The Danger You Know

by Lily White

  The muscles in his ass are rock hard, flexing as he moves to face me again.

  “Do you approve?”

  I’m drooling is what I’m doing, and I was right about the golden color of his skin being natural. There isn’t a tan line on him.

  It isn’t fair how beautiful he is. Every feature carved from stone. A predator in both mind and body that has been studying me for so long.

  The words fall out of my mouth before I realize what I’m saying. “I want to taste you.”

  His eyebrows rise up, his teeth brushing over his bottom lip as his stare drops to my mouth.

  “I’m not sure I can trust you not to bite.”

  “Please.”

  He blinks, and his eyes trap mine again.

  Ari climbs onto the bed and crawls up my body, his hand gripping the belt. Straddling my chest, his knees dip the mattress at my sides as he wraps the leather around my throat and pulls the buckle down.

  It’s an idle threat, the soft pressure on my neck causing my breath to catch, my nipples to harden.

  His cock is right there for me to taste, the tip glimmering, the shaft thick.

  “It’s just an insurance policy,” he says as he wraps the end of the belt around his hand. “Bite and I pull.”

  I open my mouth, and he slowly dips his cock into my mouth, the salt of his skin a burst of flavor on my tongue, the head driving deeper when I prove I’ll be good.

  “Fuck...” He breathes out when I take his length and width, my cheeks sinking in as I suck.

  “You really are as dirty as I imagined.”

  His hips move as he thrusts inside my mouth, the buckle pinching my skin against my throat, but still I take him as deep as I can, spit leaking from the corner of my lips, his eyes watching as he fucks my face with a rhythm that is sinful.

  Damn it. I like the belt. Not that he’s pulled it tight, but just the threat of it. The control.

  Ari pulls out when I’m struggling to breathe around the girth of him, his eyes staring down at me with pure, ravenous lust.

  There is something so dark in his expression that I can’t blink, can’t tear my eyes from the beauty of this dangerous man above me.

  “You are such a tempting creature.”

  I shiver at the depth of his voice, the rugged edge of it.

  He pulls the belt from my neck and moves down my body, slaps it over my tits, and I cry out from the sensation. My nipples tingle, and I arch my back, demanding more.

  Instead, he grips a nipple between his teeth and sucks so hard I pull at my restraints, my fingers curling against the straps as he moves to the other breast.

  Another bite on the side of my breast, and I know he’s marking me again. But I don’t care. He can mark every inch of me as long as he promises not to stop.

  My skin tingles when he pulls his mouth away, his patience back in play as he nips at my stomach, dips his tongue in my navel and works his way down.

  Shoving my legs apart farther, he breathes me in again before covering me with his mouth to thrust his tongue inside me.

  I moan, my entire body rolling as his fingers trap my clit, his tongue teasing the walls of my opening.

  “God, please just fuck me already.”

  He looks up and grins. “So eager.”

  I stare down at him, not giving a damn how desperate I seem.

  “If you don’t shove your cock in me in the next three seconds I swear to God, I’ll find a way to murder you when you release me.”

  He nips the inside of my thigh and moves to notch the head against my pussy, his body leaning down and his mouth claiming mine as he pushes inside me with a slow thrust, stretching me open until he’s so deep that he fills me.

  I can taste myself on his lips and tongue, his hips moving to pull back and thrust inside again.

  My body breaks apart in less than a minute, the second orgasm tearing me apart as he moves faster and deeper.

  I’m swept away by the strength of it, his name rolling off my lips as my eyes clench shut.

  Eventually Ari is lost to his need, his hips moving faster, his cock driving deeper, and when a third orgasm shatters me beneath him, he finds his own release, pulling out fast enough that it spills on my stomach.

  I open my eyes to see him staring down at me. And for the first time, I think that I like when he watches me.

  Despite it all.

  Despite his questionable morality.

  I’ve always sensed him around. Always felt comforted by it.

  And I’m no longer sure I want him to stop.

  Ari

  While Adeline takes a shower, I slip into the living room to check up on Grant’s latest dramatic pleas for help.

  Dropping my weight on the couch, I scroll through local news on my laptop, watch the video clips of Grant feigning concern over his wife who’s been missing for weeks now, watch an interview with both him and his sister where they discuss the love Grant shared with Adeline, the devotion he claims they had for each other.

  It’s a load of shit I’ll shove down his throat when the time comes. He’ll learn the definition of devotion when he sees what I’m willing to do for her.

  “What’s your real name?”

  My head snaps up to find Adeline hovering in the doorway leading from the hall, her dark hair wet where it falls down her back, the t-shirt she wears hanging down to mid-thigh.

  Grant’s voice continues droning on from my computer as my stare locks to hers, and I groan at the question.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  She blinks, dark lashes framing her blue eyes when she glances at the computer and back to me. “Why not?”

  There’s no point in dancing around the truth anymore, not when I’m focused on ending this mess once and for all.

  “Because then I won’t be able to let you go when this is over.”

  Her eyes round for just a second, blood red lips pulling into a line before she takes a step into the living room and glances down to watch where she walks.

  Shattered glass and other objects litter the floor from when we’d fought, her bare feet unprotected against it.

  I think she’s heading to me as she crosses the room, but instead she goes to the bookshelf, sits on the floor and begins picking through the mess scattered on the floor, the pieces of her life I’d stolen.

  For a few minutes, she says nothing as she flips through the pages of an old spiral notebook she’d used as a journal.

  “You’re letting me go?” she finally asks, her voice soft, her stare locked to the words she’d written many years ago.

  Tapping a few keys on the computer to find more information on her soon to be dead husband, I answer, “That was always my intent. I just can’t do it now.”

  “Why not?”

  Adeline turns her head, blue eyes lifting to mine, the dampness of her hair soaking her shirt until I can see the outline of her breast beneath it.

  Closing the computer, I set it aside.

  “Because if I send you home, your husband will find you. He won’t let you live for too long. Only long enough for him to use you for whatever you’re worth to promote his business, and then he’ll find a way to make sure you can’t talk about what he’s done.”

  Her eyes drop to the journal in her lap, her hair moving to conceal her face. “You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”

  I would think the answer to that is a given. But she still wants to believe what I’m doing is wrong. And maybe it is. Stalking and murder are technically crimes. But I live more in a grey area where one has to consider my reasons.

  It’s why I prefer grey areas. There’s never a definite answer as to what’s right and what’s wrong.

  “He’s going to die,” I answer simply, leaving out my ideas on how it will happen.

  She doesn’t look at me, her body slouching forward as she focuses on the journal in her lap. I know she’s overthinking this.

  “He would have killed you if Lincoln didn’t get you out of that hous
e. And what’s to stop him from trying again? Even if it isn’t you, what’s to stop him from marrying again and doing the same thing to another woman?”

  Her head lifts, and she turns her body to face me fully. “It just seems wrong.”

  I shrug, my eyes drifting down to where her shirt rises up her thighs, to where her panties peek out, the bruises on her inner thighs. She notices and tries to cover herself with the book she holds.

  Grinning, I glance back at her face. “Wrong and right are subjective in my world.”

  “What is your world, Ari? I feel like you know everything about me, and I don’t know the first thing about you.”

  Because she doesn’t. Nobody knows much about me. Not even Lincoln.

  “Tell me your real name. Give me that, at least.”

  “If I do that-“

  “You can’t let me go regardless,” she says, her eyes pinning mine. “I know where you live. If I really planned to turn you in for everything you’ve done, I can direct them to your door.”

  Excellent point, and one I wish she couldn’t make. I would give anything to go back and change the events that led her here.

  It also removes any argument I have as to why she can’t know who I am.

  “I can’t tell you everything about me. There are things you won’t want to know.”

  My thoughts go to the way I’d wronged her, to the one sticking point that has doomed us from the very beginning. She still doesn’t know what happened with her father, and despite having thought about it, I have no good explanation for what I’ve done.

  Her father never threatened her. Never harmed her. His death was solely about money.

  Dropping the journal to the floor, Adeline pushes to her feet and crosses the room. Her hands lock over my shoulders and she lowers her body to straddle my lap. She brushes her fingertips down over my bare chest, traces the muscles in my abdomen as she studies me.

  I study her back, watching the way her eyes move over my skin, every tiny change in her careful expression.

  “I should hate you. And I do fear you. But at the same time, I want to know you.”

  Gaze lifting to mine, she pins me in place. “How crazy is that?”

  My pulse is steady beneath her hands, but still it feels as if my heart is ripping through my chest. To have her so close. To hear her speak to me as if she knows exactly who I am. It’s something I’ve denied myself for so long.

  “It’s insane,” I answer, my voice rough.

  Her head tilts just slightly, her mouth pulling into a teasing grin. “Isn’t that what you’ve admired about me?”

  My hands grip her thighs, a warning in the strength of my fingers. “You’ve always had the annoying habit of putting yourself in bad situations.”

  Smile stretching, she cups my cheeks with her palms, holding me in such a tender embrace that I realize I’ve never allowed any woman to touch me like this before.

  “Tell me your name. Give me one question a day to learn about you. We’re both already screwed in this. You can’t let me go, and you know it.”

  Quieting for a moment, she sighs. “And I’m not sure I want you to.”

  Fucking nuts. But then, she wouldn’t be Adeline if she wasn’t.

  My teeth clench at the thought of being honest. I haven’t told anyone my real name since the day I first killed someone. It feels too close to the truth of who I am.

  But if it’s honesty she wants, it’s honesty I’ll give her.

  “When you learn all there is to know about me, you’ll change your mind. You’ll run. Why ruin this?”

  She ignores the warning and hits me with a question that strikes right where it should, one that I’ve never bothered to ask myself in all the years I refused to approach her.

  “Why are you afraid for me to know you?”

  The simple answer is I killed her father. I think any person might find that objectionable.

  “What makes you think I’m afraid of anything?”

  Her eyes dart to the mess near the cupboards and all the evidence of my having stalked her for years before they return to me.

  “Why follow a person for as many years as you have and not say hello? I would have stopped to talk to you.” She laughs. “Actually, I guess I did several times. You were the one who walked off.”

  My lips purse because I’m cornered. Admit the truth, or lie? Or a mixture of both. This is where the grey area and lack of morals comes in handy.

  “I didn’t think you’d want to know me.”

  Not the full truth and not a lie. My conscience is clear.

  “Your name, Ari. Just tell me that. Or tell me when you first saw me. I deserve to know.”

  My hands lock tighter on her thighs and she winces at the hold.

  “You deserve to have your life. That’s what I’m giving you. The rest is inconsequential noise you don’t need clogging your head.”

  Anger flashes behind her eyes, but I don’t feel guilty for it.

  “Then I guess it’s back to us hating each other.”

  She moves to crawl off my lap, but I lock my hands to her waist, holding her still. Her eyes narrow, and I stare at her fury without giving her any sign it bothers me.

  “First, I’ve never hated you. So, you can hate me all you want, but know it’s one sided. And second, you’ll do as I tell you for now. After Grant dies you can do whatever the hell you want.”

  Our stares lock, hers incapable of hiding what she’s feeling or thinking while mine is cold. There is no negotiation in this.

  “Don’t come in my room when I’m sleeping anymore. Don’t touch me.”

  She tries to move again, but I hold on. I’ve always held on when it comes to her.

  Tilting my head, I allow my mouth to tug into a taunting grin. “That’s not what you said an hour ago.”

  Her hands slam against my shoulders as if that could dislodge me. I pull one hand from her waist to grasp the back of her neck. Tugging her face to mine, I bite her bottom lip, a playful sting that casts red across her cheeks.

  “So, you’d prefer I stand there and listen to you cry and fight all night? Don’t you find it odd that I’m the only person who can calm you down? That my presence is what helps you sleep? Stop being a child, Adeline. Your temper tantrums don’t affect me. At least, not in the way you hope they will.”

  “It’s not fair! I know nothing, and you know everything.”

  “Life isn’t fair. But you’re alive and safe at the moment. Get the fuck over it.”

  She tries to move, but my hands lock down harder, our battle still not over despite the momentary truce. To make matters worse, the silence between us is broken by the hum of the elevator motor, the telltale ding of the doors opening when an uninvited asshole arrives.

  Lincoln’s deep voice echoes through the space as he rounds the corner. “I came to make sure you two kids are still alive.”

  I hear his footsteps stop in place behind me and watch Adeline’s gaze lift to look at him over my head.

  “Your place looks like shit, Ari. Do I even want to ask what happened?”

  Without looking away from the pissed off woman on my lap, I answer, “We had a slight disagreement.”

  He moves into the room, his boots crunching over broken glass. “I can see that.”

  Slowly pulling my hand from Adeline’s neck, I drop it to her thigh, her body flinching at the contact.

  She jumps away immediately, tugs her shirt down and carefully winds her way through the carnage to go to her room. The door slams shut before Lincoln steps up to where I can see him.

  Turning my head, I stare up at the asshole. “We were in the middle of something. Calling ahead would have been polite.”

  Brown eyes meet mine, his mouth curling at the corner. “Nice bruise,” he says, rubbing at his jaw to indicate what he noticed.

  I stretch my jaw and sit back against the couch. “She has a hell of a punch.”

  Lincoln walks to grab my computer from the couch, tosses it in my
lap, and drops his weight on the sofa beside me.

  “Your boy has upped the stakes. You might want to stop pissing her off for the fun of it and check out the latest news. Grant has put out a two hundred thousand dollar reward for information on Adeline. And they released a nice police sketch of your face.”

  Son of a bitch. That’s the last thing I fucking need. Opening the computer, I run hasty fingers over the keys, eventually staring at a sketch that looks nothing like me.

  Thank fuck for that.

  “Who the hell would describe me with a forehead that big, a wide nose and no chin?”

  Lincoln laughs. “Only you would be worried that the sketch looks like an ugly motherfucker. Unfortunately, that’s just what he’s done out in the open. On non-official channels, Grant’s offered three million for your head. Adeline’s, too. It’s better for business if he can cry about a dead wife. Guess that also works out to keep her from telling the world what he did to her.”

  And here I thought I couldn’t hate Grant more than I already did. The method of his death keeps getting worse and worse for him, the special fuck you I have planned a cherry on top.

  My eyes snap to his, lip curling. “Are you here to kill me and collect?”

  Laughter rumbles his chest. “If it had been ten million, I might have considered it.”

  Cocking a brow, he glances around the penthouse, a low whistle blowing over his lips. “I take it you got her to fight.”

  “I’m going to teach her to kill, too,” I mention as I log in to Grant’s security system to see what he’s doing at home. If I’m going to have people gunning to take me out, I need to know who to expect. Not that many people know me, and the ones that do aren’t stupid enough to attempt it.

  “What the fuck are you up to now, Ari? She’s a kid. Not one of us.”

  “She’s twenty-three years old.”

  “Still a kid.”

  Glancing at him, I admit, “I killed my first man at her age.”

  Lincoln’s jaw ticks. “She’s not a heartless bastard like you. I have a feeling I already know what you plan to do, and it won’t work. She won’t do it.”

  He pauses, eyeing me with far too much intelligence behind his gaze. “And even if she does, it won’t make her understand your life any better. Take Grant out. Torture the asshole for days, if you want. But leave Adeline out of it.”