A new heat flashed behind his almost black eyes. “You think this is a game? You think I want you here, want such responsibility for you? That I would do this if I didn’t honestly think your association with me put you in danger while I’m still on this island?”
My answer came back as naked and raw as my current state of dress. “No, I think you’re an asshole who doesn’t actually know how to talk to a girl who doesn’t immediately fall simpering into your arms. So you brought me here because of some supposed danger from a dude I haven’t talked to in almost a year because you can’t admit that you just want to fuck me.”
That hit a nerve. He threw his glass, sending it flying with one brutal swipe.
“Go to your room!” he roared over the sound of it shattering somewhere in the distance. “That’s an order.”
Another order. The ugliness of it made me sneer, made me want to throw ugliness right back. “Fine, I’ll go to my room. But fuck me first.”
He stilled. And I had been spouting off at the mouth before—just trying to make him as angry at me as I was at him. But I knew at that moment that I had gotten his real motive for bringing me here right.
His eyes darkened to black, the Fae King transforming into a ravenous wolf.
So I doubled down, testing. “Yeah, c’mon. Let’s do it. Let’s go to your room and bang again—oh, wait. Nobody’s allowed in your room because intimacy isn’t something you know how to do.”
“It’s not something I want to do,” he corrected. His voice hinted at a rage barely kept in check.
“Whatever, dude. If that’s how you want to spin being completely broken and fucked up, go for it. We can do this in my room. Then you can let me go home for another six months until you get the urge to fuck me again. And when that happens, instead of acting like a big baby about it, we can just do it again without any of this K Diamond bullshit. Like adults.”
He said nothing, and the rage and hunger began to recede from his expression. Not because it was no longer there, I sensed. This was the Fae King, putting back on his cold mask.
And I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand that he was retreating into his cold Fae King routine while I was trembling with rage.
So I shoved him. “What? You’re scared to take me up on my offer?”
I shoved him again. “Scared I’ll get even further under your skin if you do?”
He didn’t move the first two times. It was like shoving a heavy marble statue. So I threw my whole body into the next shove, as I said, “Scared you can’t handle—”
I never got to the end of that sentence. One moment I was shoving him, and the next, he was shoving my entire body into the lanai glass, plastering it against the cool surface with one arm twisted behind me.
“Is this what you wanted?” he growled into my ear. “For me to lose control? For me to take what you’re offering like an animal.”
“You are an animal,” I informed him, still defiant, even with the side of my face pressed into the glass. “I just want you to admit it instead of playing games with my clothes.”
A beat of silence. Then his hand found the front of me. And that was all it took for me to realize my mistake…a few seconds and a lot of shoves too late.
I’d thought this had simply been about getting him to fess up to his real motives for keeping me here, of giving him what he wanted so that he could let me go. But his touch…
It made me moan, made me realize… I wanted him too, even though I didn’t want to. I’d been in denial about that, just like he had.
Behind me, Han spoke my secret epiphany out loud. “The truth is so important to you. But you haven’t admitted to yourself that you want me, too. Did you like what I did to you in the car, Jasmine? Did you enjoy riding my fingers? Being controlled and told what to do?”
He played with me as he asked these questions, his hand grazing over the sensitive bundles of nerves between my legs in a way that sent waves of pleasure arcing through my body.
I clamped down on my lips to keep from crying out, to keep from admitting that the answer to all of his questions was yes.
“Your pussy is wet and hungry… she is angry at me for denying her. Tell me, Jasmine….”
His other hand fisted around my ponytail, pulled my head back. “Do you want to come?”
Pride…pride…I grabbed onto the last shred of mine with one fingertip.
