Page 99 of In the Dark

“Bullshit.” His voice was visceral and mean as he stared at the scabs where I’d been stabbed. He swore again louder this time before he leaned in close to me and said in my ear, “I know what you like, Jasmina Ruiz, and it’s not this. I’ve let you have me as roughly as you wanted, and it never included stab wounds.”

“Well, maybe I thought you were too much of a baby to handle it.” I lifted my chin to look down my nose at him.

He swiped a thumb over my healing skin before kneeling before me slowly.

“What are you doing?” I whispered as he pulled me a step closer so that his mouth was centimeters away from the marred skin.

He traced each wounded line with his lips. “You know better than to let another man hurt you this way. You promised me that.”

I whimpered at his soft touch.

I did know. Of course I knew.

And I had promised. It’d been over a year since that night we’d hooked up, and maybe I’d told myself enough times that he forgot, but it was clear he hadn’t.

Cal had saved me from enduring Tomás that night, and he hadn’t forgotten what he’d made me agree to.

And maybe I jumped his bones because he knew. Or maybe it was just because he was hot, but I was pretty sure it was the former. Callahan knew I’d held back and let that man wail on me.

I hadn’t let another man do it to me ever again after my night with Cal.

Although he didn’t know that.

And he wouldn’t, because I also knew there were monsters who would do much worse to me if they knew I was weak.

“Don’t worry, Cal. Even if I let a man touch me this way, I gave as good as I got.”

A vibration from deep in his chest skittered over me before his hand snaked up my skirt fast to find my knife and then he held it up to me as he murmured against my belly, “Show me, then.”

“What?”

“Show me how you like to fuck roughly.” One of his hands still held my hips close, and his thumb rubbed a sensitive spot there as he coaxed me. “Show me just how you like it.”

“You can’t be … no.” I shook my head, shaking away the haze that his hand and lips on me was causing. “I’m not that into you. There’s nothing about you I like enough to get me to that place.”

He sighed, and his forehead fell softly to my belly before he stood and put the knife in my hand. “Viper, I touch you, and you shiver. I kiss you, and you’re wet. I eat your pussy, and you scream my name. Don’t lie to me. You’re as into me as I am into you.”

“Your ego is way too big if you think—”

“My ego is about as big as my hard cock right now.” He took my wrist so that he could point the knife at himself. “I’m not saying you’re the only one turned on. I’m saying we both are, but there’s no way that continues if you’re stabbing me the way someone did to you.”

God, he was infuriating. I held my knife to his stomach on my own accord now. “You calling me a liar, Knight?”

“I’m calling you a liar, sure. But not a woman who likes to be hurt.” He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off as he stepped into my space, and, when he did, I held the knife firm and it nicked his skin. The blood that dripped from his perfect abs was a beautiful red, and it beaded down over his muscles. Licking my lips, I considered if I could be into blood play. I mean, Cal did look good with red staining his tattoos.

“Going to have to spill more than that to prove your point, Jas,” he rumbled, his hand now at my cheek, swiping over the bottom lip I’d just bitten.

“Fine.” I shrugged, trying to keep my voice steady. “You think I can’t?”

“I think you’ll do what you need to survive, Viper. But it’s not this. You don’t need to survive me when you can thrive with me instead. You get that, right?”

I glanced down at the knife and then at his skin, and that’s when I saw names tattooed that must have meant something to him.

All women.

All women on the man’s body I was supposed to marry.

For some reason, that sparked enough rage in me to continue. I shouldn’t have cared that other women got a spot on him when I didn’t. We’d only been truly together one single night. And I didn’t mean much at all, I knew that.