Don’t look at those legs, or at that face. Don’t notice that her skin is pale and luminous, her shapely lips so moist and bright with paint they make your mouth go dry.
Her makeup, her costume, the mere fact Baines and his goons had brought her here and tied her to this bed to play kinky games told Luke what she was—a whore. As a kid, he’d had fun with her kind.
Was this hellhole her room? Or Baines’s?
Glazed, startlingly blue eyes, lined in heavy black, stared up at him. “It’s our honeymoon. Love me. Love me…P-please…just love me.”
Love?
What Luke felt had a lot more in common with what she would do for a dollar than with love. He wanted sex; she sold sex.
She moistened her lip with her tongue. Then she seemed to suffer a moment’s shortness of breath beneath his direct gaze.
His stomach lurched. She represented sex and the forbidden, all the vices he’d learned young and tried to rise above when he’d crawled out of the gutter. She had designed herself to bring out the beast in him.
She did.
“Shhh…”
With a muted whimper, followed by more slurred endearments, she strained toward him. Black stockings jerked, and she collapsed against the bed.
She was drunk or very high on something. Yet not so high that she wasn’t conscious of him. Nor did she act ashamed to be lying there with her breasts and legs so exposed. Instead, she twisted her hips deliberately to entice him, begging, “Love me.…”
At that honey-soft plea, his breath stalled. His body hardened. Her cheap beauty and suggestive posture paralyzed him. For a second or two, he even forgot about the heat.
He hadn’t changed. His fine suits, his fine house, the fine wife he’d buried only this afternoon…The fine schools he’d attended but hadn’t fit into…His whole damn life was a lie.
This girl was real. Too damn real. And she made him real.
“Don’t play your whore tricks on me,” he snarled even as he sank down on the bed beside her.
On a whimper, she shrank from him. Her wide eyes fixed on the broken bottle in his hand. Strips of black nylon held fast and put her at his mercy.
He saw a brown boy, facedown, in a vacant lot and the bullies standing over him, kicking dirt and rocks at him.
“Be still. I won’t hurt you. I’m going to cut you loose.”
She watched him. He fought not to look at her. Still, sitting on her bed, their hips touching, he felt joined to her in ways he didn’t understand.
He caught the scent of her perfume. Gardenias. Sweet, sweet gardenias. The fragile scent took him back to a summer day, to a cool, shady garden, to a haughty white woman who’d frowned at him with fury when he’d picked that single perfect blossom. He remembered her children in the same garden and the bouquets they’d held.
No.
The heat of the whore against his hip was a wholesome pleasure compared to his bitter memories. Perspiration beaded his brow. Better her. Better this hellish shack than his own shameful past.
The girl stared at his face unblinkingly. “Hawaii? Love…”
He waved the razor edges of the brown glass under her chin. Then he deliberately sliced a brown fingertip across the glass that was like a blade. Blood bubbled, oozed. A single drop splashed her cheek.
She started, whimpered.
“Hold still. Understand? So I don’t cut you.”
Her expression was grave, but she didn’t move when he began sawing with the bottle.
After a few swipes, the nylon gave, and her limp arm fell across her breast. Trouble was, he had to lean across her to reach her other wrist.
The second he felt her female flesh molding his, something hot and dangerous consumed him.
His heart slowed to painful thuds. Male nerve cells registered body heat, registered gardenias, woman smell. Registered her. She fit him like a glove.
She was available. She would do anything.
Wildfire.
Her breasts pressing into his chest made him dizzy. His hand began to shake so badly he had to stop so he wouldn’t cut her.
She held her breath.
So did he.
Get a grip. Don’t let her know. Work fast.
Again, jagged brown glass sheered the flimsy nylon.
But she knew. The instant she was free, her hands were all over him.
“I love you. Love me. I love you. Love me,” she pleaded in Marcie’s drawl.
Her hands. Her body.
Marcie’s voice.
Love me. That constant refrain pounded through him like a drumbeat. Eagerly her hands moved over his torso.
He had to get away. It had been a mistake to lean over her. Her skillful, expert hands, her whore’s hands knew exactly what to do to arouse a man like him.
Lightly, ever so lightly, she stroked. Sliding across his chest, her heated fingertips had his damp shirt out of his pants in no time, his belt unbuckled. Then like heat-seeking missiles, her hands were inside his jeans, circling him with her fist.
Low moans rose from her throat, her excitement matching his when she found him already hard.
Marcie used to moan like that. Until he’d forbidden her to make that sound in bed. You’re not a whore. You’re my wife.
He’d liked what Marcie had done too much. He’d known she’d win him through sex. It was a way to that deeper part of him he’d sealed and locked, so he’d be safe. With a whore, he could let go in bed. Because there were other lines he wouldn’t cross with a whore.
The girl writhed. To hold her still, he threw a leg over her thighs. She wiggled, snugged herself closer. He slashed her ankle bindings loose with the broken bottle. Their hips joined.
Meltdown.
Wrapping herself around him, she clung.
For years he’d been alone—his whole damn life. This woman, the soft warmth of her, erased all that. He gulped in air as her fist caressed him.
“Love me.…”
“You’re a whore.”
He saw tearing pain in her gaze. She froze, and he was moved beyond words by the sheen of tears misting her black-lashed blue eyes, by the way she drew back with proud dignity. “I love you…B-B…”
But whatever drug she was on got the best of her. Before Luke could register the name she called him, she wiggled closer, bringing her lips up to his. She caught her lower lip with her teeth. When she released it with a soft kiss, the swollen softness was pink, wet and shiny. And so damned kissable.
She kissed him, and her adoration, sweetness and innocence amazed him. Her seeming innocence, he amended.
He held his breath, his heart beating hard and fast. Don’t. Don’t.
But she kept at it, this spontaneous nibbling of his lips. She had a marvelous mouth. And not just to look at. She tasted, oh, God, she tasted delicious and so damned innocent…and so utterly utterly sweet.
Her tongue teased his, traced along the upper edges of his teeth. Nobody kissed like that but an expert.
Almost at once, he was shaking. Hardly knowing what he did, his mouth opened. He wanted more.
Gently, marveling at the softness of her skin, he let his knuckle touch her face. She didn’t recoil. For a long moment he just held