She might not know it, but she’d just lost.
She’d let me in.
Stupid, stupid girl.
“How long is it since you’ve been free?”
Whatever openness she’d given me shut down with the clang of a steel gate. Her eyes closed as she swallowed.
“Months or years?”
She didn’t flinch.
Studying her body, counting the breaks and kicks and bruises, I answered for her. “Just like a tree gives up its age when its trunk is revealed, your body answers without words.”
Her forehead furrowed, keeping her eyes shut.
“I’ll guess a few years.”
Anger heated my blood—not because of her pain, but her refusal to reply. Such questions might’ve made a normal man care. Might’ve given them second thoughts about being here and doing his best to shoplift a girl’s secrets.
But I wasn’t most men. I did care…somewhere inside me. But I’d been through my own trauma, and it’d tainted my view of others.
I didn’t have a saviour when I’d needed one.
I had no intention of being a saviour to someone else.
Who cared about such generic questions? I’d earn her answers through other means. She owed me a debt. It was time to pay it.
The thought of watching her finger herself thickened my cock.
Alrik was right about one thing. Being at sea made it hard to find a fuckable companion—unless I supplemented my on-board staff or flew in an escort with my helicopter. However, both those options didn’t hold allure.
Not like this creature.
I didn’t have long before I returned to the ocean. I’d wasted enough time already.
“Enough questions. Time to repay me, Pimlico.”
Her eyes shot wide as my hand splayed on her lower belly, trailing up her ribcage, following the slight curve of her breast to the vivid collarbone sticking out with hunger.
I didn’t stop touching her—up her throat, to her cheeks where I dug my thumb into one side and my fingers into the other, yanking her face to mine.
She stopped breathing.
I squeezed hard, forcing her to pay attention and listen to every instruction.
“Open your legs.”
Her teeth clenched beneath my hold.
My hand tightened. “Do it.”
For a moment, utmost detestation glowed then, ever so slowly, her legs switched from glued together to slightly spread. Not nearly wide enough for a hand or tongue but enough to glimpse what lay between them.
My cock turned to stone.
Shaking my head, ridding the pressuring lust and focusing on my control and never-fading shame, I growled, “I’m going to let you go, but you’re going to do everything I tell you. Got it?”
Even now, I still expected a nod.
However, Pimlico merely stared at me offering no acknowledgement or refusal. My eyes dropped to her lips, following the cracked pink skin and fighting the sudden diabolical desire to kiss her.
I wanted so fucking much to kiss her. To force her lips to move even if they wouldn’t speak.
But shit, that was way too personal.
I was allowed to sample one of everything. One gasp, one night, one orgasm.
But a kiss…I wouldn’t fucking do it.
Trusting years of training by Alrik to force her to obey, I let her face go. The loose ponytail I’d formed with her hair fanned on the bed as she rolled completely onto her back and opened her legs a little farther.
“Good girl,” I murmured, tracing the bruises on her flesh, almost like roses in different stages of bloom. Some spread and mostly colourless with fading beauty and others as bright and tight as new buds.
Pressing a practically violent green one, I said, “Do you remember what each was caused by? Or do you prefer to forget?”
She stared at the ceiling as I followed the petals of another as it faded into ochres and browns. “The more I study you, the more you remind me of a mouse.”
The sharp intake of breath and sudden flinch was the most reaction I’d earned so far.
I latched onto the word that’d unravelled her silence. “You don’t like being called a mouse or was it something else I said?”
Her chin tilted. She shut down again.
Too late.
I’d unlocked something. I didn’t know what, but I’d find out.
“I think I’ll call you that from now on…little mouse. You’re a silent mouse tormented in a cage. However, no matter how small and vulnerable a mouse is, they have the power to wreak havoc if they accept who they truly are.”
“They also have incredibly sharp teeth.” Drifting my finger over her mouth, I inserted the tip past her lips to the warm wetness beyond. “Tell me, Pimlico, do you have sharp teeth?”
She didn’t open or let me run my finger beneath her canines. But her heart picked up, siphoning through the visible vein in her neck.
My silent one had become a silent mouse, and it suited her so fucking much.
Her face snapped away as if a memory was too hard to handle.
Nudging her chin with my knuckles, I guided her back to me forcibly. “You don’t know me, but you do need to know that if you’re in bed with me, you focus on me and only fucking me.”