His Tormented Heart: An Island of Ys Novel

by Katee Robert

  To explain what Ryu meant when he said Delilah was beautiful, how he hadn’t actually intended to seduce her. The second her lips touched his, however, all his good intentions went up in flames. He swore he could actually feel them turning to ash inside him. She tasted like cinnamon and something unknowable, as if he could spend the next ten years kissing her and never truly reach understanding of this woman. That, more than anything else, tipped Ryu over the edge.

  He never had been able to resist a mystery.

  Delilah was a fucking mystery. She never quite did what he expected, and she never reacted the way other people would in any given situation. It defied explanation, and he needed to know. Was it just the natural way she moved through the world, one of the few people who truly danced to a beat of their own drums? Was it all part of the wall she’d built up around her?

  He didn’t know, and because he didn’t know, he sifted his hands through her long dark hair and tilted her head back to gain a better angle. Her tongue slid against his, as playful and wicked as the woman herself, and he groaned against her mouth.

  The things you do to me.

  Ryu wanted more. He wanted everything.

  His sheer greed for her nearly overwhelmed him, but he managed to lift his head and break the kiss. Their ragged breathing mingled in the sparse space between them. It would be the easiest thing in the world to close that distance, to keep kissing her until things escalated beyond the point of no return. Until they both lost themselves yet again.

  It wouldn’t get him answers. Not really. She might give her body freely, but she kept large swathes of her inner self locked away from him. He had no right to ask for the key, but he wanted it all the same. “Delilah.”

  Whatever she saw on his face had her pushing to her feet. She looked … divine was the only word that came to mind. Her tight black skirt clung to her hips and ass, leaving nothing to the imagination and yet enticing him to see beneath all the same. It was barely long enough to be considered decent, giving the impression that one wrong move would give him a glimpse of paradise. The top of the skirt hugged the dip of her natural waist, and the tease of a shirt started a few inches higher. It was pale against her light brown skin, the boning making him think of a corset, but there was nothing confined about the way the piece of clothing offered her breasts up. Add in her just-been-fucked hair and sky-high black heels and his cock was so hard, he couldn’t fucking think straight.

  Delilah was temptation personified.

  For one heavy moment, he thought she meant to flee again, but she turned a contemplative look at the room. “This isn’t much different from the private room where I dance for you.”

  He saw where she was going with this, and found himself holding his breath. “You’re not wrong.”

  “Ryu.” She sounded like she was tasting his name, savoring it on her tongue. “Would you like me to dance for you here?”

  He glanced at her injured wrist. There was no brace in sight, but she had a thick leather bracelet cuff covering the bruises. “You’re hurt.”

  “No pole.” She smiled, her dark red lips promising all sorts of delights. She glanced over her shoulder. “If you prefer the show they’re putting on …”

  “No.” Not when his real life fantasy stood in front of him. He settled back against the couch and spread his arms over the back of it. “Dance for me, Delilah.”

  She gave him a surprisingly sweet smile and walked to the stereo system set up in the corner. A minute later, a slow throbbing bass line came through the speakers cleverly hidden around the room. It burrowed beneath Ryu’s skin until it felt like his heart beat in time with the song.

  Delilah let her head fall back as she began to move. It was both the same and completely different to when she danced onstage. She seemed to lose all awareness of the room around her, to become lost in the music and the pure joy that shone from her face with every sway of her hips.

  It was as if he wasn’t there at all.

  His chest went tight and his cock hardened to the point where he felt a little lightheaded. His suspicion that she’d dance this way with or without an audience, that she trusted him enough to let that awareness of the space around her go, that instead of walking away at the end of this song, he’d get to touch her …

  He could barely breathe past wanting her.

  Delilah ran her hands through her hair and down her chest, cupping her breasts almost absently. Her lips parted and even though he couldn’t hear anything over the music, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that a little gasp slipped free. She plucked at her nipples through the fabric of the top, but when that seemed not to be enough, Delilah reached behind her and unclasped it.

  Each move felt like the most natural thing in the world, as if she’d play it out exactly this way even if he wasn’t here. Ryu’s mouth went dry and he leaned forward and propped his elbows on his thighs. A reminder to keep himself in place, to let her come to him.

  The fabric of her top went slack and she hugged it to her a second before letting it slide down her arms and drop to the floor. She kicked it out of the way and it landed near the couch by his feet. Now nothing stood in the way of her questing hands, and she wasted no time touching herself again, rolling her nipples between her fingers until they stood at stiff points. All the while she kept up that slow grinding move, sometimes turning fully toward him, sometimes away, as if drawn to the sight of the two men fucking the woman and each other on the other side of the glass.

  The beat of the song changed, becoming more insistent, and Delilah turned those dark eyes on him. She stalked to the couch, stopping just out of reach and running her fingers through her hair, pulling it back from her face and shoulders. She swiveled her hips and the fabric of her skirt rode up a little. Another half an inch and he’d be able to see if she wore any panties.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  It took several seconds for her command to register. Ryu raised his brows, but he wanted to see where this was going. Liar. He knew where this was going. Had known it was coming from the point where she told him she fantasized about dancing on his cock. Maybe he hadn’t expected it this quickly, but he wasn’t about to complain. It reassured him in a way. As fractured as his self-control was, Delilah seemed to be right there in the free fall with him.

  Whether they would crash and burn together remained to be seen.

  He slowly unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged it off to drop on the floor with hers. Ryu made himself settle back against the couch and forced the tension from his body. Delilah obviously had a plan she wanted to enact, and he’d do whatever it took not to ruin it.

  She turned around and pulled a move that had his body going tight. Delilah leaned back against him and rolled her body against his, her ass creating a delicious friction against his cock for half a second before she moved on, bending forward and reaching down to run her hands over her curves. “Do you want to touch?”

  “You know I do.”

  “It’s against the rules.” She shot him a scorching look over her shoulder. “We shouldn’t.”

  Even knowing this was role play, his cock went even harder. Shouldn’t was such a sexy fucking word when it came from those red lips. “I know.” She ground down against his cock again, and his breath caught. Fuck, everything about this woman made his breath catch. It was in the way she danced, in her confidence, in her devilish smile as she rolled her hips again.

  She pulled a move that had her straddling him. “Maybe …”

  “Maybe?”

  She reached over his shoulders to hold the back of the couch and her lips brushed his ear. “Maybe if you take your cock out … Accidents happen.”

  Fuck.

  “I’m no accident, Delilah.” He loved the way her eyes hazed over every time he said her name. Like she couldn’t get enough of this any more than he could. “This is no accident.” He very deliberately bracketed her thighs with his hands and ran them up to the hem of her indecently short skirt. Holding her gaze, he inched the
fabric up.

  “Ryu,” she whispered.

  “Let me touch you.” His thumbs brushed fabric and he looked down to find a tiny triangle of fabric shielding her from view. He traced the lines of it, enjoying the way her body went tense and still. “No one has to know that we broke the rules. It’ll be our little secret.”

  DELILAH COULDN’T CATCH her breath. Not with Ryu idly stroking her through her panties. Sure as hell not when he cupped her pussy like he owned her. And he did. Just a little and just in this moment. She’d do damn near anything to keep this going.

  “Touch me.” The command came out hoarse with need.

  “I am touching you.” His lips curved.

  “Touch me more.”

  He tugged her panties to the side and dragged a single finger over her. “You’re wet, Delilah. You like breaking the rules.”

  “Only with you.” It was even the truth. Two years and she’d never once really wanted to cross the line, not until she started circling Ryu. She rolled her hips, but he easily moved back, keeping his touch devastatingly light.

  Ryu gripped her hips and set her back on her feet. She stared, hurt rising, but it gave way beneath a cascade of need as he held her gaze and undid his pants, shoving them down enough to free his cock. He bent down and pulled open a compartment in the bottom of the couch. It was filled with condoms, and Delilah might have laughed if she had the breath for it. Instead, she watched, her heart hammering in her throat, as he opened the package and rolled the condom down his cock. Then he sat back and let her look her fill. He was beautiful like this, rumpled and watching her with those dark eyes, challenging her to meet him step for step.

  Oh, she’d meet him all right.

  Delilah shimmied out of her skirt and made a show of removing her panties. She left on the heels and turned around, letting herself roll backward down onto his body, rubbing against the same way she would in a normal lap dance. As if she couldn’t feel his cock against her ass. As if she wasn’t dying for him to fill her.

  She turned as the beat changed and straddled him. “Just a dance.”

  The edges of his mouth pulled up. “Of course. Just a dance.”

  “Whatever happens … Happens.” She braced her hands on the back of the couch and lifted herself up. Ryu didn’t touch her with his hands, following the rules set out by the club, but he caught one of her nipples with his mouth and sucked hard enough that she moaned. She forgot what she was supposed to be doing and cupped her breasts, offering both to him.

  He alternated, coaxing first one and then the other to stiff points. Delilah shivered and resumed her grip on the back of the couch. More. She needed more. She dragged her body against his, chest to chest, until she felt his cock nudge her entrance. “Just a dance,” she murmured and tilted her hips, edging him inside her.

  And, god, it wasn’t enough. It felt so dirty and so right and so downright wicked as she impaled herself on him, inch by devastating inch, until he was sheathed completely inside her.

  She leaned back and looked at Ryu. His entire body was one long tense line, his muscles standing out against his skin as he obviously fought not to touch her, not to break the “rules.”

  Delilah reached for his hands and stopped, remembering their own rules. She hesitated, then arched her back. “You can touch my breasts if you want. That’s allowed.”

  He palmed her breasts, seeming to learn her curves with the rough palms of his hands before playing with her nipples, pinching and teasing as she rode his cock. As she danced on his cock. It felt so fucking good. Better than she could have dreamed. He was better than she could have dreamed. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Touch yourself. Since I’m not supposed to.”

  She loved how committed he was to playing this game. How he followed the club’s rules as if she wasn’t about to come on his cock. She snaked a hand down to circle her clit, easily finding the touch that would send her hurtling over the edge. “I don’t think there’s a rule about orgasming in the private rooms.”

  “Then do it. Come for me, Delilah.”

  She stroked herself as she rode him, torn between wanting this to go on forever and wanting to reach the edge of pleasure that danced just beyond her grasp. Ryu made the decision for both of them. He hooked the back of her neck and towed her down to claim her mouth. He kissed her as she rode him and it was too good, too perfect. She came with a cry that he took into himself.

  He lifted her and switched their positions, spreading her out on the couch and pounding into her as he chased his own pleasure. He was so beautiful like this, his powerful body moving in strong thrusts, his expression somewhere between agony and bliss. He came with a curse and slumped down next to her.

  Delilah stared at the ceiling, trying to make sense of this new world she occupied. She suspected sex would be world-shattering, but her imagination hadn’t know the half of it. All she wanted to do was arch against him like a freaking cat and maybe eat a snack before they went for round two.

  Her gaze tracked down to their pile of clothes on the floor. The pile of clothing that contained Ryu’s phone.

  Damn it, but she didn’t have a choice.

  She had to get his phone.

  Now.

  CHAPTER 10

  Delilah almost didn’t take the phone. After what just happened with them, the desire to confess everything was stronger than ever. She knew better. Sex was something she’d never been able to separate from emotions, and just because she liked the way he fucked her didn’t mean she could trust him with Esther. Even if Ryu—the Horsemen—decided not to remove Delilah entirely, they had no vested interest in her sister. To protect themselves, all they had to do was ensure Delilah didn’t follow their enemy’s orders. They certainly wouldn’t launch an effort to keep Esther safe. She was just a girl to them. A stranger.

  No, there was no other way.

  She slipped into the bathroom touched the phone screen. To unlock it required tracing the correct pattern, but she’d seen Ryu do it once last week. Delilah held her breath and dragged her finger over the screen. Maybe he’d changed it since then. He seemed the type to update his security often.

  It unlocked.

  Feeling sick, she pulled up the messages app and typed out the number she’d been given. A few seconds later, the phone buzzed with an incoming message. A link to click that would no doubt give them access to all Ryu’s information.

  “Delilah?”

  She jumped and almost dropped the phone. “One second.” She clicked the link, waited a few seconds, and erased the message. She’d done it. It was over. She quickly dressed and tucked the phone into the pocket of his balled up jeans and walked back into the room. “Sorry, I grabbed your pants by accident.”

  Ryu stood in front of the glass, gloriously naked. The sight of him actually stopped her breath in her lungs. She set his jeans down and hesitated. Now was the time to make her excuses and get out. He was so tense, he obviously expected her to do exactly that. It left her feeling jagged and all sorts of tangled up. Better to meet his expectations now than to try to continue this farce.

  Except it didn’t feel like a farce when she was with him. It felt as natural as breathing. She’d told him things she’d never talked about before—not even with Esther. Oh, Delilah made sure her sister had a therapist as soon as she could afford one, but paving the way for Esther to heal was very different than sitting down and talking about all the horrible crap their father had done over the years. Better to leave it in the murky depths of the past, to ignore it between the times it rose and she had to beat it back.

  Even without Ryu going into much detail about what he’d gone through, she felt a kinship there. They’d both survived. They’d both keep surviving, no matter what.

  That connection had her crossing to stand in front him and smiling into the tension he was doing a piss poor job of hiding. “I wasn’t running.”

  “I know.” He turned and looked at her with a strange expression, as if he’d never seen her before
. Her heart stuttered in response, but before she could think of something else to say, he kept speaking. “Have dinner with me.”

  The sheer want that rolled through her at his command nearly sent her to her knees. She wanted to spend more time with him—both in and out of bed. Giving into that temptation was a mistake. If it was just Delilah in the mix, she’d take her chances and go for it. But she wasn’t the only person her decisions affected, and she’d never do anything to jeopardize Esther.

  Maybe you shouldn’t have slept with him, then.

  She forced a smile. “Ryu, it’s like four in the morning.”

  “Tonight then.” He set his hands on her shoulders and ran them down her arms and back up again. “I’d like to get to know you better, Delilah.”

  She wanted to get to know him better, too. She wanted to dig into those little throwaway comments he’d made, to find out what made him tick, to just know him. It couldn’t be, though. This whole thing started off … Well, it hadn’t started off as a lie. She’d felt the connection zing between them when she danced for him, weeks before that goddamn phone ever showed up in her room. If things had been allowed to play out naturally, then maybe it would be different.

  Maybe a lot of things would be different.

  Worrying about maybes and lost opportunities wasn’t the road she wanted to travel into the future, though. She didn’t want to keep up lying to Ryu, even by omission. She’d completed the task set out for her. The only thing she really needed to do was put some distance between them and stay clear of whatever the sick piece of shit on the other end of the line was planning.

  What if they hurt Ryu?

  She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold. “We shouldn’t spend more time together.”

  Ryu raised an eyebrow, something like amusement lingering in his dark eyes. “Considering what we spent the last hour doing, I’d say that ship has long since sailed.”

  Hard to argue that, and if she kept resisting, he might stop to wonder why. Or that’s what she told herself as she slowly nodded. “Dinner sounds nice.”