was nothing compared to the one reason she had to give him what he wanted.
That he was right.
Giving in, she reached out, wound his tie around her hand and yanked on it with all her strength.
Which didn’t say much right now. Her tug was trembling and weak like the rest of her. She was that aroused. He wouldn’t have moved if he hadn’t wanted to.
But her action was seemingly enough of an appeasement. He let her drag him down so his face was two inches from hers.
His virility-laden, madness-inducing breath flayed her lips, filled her lungs. “Now say it.”
Voice as unsteady as her legs, she did. “I want you.”
“Say it all, Isabella.”
That cruel bastard had to extract her very soul, didn’t he? Just as he had in the past.
Knowing she’d regret it when her body stopped clamoring, if it ever did—but she’d sooner stop her next breath—she gave him the full capitulation he demanded. “I wanted you with every single breath these past eight years.”
His satisfaction was so ferocious it seared her as his hand covered the one spastically pulling on his tie, untangling it in such unhurried smoothness. Then, like the serpent he was, he slinked away from her. Heartbeats shook her as she watched him sit on the huge couch facing the pool.