She gasped, at his outrageous nerve. “All my other…oh! Am I not good enough for you?”
“Do not be ridiculous,” he said. “It is only that I prefer you as you are.”
Yeah. As vulnerable and raw as the grief-stricken girl she had been. No.
“I can’t.” She was horrified to hear her voice breaking.
He reached out, brushed her hair off her face. “You can trust me,” he urged gently. “I will not hurt you.”
She flinched away from his touch and covered her shaking mouth. “You have,” she said. “If you don’t want me, then go.”
He blew out a fierce, frustrated breath. “I knew you would be like this. Sooner or later, something inside you would run away and hide, and I would be left with a beautiful doll in my arms.”
“Whore, you mean, not doll,” she hissed. “Go ahead, say it. It’s how you make me feel.”
He lifted a lock of her hair and pressed his lips to it, stroking it against his cheek. “I would be the last one to judge a whore,” he said quietly. “I know what it means to do what you must to survive.”
She jerked her hair back out of his grasp. “How could you know? Do you know how it feels to be used like a thing and tossed aside afterward like garbage? What you have to turn yourself into, just to survive?”
“Yes,” he said.
She stopped, mesmerized by his aura of tightly leashed power and his battered, inscrutably beautiful face. “You?” Her voice cracked. “Oh, please. Give me a fucking break. Your job experience as a professional gigolo is irrelevant, Janos. Look at you. You’re a man, you’re six foot four, you’re at least two hundred and fifty pounds. No one could use you and toss you. You have no clue.”
“You are wrong.” He glanced down at his own body, and gave her an odd, lopsided smile that struck her as heartbreakingly sad. “You hate men too much to imagine that they could ever be vulnerable, no? I was not always this big.”
She closed her mouth and chewed her lip. “Oh,” she murmured.
“I was young when I…when it happened,” he said. “But it is not something that you forget.”
An awkward silence lengthened between them. He had cut her anger off neatly at the knees. He had a frightening talent for that.
It could be a lie. But something about the spareness of his words, the look on his face made her think that perhaps it was the truth.
Truth. There it was again. That volatile, changeable, dangerous word. Dogging her at every turn. At the center of everything.
“So…now you’re fine?” she asked. “You’re all over it?”
He shrugged. “You find ways to take your power back.”
“Yes, that’s exactly it. Taking my power back,” she muttered. “That’s exactly what I was trying to do.”
He frowned. “I don’t want to play games with you.”
“So what the fuck do you want? I was giving you the benefit of everything I have to give a man, everything I know, and you reject it, you ungrateful son of a bitch. So what do you want? Spell it out for me!”
He opened his hands, looking bewildered. “It is…a feeling. I do not know how to explain it. I never felt it before. It is like seeing without eyes. Something beyond the senses. But it was amazing.”
The desire to believe every word he said, to fall into this honey-baited trap, was so strong, it almost swept her away. But he was too damn smart. Sharp enough to read her mind, to know exactly what would tempt her, what would melt her.
She wiped angry tears away. Gave him a hollow laugh. “You want something that doesn’t exist, Janos. Or something that’s long dead.”
His face turned obstinate. “I felt it before you took me in your mouth. You were there with me, and suddenly you were not, and I was being fellated by a beautiful cortigiana, her mind and heart a million miles away from me. I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt your feelings. But it made me feel lonely.” He gave her a rueful shrug.
Tam rolled her eyes. “Oh, crap. I’m doing the one man in the whole world who gets depressed and lonely when a woman blows him.”
“Yes, yes. I know. There are worse things,” he cut in impatiently. “I have no reason to complain. You almost killed me with pleasure. But it is not enough, after feeling the other.”
“Keep in mind, the last time you screwed me, I was high, remember? I won’t let you do that to me again. What you felt was not real. It was just a chemical fantasy.”
“I did not take the drug, so the drug could not have created it,” he said stubbornly. “It only removed your barrier to it.”
“Same difference,” she informed him. “My barrier is up and it’s staying up. So put your clothes back on and get your high standards and your tight ass out of my hotel room before I—”
“No,” he said.
“What do you mean, no?”
“Me putting on my clothes and leaving you alone tonight is not one of the options you have right now,” he announced. “In fact, you have no options. There is only one outcome possible. Resign yourself.”
His implacable tone infuriated her. “Don’t you dare throw your weight around, Janos. I know you’re strong, but no one compels me. Trust me, it’s not worth the price I would make you pay.”
His eyes gleamed. “Is it not?”
“Want to die?” she asked. “I am not speaking figuratively, Janos.”
His face brightened. “Excellent!” he encouraged. “I prefer you murderous and for real to smiling and false.”
“Oh, you are nuts.” She lunged for the door. He yanked her up off her feet from behind, his hard arm clamped under her ribcage, holding her against his hot body. She tried hooking his ankles, elbowing his ribs, twisting like an eel, but his strength was enormous. “Goddamn you,” she whispered furiously. “Put me down.”
“Shhh,” he murmured. “You’ll wake the child.”
She started to feel panicked. “Put me down! This is where you get back at me for the necklace, right?”
“Shhh. Not at all,” he soothed. “I do not hold a grudge. That was my fault for letting down my guard. I will not make that mistake again.”
His cool, controlled tone drove her mad. “Oh, no,” she said, breathlessly. “You’re not angry. While you won’t let me go and threaten me with forced sex. Not angry at all. Right.”
He kissed the side of her neck. “Don’t be foolish,” he said. “You need me to be strong for you. Gently now. Or you’ll hurt yourself.”
“No,” she snarled, writhing. “I’ll hurt you.”
“I will not allow you to hurt me,” he said calmly. “You got the better of me today with your necklace, but I have you now and I will not let you go until I get what I want.”
Tears of pure frustration pricked and burned in her eyes. “I told you already, stronzo. What you want doesn’t exist!”
“No?” He turned her until they both looked into the mirror. “Look at you,” he said. “Finally, color in your face. Your eyes are shining. You are on fire.”
“Of course,” she snapped. “I’m furious with you!”
“Good, then. It works,” he said. “I know what you want. You like strength. You must have been so disappointed