“What?” Her voice rose slightly in horrified protest.
“Don’t worry—sex is the last thing on my mind,” he said, a complete lie. Sex was all he could think about, but he wasn’t going to do anything about it. “We’re just going to sleep together, so you can get used to me.”
“I can get used to you, I promise.” She was sounding slightly panicked, but he simply shook his head.
“This will work better. You’re just going to have to put up with it.”
“Lie back and enjoy it?” she said bitterly.
“I told you, this isn’t about sex. It’s about familiarity.”
He wanted to kiss her. She was looking at him with such distrust, and he wanted to quiet that distrust, to distract her, to take them both to that dark, dangerous place where everything fell away but the elemental connection between man and woman.
No, he reminded himself. If you screw her she’ll hate you even more. Right now they had a job to do, and all his actions needed to be in service to that job. He turned her in his arms, tempering his strength with her reluctance, and then curved his body around hers, his leg still keeping her dangerous ones away from vulnerable parts.
She put up another fight, and she lay facing away from him, panting, furious. “I thought you said this wasn’t about sex,” she said after a long moment, and he knew she could feel his erection pressing up against her delectable butt.
“I said this wasn’t about sex,” he agreed. “I didn’t say I didn’t want you.”
She froze, as if the idea were novel. “Dream on,” she said finally.
“I intend to.”
She was wearing her underwear, which left vast amounts of skin uncovered, and she felt cold to the touch. He wrapped himself tighter around her, and slowly her skin warmed, slowly her heart dropped back to a normal pace. “That’s right, Parker,” he murmured in the ear he really, really wanted to bite. “Accept the inevitable, and trust in the fact that I already hurt you enough today. I’m not about to follow through and use sex to get what I want. I promise.”
“No sex and no violence?” she echoed with a trace of her old spark. “Now why don’t I believe that?”
“You can trust my word?”
Her laugh was bitter. “Until you change your mind.”
“No. No matter what happens, no matter how important it is, I promise you I won’t hurt you again.” It was an insane promise, one he couldn’t possibly keep if the stakes were high enough, and yet he made it.
“What’s to keep you from breaking your promise?”
“I make very few promises in this life,” he said after a moment. “Those I make, I keep.”
“You promise you won’t hurt me or . . . or try to seduce me?” she said in a small voice, her warm, sleek body still stiff in his arms.
“That’s not what I said and you know it. I said I wouldn’t hurt you. As for the rest, we’ll see what happens.” He kept his hands where they were, holding her against him, when he wanted nothing more than to slide them up her sleek torso to that damnable bra and slip it off her. “When two people are as strongly attracted as we are, then chances are something’s going to happen.”
“I’m not attracted to you. I hate you.”
“I believe you on the second. As for the first, I could prove you otherwise, but I’m too tired. Go to sleep, Parker. I’m not letting you go, so you’re just going to have to get used to it.”
“I hate you.”
“Don’t repeat yourself—it gets tiresome. Go to sleep, Parker. Or I just might change my mind.”
He could feel reaction shoot through her body. Alarm, and something else that she refused to recognize. Getting her warm and wet and willing was going to be an uphill battle, but he had every confidence of winning. In the meantime, he just needed to sleep.
Ryder actually expected her to sleep like this, with his big strong body wrapped around her and long bare legs entwined with hers? He was insane.
Damn him. If it were up to her, she’d never let him anywhere near her again. But it wasn’t up to her, and she realized with disgust that she was no longer trembling. Whether she wanted to believe him or not, apparently her body recognized when someone wasn’t a threat, and her muscles were slowly relaxing back against him, too weary to fight any longer. Her arm hurt, but by chance he’d managed to keep from making it worse in their struggles . . .
No, it wasn’t by chance. Ryder didn’t do things by chance. He knew he’d hurt her, he’d done it deliberately, but she had the sense he was shocked by her bruises. Maybe the other times he’d tortured women he hadn’t had to watch them undress afterward and see the results of his abuse.
No, scratch that. A man like Ryder could talk a ninety-year-old nun into bed, she had little doubt. There was an odd intimacy between them now, once they’d shared those moments of pain. It was sick, but it was the truth, and Jenny always believed in facing the truth head on. She wanted him to promise not to try to have sex with her, for the simple reason that sooner or later she’d give in. Even if her brain was screaming no, her body was molding itself to his in soft, animal acceptance.