Page 90 of Beautiful Prey

I chuckle. “That’s not an answer.”

“No, it isn’t. But it’s the only one you’re getting.”

“Yeah, I guess our lives are pretty fucking different.” I look over the dead trees to the road behind it.

That’s when I see the car. It’s parked on the far side of the lot, dusty enough to blend in with the others. It shouldn’t matter at all. Cars park there all the time. But there’s something about the man behind the wheel. And about the way he’s staring straight at us.

I’d recognize one of Vasco’s men anywhere.

“Asher.” I lower my voice even though there’s no chance he can hear us. “We’re being watched.”

Asher follows my gaze. “Vasco’s finally sent someone to look at me directly. I wondered when he’d stop being shy.” Turning back to me, he rests a hand at the small of my back and steers me down the steps and across the lot. “He lost a great deal at my table. Vasco doesn’t forgive losses like that. So he sends someone to follow the person who took it and waits for a mistake.”

“And that’s what I am to you? A mistake?”

He looks at me for a moment. “No. You’re the thing I’d make ten of them for. Don’t ask me why.”

I wish he hadn’t said that.

Some stupid part of me wants to believe him so badly it hurts, and wanting that feels more dangerous than anything else he’s done.

He opens the car door for me as if the man across the lot isn’t there, the doors sealing us in behind him. The engine hums as Vasco’s man remains a shape through the tinted glass, and Asher makes no move to pull away.

“You’re having dinner with me tonight. You can choose the restaurant, or we can eat at the penthouse, or in my bed. Your choice. I’m told that’s what compromise looks like.”

“I’m not having dinner with you.”

I’m still furious. Still hard, too, aching with the memory of his knee between my thighs and his mouth dragging over the mark on my throat. Somewhere on the walk back through the museum, I went hard again, and I’ve spent the entire time pretending he can’t tell.

He can tell.

His hand slides up my thigh and closes around my erection through the borrowed trousers. “You keep saying no, but your cock keeps disagreeing. Say it again. Tell me you’re not having dinner with me.”

“I’m not—” It cracks in the middle as he opens my pants and takes me in his hand. “I’m not something you can whistle for.”

“No? You followed me to my bed fast enough last night.” He leans across the console, dragging that clever mouth along the side of my throat, the cool bar of the piercing tracing the mark. “And you’re going to come for me now.”

“Fuck you.” My hips rise into his fist as he strokes me with long, slow pulls. I despise every part of my body, in turn.

“You keep offering me that.” His thumb circles the head, smearing pre-cum down my shaft before his fist closes again. “Right now, I’m more interested in watching you come apart in my hand.”

I try to hold onto the mine, the wreckage, every reason this is a bad idea. He strokes them out of me, one by one. His grip tightens as the pace stays even and merciless until I’m left panting through my nose, my teeth sunk into my bottom lip.

“So fucking pretty when you’re fighting it.”

“Asshole.”

His hand tightens again, and I come with a bitten-off groan, spilling over his fist and shaking through it.

For a moment, I just breathe, staring at my cum on his hand as that knowing curl returns to his mouth.

“You’re insufferable,” I manage.

“And yet.” He reaches for a cloth and starts wiping his hand clean, the sheer smugness of it snapping something loose in me.

I should leave it there. Zip myself up. Say no to him again.

Instead, my gaze drops to the front of his pants.