“Why did you do that?” I rasped. “He might have chosen you anyway.”
“I don’t wait to be given what’s mine. I take it.”
“Spoken like the random sociopath who’s bringing me upstairs after I’ve clearly stated he doesn’t have a chance.” I twisted, reaching for the banister. “Put me down now, or I’ll scream.”
Cairo jerked me up and my grasp went wide. “Scream to who? You think anyone down there is going to help you?”
Real, soul-deep fear curdled my stomach. “What kind of creep-ass thing was that to say?” I hissed, praying he couldn’t hear that fear. “Let me go or that pretty face is getting fucked up.”
Cairo laughed. “I like you, new girl. You’ve got spirit. We broke that out of everyone else so long ago, I could unzip my pants in the middle of a party and girls will fight to suck my dick without even asking.”
We passed down a long corridor. No one else was up here. Nothing else either. Other than the hardwood floors beneath, the twinkling chandeliers above, and the five closed doors behind, not a picture frame or credenza broke up the trail.
“I was starting to get bored.” Cairo raised my head and kissed me full on the lips. “Now there’s you.”
I punched him dead in the face. He laughed so hard the sound rumbled in his chest and shook me. I sensed my mistake almost immediately.
Blood dripped in his mouth, tingeing his grin. Cairo was enjoying every minute of this. Frightening me, exercising his power, claiming me in a roomful of witnesses who resumed their party the minute we left the room. My wild punch was a cornered animal lashing out. An act that would enrage a bully, but turn on a psychopath.
I glanced down.
Now I knew with certainty which one described Cairo Sharpe, and the door was closing behind us.
The room blurred. He dropped me on my feet and slammed me against the door. I gasped as his hand closed around my throat.
Cairo bore over me, his crushingly handsome face filling my vision. My mind cast for someone to compare him to, and came up empty. He was a beauty of his own creation. The soft lips, the sharp angles, the once-dead eyes coming to with my fear lighting the match.
“You punched me.” It almost sounded like a question. “I’m bleeding.”
“You deserved it,” I spat.
“Did I? I haven’t hurt you. Haven’t punched you, hit you, or spilled your sweet blood. Why did I deserve it?”
Trembling lips pressed tight together.
Cairo constricted on my throat. “Answer.”
“You... know why.”
“Because I made you afraid,” he whispered. “No one likes to be afraid, but you, Rainey...” Cairo licked my cheek. “You’ve experienced true, helpless terror. You’ve been reduced to a cowering, sniveling lump in soaked jeans, and you couldn’t hit that person. You couldn’t take your hands off your face to do anything at all.”
My whole body shook, throat bobbing against his grasp. How do you know?
What are you seeing in my eyes?
“So, now you lash out at everything that returns you to that place, hoping that one day you’ll have the courage to strike back at the person who matters.” He kissed me again—harder, forceful, punishing me for tainting our first. “How’d I do?”
I gripped his wrist, pulling him back to let me speak. “Wrong.” I met those eyes head-on, even as everything in me screamed to look away. “I punched you because you’re an asshole who humiliated and threw his own sister out, then kissed me while his girlfriend was downstairs.”
He chuckled. “That reason works too.” My throat was given relief only for my wrists to take their turn. Cairo crossed them over my head, secure in his hold.
I strained and thrashed against him. Cairo just gazed at me like I was a curious thing. Goose bumps popped along my skin to trail his fingers skimming my collarbone. Such a gentle touch for an iron man.
It enraged and suffused my skin with heat in equal measure. He looked at me like he wanted to hurt me, but touched me like a precious, delicate thing.
“Where were you hiding from me, Rain?”
He continued down, tracing a line to my cleavage, and kept going, dragging the fabric over and off my breasts. The black lace bra I chose for the night was on full display.
Arching my back, I flattened against his chest. I think I did so to force him away, then he slipped around my waist, palm warm on the small of my back, and my mouth went dry at his cock hard and unyielding against my thigh.
“Let me go.”
“I might,” he said, loosening my top button. “If you really wanted me to.”
“I do.”
“Then why aren’t you trying to get away?”
“What the fuck have I been doing since you ordered your henchman to hand me over?” Even as I said it, my face burned, knowing exactly what he meant. Why hadn’t I kneed him in the groin? Smashed my skull on his nose? Screamed like I promised to?