Raine - Marble Table

One huge hand low against my back guides me toward the entrance. The touch burns straight through my hoodie. The massive front doors open wider as we approach.

Inside is even more overwhelming.

Dark marble stretches endlessly beneath glittering chandeliers while soft classical music drifts through the air somewhere overhead. Massive oil paintings line the walls in heavy gold frames, portraits of dead men with cold eyes and expensive suits staring down, ghosts guarding the place.

Everything smells faintly of cedarwood, smoke, expensive liquor. Him.

Leon’s scent clings to the air around me already, dark and masculine and dangerous enough to make my stomach tighten every time I inhale. I become painfully aware of myself standing here in damp sneakers and an oversized damp hoodie while polished staff move quietly through the house pretending not to stare.

I don’t belong somewhere like this. I belong in fluorescent hallways that smell like bleach and cigarettes.

A massive black Cane Corso lounges near the staircase, easily the largest dog I’ve ever seen in my life. Thick muscle shifts beneath sleek dark fur while dark eyes track us the second we enter.

A thick leather collar circles its throat. The dog lifts its enormous head immediately when Leon walks in.

“Jesus,” I whisper before I can stop myself. Every survival instinct I possess lights up at once.

Leon steps beside me, close enough that heat radiates from his body.

“His name’s Nero.”

Nero rises slowly onto all fours, every movement looks powerful enough to break bones.

I swallow hard. “Does he bite?”

Leon looks at me, there’s something unreadable in his expression. Something darkly amused.

“Only when I tell him to.”

Nero walks toward us with eerie calm, massive paws silent against polished marble. He goes directly to Leon first. The huge dog brushes briefly against Leon’s leg before settling beside him again, sitting tall and silent, a bodyguard waiting for orders.

Watching me carefully.

The thick collar catches the chandelier light again and I understand exactly why it unsettles me. Controlled power, danger chained by someone even more dangerous.

A cold shiver slides slowly down my spine, Leon sees it.

“Cold?” he asks, voice low enough that it barely carries beyond us.

“No.”

His eyes drag slowly over me, taking in the damp hoodie clinging to my skin, the rainwater still dripping from the ends of my hair, the way my arms have folded tightly across myself, trying to protect me from him.

“Another lie.” He catches the hem of my hoodie.

I jerk backward, pulse jumping. “What are you doing?”

“Taking this off before you drip motel filth all over my floors.”

Shock flashes through me so fast it almost overrides the nerves. “Excuse me?”

A slow smile touches his mouth then, dark and dangerous enough to make my stomach tighten.

“There she is.”

The rough approval in his voice catches me completely off guard. As if he’s been waiting for me to stop shrinking away from him for five fucking seconds and finally bare my teeth instead.

Leon steps closer, his fingers brush slowly across my waist as he pushes the damp hoodie upward, and the touch sends heat flashing violently through my body. My breath catches when cool air kisses the strip of bare skin exposed above my jeans.

Leon’s eyes drop there and the entire room disappears. The chandeliers. The staff. The music drifting softly through this castle he calls home.

All I can feel is him standing in front of me, huge and dangerous and looking at my body, imagining exactly how it would bend beneath his hands. Heat radiates from him in waves. Smoke and cedar and expensive whiskey wrap around me every time I breathe, and the rough drag of his knuckles against my skin makes my knees feel weak enough to buckle.

My nipples tighten painfully beneath my shirt.

One large hand settles fully against my waist now, his fingers span nearly the entire width of me, holding me in place with terrifying ease.

“You’re scared of me,” he murmurs.

“You threatened to rip someone’s hands off, and another person's balls.”

His mouth twitches slightly. “Didn’t say you were wrong.”

That just sends another pulse of heat low through my stomach, dark and twisting and impossible to ignore.

When he stares at my lips, he goes still in that dangerous way predators do before they strike, focus sharpening into a living thing heavy enough to feel against my skin.

Hungry enough to make my pulse stutter painfully against my throat. I should step away before I do something catastrophically stupid. Instead I stand there trapped between the marble table behind me and the massive body in front of me, letting him look at me like that.

Maybe because I’m picturing those filthy things too.

As he steps closer, my lower back brushes the edge of the marble entry table, nowhere left to retreat when his hand slides from my waist to the side of my throat, his thumb drags slowly beneath my jaw while his eyes stay locked on mine, watching every shaky breath I take like.

Across the room, Nero is back beside the staircase and watches silently.

“Tell me to stop,” he says softly.

My brows pull together, because out of all the things I expected him to say, that wasn’t one of them. Beneath the roughness, beneath the simmering violence and the terrifying possessiveness in the way he touches me, there’s something else there too.

He’s hanging onto his last shred of control by his fucking teeth.

“You don’t listen to no very well,” I whisper.

A dark smile curves slowly across his mouth.

“Try me.”

His thumb strokes once more beneath my jaw before he kisses me.

There’s nothing gentle about it. The second his mouth touches mine I know that this has been building since the moment he stepped into the motel and looked at me like he wanted to own every terrified inch of me.

Heat explodes through my body, his hand tightens against my throat while the other grips my waist and pulls me flush against him. The sheer size of him surrounding me sends panic and desire crashing together so violently I can’t separate them anymore.

I make a small sound against his mouth, startled and breathless all at once. Leon swallows it.

The kiss deepens with hungry restraint that feels more dangerous than losing control entirely. His tongue brushes mine and my knees nearly give out beneath me. No one has ever kissed me like this. No one has ever touched me like they wanted to consume me whole.

My fingers clutch helplessly at the front of his shirt, wrinkling expensive black fabric beneath my fists. The muscles beneath it feel hard as stone, broad chest rising sharply when I grab him harder.

A rough sound leaves Leon’s throat at my clumsy actions, the noise shoots straight between my thighs. His hard length is pressed against my stomach through the fabric of tailored trousers. It’s huge and I can feel the heavy heat of it already.

He breaks the kiss just enough to look down at me, lips brushing mine while my breathing turns shaky and wrecked beneath him. My mouth is swollen already, my body burning with humiliating awareness when his gaze flicks downward.

Right where I’m pressed against him. A slow grin spreads across his mouth.

“Look at what you do to me,” he murmurs roughly.

I try to step back, his hand tightens on my waist, not letting me move more than an inch.

“Leon...”

“You feel that, Bunny?” The satisfaction in his voice makes the desire pool low in my stomach.

I shouldn’t want this. I really fucking shouldn’t, but my thighs press together anyway, searching for friction.

The look that crosses his face when he clocks the movement nearly ruins me.

“Fuck,” he mutters softly, forehead dropping briefly against mine.

His hand flexes against my waist hard enough to leave bruises later.

“You have any idea how hard it is not to bend you over this table right now?”