She held my gaze for a long moment, a silent battle of wills. Then she looked away with a scowl.
Finally, she stood up and picked up the dress, her movements slow and incredibly reluctant. She slid it over her head, the fabric whispering against her skin. It fit her perfectly, clinging to her curves like a second skin. My eyes raked over her and I smiled, knowing that she was still a dripping wet, naked mess underneath that dress.
I watched her. I could see the subtle signs of her arousal, the hard points of her nipples pressing against the fabric, the faint flush on her skin. She was still affected. Still mine.
“Shoes,” I prompted impatiently.
She slipped into a pair of simple black heels, her movements a little unsteady. She stood before me, a vision of dark, defiant beauty.
“What now?” she whispered.
“Now,” I rumbled. “You come with me.”My gaze swept the room, cataloging the remnants of our battle. My eyes landed on a scrap of black lace near the foot of the bed—her panties. A small, intimate souvenir of her defeat.
I walked over and picked them up. The lace was damp, fragrant with the scent of her arousal. I looked at her, a wicked smile spreading across my face. Then I tucked them into my pocket.
She watched me, her eyes wide, a flicker of something—humiliation, maybe, or a hesitant, dawning understanding of her new reality. Either way, it made my cock jump.
“Let’s go.” I directed her out of the room with a gesture.
I took her arm in a firm grip and led her out of the suite, not back toward the helipad, but toward the private elevator. The helicopter was long gone by now.I’d told the pilot to leave me behind, not knowing how much time I’d need to deal with Kara. I’d arranged another form of transportation to be waiting for us in the garage below.
The elevator descended in a smooth, silent rush, the city a blur of motion outside the glass walls. She was quiet, her body tense and rigid beside me. I could feel the tremors still runningthrough her though, a fine, almost imperceptible quaking that made my dick hard as a rock.
We didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say. Not here. Not now.
The doors opened directly into a private sub-level garage, a cavern of concrete and polished steel. It was empty, except for one vehicle. A long, black Maybach, its curves a study in predatory elegance. It was my car. My territory.
I opened the rear door and gestured for her to get in. She hesitated, a flicker of rebellion in her eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. She slid onto the leather seat, her movements stiff and awkward.
I followed her in, settling onto the seat opposite. The door clicked shut, enclosing us in a cocoon of soft leather and tinted glass. The divider between us and the driver was already up, granting us a privacy that was as much a weapon as it was a luxury.
She sat opposite me, her hands clasped in her lap, her gaze fixed on the floor. She looked small, fragile, a stark contrast to the woman who had drugged my brother, the woman who had fought me, the woman who had screamed my name as she came on my cock.
The game between us had changed.
The hunt was over. The capture was complete. Now the real work began.
CHAPTER 8
Kara
The leather of the Maybach’s seats was cool against my skin, which was really a small, insignificant detail in the grand, terrifying scheme of things.
We were moving, but I felt utterly still, almost like a specimen pinned to velvet in a dark, silent museum.
And he was the collector.
Lev sat opposite me, a study in controlled menace. He hadn’t touched me since we’d left the hotel, but his presence was a physical force, a pressure that made the air feel thick, hard to breathe. He just watched me, his eyes dark fathomless, with a predator’s ever-patient gaze.
I tried to rally the pieces of myself, to find the Kara who could handle this. The spy. The weapon. The woman who had walked into Roman’s penthouse with a mission and walked out with a victory. That woman felt like a ghost, though, a character in a story I’d once heard when I was little. The woman in this carwas a scared, trembling thing, her body a canvas of pleasure and pain, her mind a battlefield of surrender and resentment and lust.
The silence deepened between us. I looked at him, a question in my eyes, but he didn’t offer an answer. He just leaned forward and opened a compartment in the door.
He pulled out a pair of slender black cuffs. They weren’t police-issue steel, but more refined, more threatening. Polished carbon fiber with a sophisticated locking mechanism. They looked expensive. They belonged to him, of course.
“Hands,” he demanded.
My breath hitched. A spark of the old defiance flared. “No.”
