He reaches for the button of my jeans, and I swallow. My throat feels like sandpaper. I could ask him to untie me, but it would be a waste of words. That will never happen. The button pops free, and the zipper makes a scratching sound as he slowly pulls it down, all the while holding my gaze.
Those other men, the guards, they frightened me. I’ve seen what men at war can do to a woman. If not for Gergo, I would’ve been infinitely more familiar with those sinister intentions. Yet I’m not frightened of Yan. Not like that. I’m terrified he’ll kill me, but not that he’ll force me. He kidnapped me in Budapest and carried me off to his place. If he wanted to, he could’ve done anything to me. But despite the twisted situation back then, I felt safe in his bed. Secure. A rare feeling for me to have with a man.
He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my jeans and slips them under the elastic of my cotton panties. My face heats like I’m an inexperienced teenager, not only at the intimacy of our situation, but also at the memory of how he devoured me, and how I devoured him back.
His lips curve with the self-assurance of a man who knows the effect he has on a woman, but his eyes remain as frosty as the northern lights, mocking me, despising me, as he pushes my jeans and underwear over my hips and thighs to my knees. Goosebumps break out over my skin, following the path of his touch. He straightens slowly, trailing the tips of his calloused fingers up the outside of my naked legs and over the indents of my glutes on the sides.
The heat in my cheeks intensifies when he finally drops his gaze, looking at the triangle between my legs as if it’s his right. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but this is different. I’m bound and naked, exposed with my hands tied and my jeans around my knees. Whereas he’s cool, collected, and fully clothed. As he stares at me, a heavy assault of vulnerability hits me in the gut. It’s humiliating, and judging by his relentless smile, humiliation is what he’s aiming for.
Angry punishment. Cold-hearted revenge.
Despite it all, the underlying current of danger sends a spark of exhilaration to my belly. I can help it as little as I can help my attraction to this dangerous man. My body craves his touch. Just one more time to remember how good it was. A taste to remind me how it feels to be alive. He has an effect on me like no other. Before him, I thought I’d never be able to tolerate a man’s touch again without the accompanying repulsion.
But there it is. An untimely, yet undeniable reaction. My core heats. My sex swells. The bundle of nerves between my folds tingles. It takes all the self-control I possess not to tilt my hips toward the cradle of his thighs. I’m lucid enough to admit it’s more than physical, that there’s a psychological element to my desire to feel his arms around me. I’m not stupid. I know I’m not walking away from here alive, though I do intend to try. Either way, I suddenly crave the soothing security I found in his embrace in Budapest. I don’t care that it will be a lie. I just want to feel it one more time, and I refuse to judge myself for that.
It’s only natural. Nobody wants to die alone.
I focus on where his hands are resting lightly on my naked hips, those incredibly male hands with long, masculine fingers and perfectly manicured nails. Hands that can inflict pain in a myriad of ways. I pull in a ragged breath, on the verge of begging him to make the end sweet and quick when he steps away and turns his back on me.
“Get a move on.” His voice is even, emotionless. “You have ten seconds.”
I crouch down and quickly do my business. Having lived in close quarters with men in all kinds of tactical situations, I don’t suffer from stage fright.
I count in my head. He gives me exactly ten seconds before he turns. I’m up already. He makes quick work of dragging my underwear and jeans over my hips and fastening the zipper and button. He’s rushed all of a sudden.
Grabbing my arm, he manhandles me back to the shed and forces me into a chair that stands in the middle of the room—for interrogation purposes, no doubt. My insides go cold at the implication of what’s in store for me. Yan lifts my bound arms over the chair back so I’m not crushing them with the weight of my body, a strange reprieve when an interrogation is a foregone conclusion and torture a most likely possibility. Then he gets more rope, spreads my legs, and ties my ankles to the feet of the chair.