Claiming My Sweet Captive

Cristian finally cut her. He grazed a crimson line across her collarbone, the cut shallow but painful as the metal grated against bone. Her scream ripped into me.

I wanted her screams for myself. I wanted her tears.

But not like this. Not with blood. And not with Cristian.

He hooked the blade through the little strip of cotton that connected the cups of her innocent white bra, parting the fabric and exposing her.

Her scream choked off on a sob. She was terrified, humiliated.

“What do you think, hermanito?” he asked me. “Is she pretty enough for you? She’s not a great beauty, but her nipples stand out nicely against her pale skin.”

My gaze locked on her dusky pink nipples. They were peaked from the coolness of the knife on her flesh. Just as Cristian said, they were pretty and perfect against her alabaster skin.

She began to shake violently, the cold of the blade sinking deep into her bones as she started going into shock.

“And her eyes are quite lovely,” Cristian continued in detached observation. “So much fear there. You like when they’re frightened, don’t you, Andrés?”

My only answer was a low grunt. I didn’t want to admit it aloud. I didn’t want him to hear the eager rasp in my voice. He really was going to give her to me. He had hurt her, but I’d patch her up and take care of her. She probably wouldn’t see it that way, but she’d come around, once I trained her.

Cristian’s knife finally left her skin to slice through the ropes that bound her wrists. She slumped forward, and I immediately closed the distance between us to catch her before she slid to the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cristian’s smirk. He knew he’d just given me a gift, and he also knew he could take it away at any time.

I did my best to school my features to a blank mask, so he couldn’t see how badly I wanted to get her away from him. No one should see her bare body but me from now on. He might not find her beautiful, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t touch her just to taunt me.

I lifted her slight frame up and cradled her against my chest, holding her fragile body with care. For a moment, her sky-blue eyes caught mine. Then they rolled back in her head, and she went limp in my arms as her terror finally overwhelmed her.

My gut clenched. She was as frightened of me as she was of Cristian’s knife.

“You’re welcome,” Cristian drawled. “It’s been a while since you had a plaything, hasn’t it? If you’d just make use of our whores, you wouldn’t be so needy.”

I ground my teeth together, saying nothing. Those women were kept drugged to make them compliant. It made me sick. I might have my own deviant perversions, but I’d never raped a woman. I wouldn’t.

Cristian sighed, disappointed that I hadn’t risen to his bait. “Make sure she’s telling the truth about being a fed,” he ordered. “Then I’ll decide what to do with her. Until then, she’s yours.”

Mine. I pulled her tighter against my chest. Cristian smirked again. I turned sharply and strode toward the elevator that would take me up to my penthouse, carrying my precious prize with me.

Chapter 1

I laid her slim body down on my bed and placed the necessary items to tend her on the mattress beside her: damp cloth, surgical glue, sedative. The last was in case she turned out to be a more formidable opponent than I suspected. She claimed she was a trained FBI field agent. She might be small, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be fierce. Once she woke up, I’d have the drugs nearby as a precaution. I wasn’t too concerned about her ability to overpower me, but I wasn’t stupid enough to underestimate her, either.

For now, I needed to clean the bloody cut on her collarbone and glue the wound closed. As soon as I touched the antiseptic-soaked cloth to her torn skin, she hissed and bolted upright.

I gripped her upper arms and pushed her back down. She squirmed and kicked out in blind panic, her fingers curling and clawing ineffectively.

Not so formidable, after all.

If Samantha was a field agent, she was either not very well trained or she’d never been in a high-stress scenario before. Her physical defensive reaction should be far more methodical, precise, and ingrained.

I grasped her wrists to save my skin from her raking fingernails, pinning them against the mattress at either side of her hips. She whined and writhed, and blood oozed from the cut on her collarbone.

“Calm down, cosita, or I’ll have to restrain you,” I warned.

I grumbled my disapproval of her continued flailing. She was giving way to panic

, and she was only preventing me from treating her injury.

I lifted her arms above her head and quickly secured her wrists in place with the cuffs I kept attached to my bed. Her struggles only increased, and she twisted her body in an effort to kick out at me. She might not be very skilled, but she was still a fighter at heart. She was terrified, and her instinct was to try to escape. She could have just trembled and cried and surrendered to her fate, but she wouldn’t give in so easily.

I’d enjoy the challenge she posed.