Heartless Hero (Crowne Point 1)

At my question, he turned, rotating me with him, and slid a jean-clad knee between my bare thighs. His eyes locked with mine.

“Maybe.”

Mischief floated in his pale eyes, and fear collected like beetles in my gut. At my face, he grinned, sliding his knee deeper between my thighs.

“I told your mom you needed more security. She told me a lot of stories, like how you skinned your knee to get her attention.”

My gut dropped, and I tried to focus on anything but his jeaned thigh sliding between my bare ones, getting closer. Everything blurred—his eyes, his thigh—the plane’s engine the only thing clear.

“She really painted a picture of Abigail Crowne,” he said lowly. “A desperate, attention-seeking liar.”

Hurt and pain at being once again betrayed, and in the most brutal and primeval of ways, somehow heightened Theo. He slid deeper, getting closer to the apex between my thighs, and I was stuck on his eyes. His hand on my thigh. The coarse sensation of his jeans against my bare skin.

Move, Abigail.

Run.

I swallowed. “Oh.” It was all I could manage.

The plane hit some turbulence, and I broke out of his spell, using the opportunity to run away before Theo could do any more damage to an already brutally bruised heart, sprinting to the bathroom. Before I could even close the door, Theo slammed it open with one hand. The mirror shivered.

I should have known I wasn’t safe.

He shut the door behind us with a snick.

Inside, my mind was screaming: Please don’t do this, please don’t obliterate me once and for all.

I couldn’t let him see my vulnerability, so I looked left, right, eyes landing on a vase, and chucked it at him. He dodged it easily with a laugh and it shattered to pieces behind him.

He took a step closer and I turned around, focused on

the black marble sink. The bathroom was the size of some of our guest bathrooms at Crowne Hall, but it felt too small. Much too small.

He wrapped his body around me, and I felt every inch of him—the roped muscles of his forearms, the warmth and security of his biceps.

His sharp hips.

His hard cock.

I tried not to like it, tried not to melt into his embrace. I turned into my shoulder so he couldn’t see my cheeks heating.

He pushed into me, and a small, treacherous groan fell from my lips. I ground back against him, losing myself.

“That was the moment I knew, Abigail.”

My stomach dropped. He was going to gut me, but I was a junkie searching for her next fix. Even though I knew he would hurt me, I couldn’t not ask for the pain.

“Knew what?”

“There was no going back. Not with you. I’d rather be kicked to the curb by you than brought home by anyone else. You could leave me over and over again like the fucking dog I was, it didn’t matter. All I could think as she spoke was…” His lips found the side of my neck. “I’m yours forever, Abigail.”

Our eyes met in the mirror. “Don’t you know that yet?”

He bit the skin he’d previously been sucking and his name fell from my lips, relief flooding my veins like an opioid.

Theo tortured me. All morning he’d kept me on the brink of misery. And the sick part? I liked it.

Because Theo knew me. In the same way he’d physically kept me on the edge last night, twisting the high inside me until I rode the razor-thin line between pleasure and pain; he did it emotionally. Fuck me physically, emotionally; I needed what only he could give me.