Chapter 5

I’d made my share of dumb decisions but this one took the fucking trophy.

Lying was always a gamble, but lying to Dominic Sokolov? That wasn’t a gamble. That was sticking a gun between your teeth and pulling the trigger just to see if the chamber was empty. 

It was suicidal.

Men like him didn’t forgive mistakes; let alone deception. They slit throats for being looked at wrong, burned men alive for breathing too loud. And here I was, feeding him the clumsiest, most see-through lie in the history of lies.

A stripper who’d never been touched. Jesus fucking Christ. What was I thinking?

The words had sounded insane even as they’d left my mouth. It was a lie too stupid to work on anyone with two brain cells, let alone a man like him.

And I was good at lying—fuck that, I was great at it. I could cry on cue, bat my lashes until some poor bastard swore I was head over heels. I could lie about anything, everything, and men would eat it up. Every. Single. Time. But Dominic wasn’t supposed to fall for it.

But he had. 

He'd taken the bait.

The city lights bled into long streaks of gold and red as we hit the highway, racing toward only God knows where. Could be a penthouse or maybe a slaughterhouse. With someone like him, odds were fifty-fifty. Still, the destination didn’t matter. What mattered was that he’d picked me. Out of all the girls at the club, he’d chosen me. And one way or another, he was going to regret the fuck out of it.

I dragged in a breath, inhaling the suffocating smell of leather and expensive cologne that saturated the car as I glanced around. The interior screamed money. Even the doors felt too heavy, too thick. Bulletproof, obviously. 

A partition cut us off from the driver, a slab of tinted glass or steel or both. The guy behind it was invisible and probably had a Glock tucked under his arm and a knife in his boot. I couldn’t even hear him breathe. He was a ghost. For all I knew, Dominic didn’t need a driver. Maybe the car drove itself. 

I couldn’t see the convoy behind us but I knew they were there trailing us with watchful eyes. Bodyguards. Soldiers. Men whose only job was to kill or die at Dominic’s command. If I so much as sneezed funny, they’d put a bullet through my skull before I could blink.

So, yeah. Trying something stupid wasn’t exactly on the menu tonight. Not yet.

I sat there, wrapped in the coat Dominic had thrown around me when he dragged me out of the club. I was still in my fucking thong and bra because he hadn’t let me collect a single thing. I was just a half-naked little lamb he’d plucked from the herd.

Humiliating.

But also perfect.

Inside, my blood was fizzing. A mix of nerves, disbelief and the sharp heady rush of playing this close to death. Still unbelieving that he'd actually bought my lie. But that was the thing about men, they saw what they wanted to see. And they wanted to believe in their own power so badly that when someone like me threw them a lie, a gift-wrapped in wide-eyed innocence, they took it without blinking.

Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe he hadn’t bought it at all. Maybe he was just waiting. Letting me dig my grave deeper, watching as I buried myself alive.

I glanced sideways, taking in his profile that had no business looking that lethal. Too beautiful for someone so ugly inside. He hadn’t said a word in the thirty minutes we’d been locked in this car, and the silence was starting to itch under my skin. 

His eyes stared forward like they were seeing something far beyond the tinted glass as his left hand drummed a slow, measured rhythm against his thigh like a man counting down to something only he knew.

Finally, he turned. And fuck, the weight of that gaze nearly stopped my lungs.

"Comfortable?" He asked.

My lips parted and my voice cracked on purpose. "Y-yes." I made it sound like I was scared to speak too loud. Like I thought even answering wrong would get me killed.

His mouth curved but not into a smile but something that made my stomach twist.

His eyes flicked down over the coat, lingering on the bare strip of thigh that peeked out. "Of course you are," he said in a lazy voice. "A woman in your line of work... You must be used to being half-dressed in strange men’s cars."

My blood ran cold.

Was that… sarcasm? It was said so lightly, so casually, I almost missed it. But there was a bite underneath it. A jab aimed straight at the lie I’d told.

Shit. Did he know?

No. He couldn’t. He was just testing me. Prodding to see if I’d flinch.

I let out a nervous little laugh, shaky and awkward, like it had been dragged out of me. "I-It’s different when the man is you," I whispered, ducking my head, handing him submission on a silver platter.

His chuckle was low and dark. And it made every hair on my body rise.

"Flattery," he drawled. "You wear it well. Almost as well as innocence."

I swallowed hard, let my face flush with manufactured embarrassment, clutching the coat tighter. Letting him think he’d made me squirm.

He leaned back, fingers tapping once more against the armrest. Relaxed. Amused. Watching me.

In one fluid, shockingly fast motion, he closed the distance between us, and his hand, large and warm, came up not to my face, but to the lapel of the coat I clutched like a shield. His knuckles brushed the sensitive skin of my collarbone and my pulse kicked into overdrive as I sat there frozen wondering what he was up to.

"Let’s see the merchandise," he said, his voice dropping to an intimate, dangerous purr. "The untouched merchandise."

My first instinct was to break his wrist. To drive the heel of my hand into his nose. To show him exactly what this ‘merchandise’ was capable of. But the lamb didn’t fight the wolf. The lamb trembled.

I forced my grip on the coat to loosen as my heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat he had to feel in the air between us.

His fingers, impossibly deft, slid the heavy fabric from my shoulders. It pooled around my waist, baring me from the waist up. The cool air hit my skin, pebbling my nipples instantly against the flimsy lace of my bra. His gaze dropped, intense and focused, tracing the lines of my body with a possessiveness that felt more violent than a touch.

"Look at you," he breathed, the words almost a sigh. His thumb stroked the crest of my shoulder in a slow circular caress that felt like a brand. "All that smooth, perfect skin. No one’s ever laid a hand on you? Not once?"

I shook my head, a barely-there movement. "No."

I caught that flicker of skepticism in his eyes and knew he was on the verge of calling my bluff. I needed a diversion, a way to steer him off that line of questioning. 

My gaze drifted deliberately, sliding from the intensity of his eyes down to the hard plane of his jaw, the curve of his lips, then teasingly back up as I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth subtle enough to make him want to lean closer, to forget the doubt threading through his mind.

It was a game I’d used on countless marks, and it had always worked; distract, entice, make them forget their defenses, even for a heartbeat. And by the way his pupils darkened and his jaw tightened, I could feel it; he was hooked, his focus on me, completely and utterly, just as I’d intended.

His thumb slid from my shoulder, tracing a searing path down my arm. The touch was shockingly gentle, at complete odds with the predator in his eyes. 

"Such a shame," he murmured, his hand closing gently around my wrist. He lifted my arm, his eyes following the line of it as if studying a piece of art. "It's their loss, then."

He brought my hand closer and pressed his warm lips against the frantic pulse point on my wrist. I froze. Every nerve in me went on high alert, like my body couldn’t decide whether to melt or bolt. My stomach turned, a mix of revulsion and something I wasn’t ready to name.

"You’re so fucking lucky it'll be me taking you first," he murmured against my wrist in a low voice, his hot breath washing over the sensitive skin. "Because I'm not just going to fuck you, I'm going to carve myself into you. Every gasp, every goddamn whimper, every twitch of your cunt...you’ll fucking remember it every time you close your eyes."

A shudder I couldn't control wracked my body as heat bloomed low in my stomach, spreading fast, shamefully fast, until my thighs pressed together like I could smother it out. 

God, I wanted to slap that smug, too-perfect face for even thinking he could shove his sad little limp noodle he called a dick in me. At the same time, some dark, stupid part of me leaned toward him, wanting him to keep talking until I shuttered from the very thing I swore I'd never give him.

Before that sickness could spiral, the car slowed, rolled to a stop. Headlights cut across a mansion that had to be his, shadows pooling like ink across the driveway. Relief shot through me so sharp it almost hurt. Perfect timing. I needed to get the hell out of this car before I did something I would regret.

The driver’s door clicked open, and the air outside seemed to hold its breath. 

One step over that threshold, and everything would change.