She smirks.
“When Hayes is better, you should keep practicing self-defense with him. It will take time to learn and get good enough to actually be able to defend yourself.”
“Then, why am I here?”
My eyes darken. “To learn from me. To face your fears.”
She frowns, eyeing me suspiciously. “What does that mean?”
“I’m going to find your greatest fears so you can learn to harness them. So you won’t be afraid. So when danger comes, you can do something to save yourself.”
“You really don’t understand me, do you?” She crosses her arms and shakes her head in disappointment.
I walk toward her until we are face to face. “I understand you better than you do.”
“I’m not afraid of anything. You forget I’ve spent my entire life being kidnapped, shot at, and hiding. I spent my entire life looking over my shoulder, wondering if the darkness was going to finally come for me. I’m not afraid of death,” she says defiantly.
“I agree, you’re not afraid of death.” I reach out, caressing her cheek and then lowering my hand to her throat, gripping her as she swallows hard. A glimmer of anxiety flickers in her eyes.
“But you are afraid…”
“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid.”
“No, there isn’t. But there is when you let it control you like you have since we all got shot at. You’ve been drowning in your own fear.”
She swats my hand away from her throat. “I don’t let it control me.”
“Every decision you’ve made is out of fear. You gave up Kit because you were afraid of losing him. You ran through a string of bullets because you were afraid of Ri getting hurt. And you’re here right now because you’re afraid that if you let me fuck you again, you’re going to admit how much you like it. How much you like me. How much you want my cock.”
“I don’t like you. And I don’t want your cock. The sex was adequate but not incredible. You tried to scare me then, to make me think you’re a villain when you barely tied me up. And any pleasure you heard from me was only because I was pretending you were Kit.”
The corner of my lip raises up. “Lies.”
She stares at me, trying not to blink or yield, but I know she’s lying.
I grab her arm, yanking it behind her back and pulling her to me, so her ass is against my crotch, and she can feel how badly I want her.
Her breathing is hard and fast; her heart is racing.
“You either fear me or want me. Which is it?”
“Neither.” She tries to break free of my hold, but I just grab her other wrist and hold them both behind her back with one hand. She’s right that even with my hurt shoulder controlling her is easy. She has no skills, no physical ability to save herself.
It’s not true. She can save herself. She just has to learn to put herself first and stop being a martyr.But first, she needs to control her fear and learn to think logically.
“I think you fear me,” I say, as I run my other hand down the curves of her body from the swell of her breast, over the bare skin of her waist, and then over the tight leggings covering her ass.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Make me stop.”
She tries to break free again but can’t.
“I can do anything I want to you.”
“No.”
“But you can’t stop me.” I palm her breast in my hand, and the softest of moans leaves her mouth. I know she likes it, but that’s not the point. The point is to show her that she can harness her fear. And maybe for her to admit that she craves me as much as I crave her.