Enemy Sworn (10 page)

“Try all you want,
diablita
, but know that each time you attack me, my word not to touch you is null and void. I
will
strike back.” He nipped a tight nipple. “And you will not like my tactics.”

“Argh!” she snarled. “You won't have me like that again.” She head-butted him. He shouldn't have been surprised by her tenacity of attack but he was, and in the brief second it took for it to sink in that she had head-butted him, his grip loosened long enough for her to swipe her arms up so that she could roll out from under him. She moved backward on her haunches, looking every bit the primal princess she was. His dick throbbed against his thigh. He stood, grinning from ear to ear. As he held her with his gaze, he stripped off his jeans.

Her eyes widened as she caught the thickness of his erection. “You don't play by any rules but your own, Sophia. You want to kill me, and I want to fuck you. So badly I would gladly give my life for one more time inside you.”

“Liar,” she hissed, moving backward as he dropped to all fours and, despite the pain of his wounded shoulder, moved toward her like the hungry lion he was.

“I am dying to fuck you.”

“Liar!” she hissed again, looking to either side of her for escape. But she was wedged in between the back of a sofa and the wall. Riveted on her, he ignored her rising panic. Every time she moved her legs, her glistening pink sex peeked out from between her thighs. His dick lengthened at the sight and his balls tightened. He wanted her bad. And he was going to have her again. Just as soon as she realized it too.

“A man who takes what he wants by force risks nothing to get it!”

“I risk my life to take you again, my beautiful liar.” He moved closer and his voice lowered to a husky rasp. “You liked what I did to you at the club. You were so hot and bothered for me you couldn't stand.” His dick jerked heavily between his legs. “And you liked the feel of me downstairs despite the fact that we had an audience.”

“Shut up,” she said.

“You were so wet. I felt it, the moment you gave yourself over to me. If only we had had more time, you would have come. Hard.” He was within an arm's length of her. “Have you ever come hard, angel?”

She swallowed and shook her head.

“Then you're in for a treat, because your body was made for what I'm going to do to it.” His gaze dropped to the Y at her thighs. Her blond curls damp with her cream. “You're wet now. Because you want what only I can give you.” He smiled, moving incrementally closer. She was mesmerized. Her wide dark brown eyes unblinking. Her nostrils flaring like a doe's knowing she was in the hunter's crosshairs and powerless to stop the bullet. Her plump lips parted and dewy. He groaned as he visualized their lushness wrapped around his aching dick. “The scent of your desire is strong. And you're my wife. Stop fighting it.”

“You killed my fiancé.”

“He killed my brother.”

Mateo stopped inches from her. All he had to do was reach out and touch her. It was all he wanted to do, yet he would never force her. “Come to me,” he said softly.

She raised teary eyes to him. Unable to help himself, Mateo touched a fingertip along the high arch of her cheekbone and caught a teardrop. He lowered his lips to it and kissed it from his finger. “That's what I want to do to your entire body. From the top of your head to the tips of your toes.”

When her body trembled and she shook her head, he moved closer, so close their body heat reflected off the other's. Closing his eyes, he sank his nose into her hair. “You smell wild and untamed.”

She gasped in a small breath. His hand slid down her back to the rise of her ass. “Forgive me my trespass. I'm sorry the man who killed my brother was your intended. I can't take back what I've done.” He slid his nose along her hair to the rise of her cheek. “Can you forgive me?”

She pushed out of his embrace and loudly exhaled. Not answering him. He knew she didn't care about Javier, it was her pride that kept putting space between them. A way to keep herself from what she really wanted.

When she moved to turn away, he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him so that she was practically sitting on his lap. Not letting her go, he crouched behind her and pushed her forward so that she had to put her hands out to break her fall. In doing so, she was on all fours, her sweet ass brushing against his rigid cock.

He moaned as her scent wafted to his nose. His arm tightened around her waist as he moved over her and whispered in her ear, “Do you deny you want me?”

Her entire body trembled violently beneath his. He spread her thighs with his knee. It took everything he had to keep from sinking into her.

“I won't deny it,” she choked out. “And I hate that I do.”

His cock throbbed painfully against her ass cheeks. When he pressed his lips to her shoulder, the head of his cock slid up between them. Gritting his teeth, he hoarsely said, “I want you so bad right now, Sophia.” He nipped her shoulder, causing her to moan and wag her ass against his erection. “Tell me it's okay, angel. Tell me it's okay to make you mine again.”

She made a low, stifled sound, and had he not been looking, he would have missed the slight nod of her head. He didn't need permission twice. He moved back, grabbed his cock and steered it into her hot, slick pussy. She cried out as he slid slowly into her, and he thought there was never a better feeling.

“Jesus,” he rasped, grasping the cradle of her hips as he closed his eyes and experienced the sublimity that was Sophia's pussy. “You are so fucking tight.” He pressed so deeply into her, he could not go farther. “So fucking wet.” He ground his hips into her ass. “So fucking hot.”

When he pulled back, almost completely out of her, then thrust deeply into her, she cried out again. It was a deep, primal sound of intense pleasure. When he did it again, she screamed. She screamed again and again, and he loved it. He loved that he was her first and that she loved the feel of his cock inside her, and despite their being virtual strangers she was as hungry for him as he was for her. There was something kinetically charged between them. He had no idea what the hell it was, and he wasn't going to try and pick it apart and analyze it. He was just going to go with it. But one thing was for sure, whatever it was between them made having sex with her the best he had ever had.

His thrusts built in momentum. He was so close, and she was sobbing, begging him not to stop.

He pounded into her, his heavy balls slapping her pussy lips, and he knew she was close to losing it. “Come for me, angel. Show me how much you love my cock inside of you. Come all over me.”

Her low moans of enjoyment grew deeper, longer, more intense. As they came closer together, he slid his hand around to her clitoris and plucked it, causing her entire body to shudder. He plucked it again, his hot breath on her back. “Now, angel, come for me now.” He pinched her clit and slammed into her at the same time and she launched. Her keens of release a glorious sound. Her pussy constricted tightly around his cock, and he let go. And for the second time in less than an hour, he came inside of the sexiest woman he'd ever met.

She collapsed onto the rug, her body shaking with the aftershocks of their sex. Mateo carefully withdrew from her, liking the feel of the warm rush of his seed that came with him. He moved to the side of her and pulled her knee up just enough to see his thick, creamy ejaculate ooze from her.

He smiled and pressed his lips to her sultry mound. “There's something primal in me that gets off seeing my cum all over your pussy.” He slid his fingers along her swollen seam. “You're so swollen and pink, angel, your clit hard and so sensitive.” He swirled his finger around her, eliciting a rise of her pelvis and a low moan. He looked up at her quivering breasts.

“You like what I do to you?” he asked, pressing his lips to her belly button.

“Yes,” she rasped. Her voice was low and husky from her screams.

“Do you want me to take you there again, angel?”

She moaned, and when she dug her fingers into his hair, it did something to him. He wanted her to come to him, to reach out when she wanted him. Not to have to seduce her each time he wanted her.

It was time he told her some of the truth of why he was there. Perhaps that would soften her damn pride some. He kissed his way up her belly, between her tits to her chin, then took her chin in his hand and gazed deeply into her eyes. “I want to be a part of this family. I'm willing to work my way up. To earn your respect and your father's.”

Parting her lips as if to say something, she closed her eyes instead. “You don't want this life.” She opened her eyes and held his. “
I
don't want it.”

That surprised him. “Why not?”

“Do you really have to ask that after what happened out there? I'm civilized. What we were forced to do before the entire family is not.”

“Then why do you stay?”

Her eyes glistened with tears. “Because I'm the last Dumas. Because my father needs me. Because I respect him and his code of honor even though I've let him down.” A tear streaked down her cheek. “Because I have nowhere else to go, and even if I did, as the only living heir of the great Dumas, there's not a rock on earth that I could hide under where I couldn't be found.”

His fingers dug into her. “Would your father kill you if you ran?”

“No, but he would make sure I was never presented the opportunity to run again.”

“I'll take you away from here if that's what you want.” He meant that.

She threw her head back and laughed. “And die trying.”

Mateo dropped the conversation. The only way he was going to get her to trust him was to keep the sexual relationship constant and intense. Because even she could not deny the animal attraction they had for each other. It was an in, a chink in her armor he would exploit if it meant getting her close and keeping her close. He didn't give a shit if she'd hate him for it. He cared about her safety more. And he would make sure she was safe when this was over. He groaned, thinking how feelings complicated matters. But it was what it was.

He moved back and stood, offering his hand to her. When she took it he hauled her up, but when she moved to break their connection he pulled her into him. “I'm here for the duration, Sophia. Your father can't scare me away and neither can you.”

He strode past her to a wide archway into what he assumed was the actual bedroom, because where they were was more of a sitting room. “I'm getting a shower, then I'm going to catch some shut-eye in your bed, which is now our bed and where I expect you to sleep beside me each night.”

“I won't.”

“Then I'll tell your father you're an unwilling bride.”

“Only a boy would run crying foul to my father.”

He grinned and raked his fingers through his hair. Grimacing in pain from the wound, he said, “A little boy who will do anything to play with his favorite toy.”

Something hard hit the wall as he hurried into the bedroom, but he was smiling. Damned if he wasn't intrigued by the enigmatic daughter of Dumas.

chapter ten

S
ophia ripped the top sheet from her bed and wrapped it around one of the pillows and waited. When her
husband
strolled in from the steamy bathroom with a towel wrapped around his lean waist, she glared at him. She was hopping mad.

He'd seduced her, taking her to a place she had never been and, damn it, she wanted more. At that moment she knew what a crack addict felt like when they needed a fix.

Catching him wince when he dragged his fingers through his damp hair, Sophia noticed his shoulder was inflamed, raw and pulpy. Served him right. If she cared, she'd call for Marta, the family midwife, and insist he get stitched up. But she didn't care.

As she walked haughtily past him, she slammed the pillow and sheet into his gut and said, “Your new best friends. Find a place in the sitting room to sleep with them.”

As she turned the showerheads on full blast, she heard him say, “They—like me—sleep where you sleep!”

Unsurprised, Sophia smiled, feeling giddy from his dominance, and stepped into the shower. She was crazy. Most women would be running for the hills. Not her. She was loving how the man in her bed relentlessly stood by her, fought for her and made it clear he wanted her.

She took her sweet time in the shower, telling herself that if she took long enough, maybe her husband would fall asleep by the time she was done. Still, part of her imagined him awake and aroused. And that aroused her.

Leaning back against the tile of the shower stall, Sophia closed her eyes as she remembered the most amazing thing she had ever experienced in her life. Her first and only orgasm.

Oh, she'd tried herself before, but as close as she got, she never quite made it. Surprise, surprise, Mateo had no problem. He knew things about her body she didn't. Just where to touch.
How
to touch. And the way he talked to her? Holy hell. She closed her eyes, imagining his warm breath on her ear, telling her how much he liked fucking her. His words alone could make a girl come.

She forced herself to tamp down her high school giddiness. She wasn't fifteen experiencing her first crush. Ugh, worse, she was twenty-four experiencing her first crush! The more she thought about her situation and the way she felt, the more ludicrous it sounded. That man out there was a killer. He had killed her fiancé, and there was a part of her that was sad for Javier's loss of life, but Javier was still a criminal, just a more highly evolved one than most. So was her husband. He was an infamous assassin! And he'd had the audacity to walk into her home like he already owned her and everyone in it, and then demand her body as if he had the right to her. Her heart pounded. No one had ever fought for her before. Not even her mother. She just ran away.

Sophia wanted to be angry with Mateo for his ballsy move to claim her, but she felt the complete opposite. It excited her. He'd bested Javier, who never would have stood up to her father for her, then Mateo challenged the almighty Dumas and Tony for the right to her! He was truly loco. But could she blame him for his power play?

The person she should be angry with was her father for handing her over to a complete stranger. What if he was diseased or deranged? Papa didn't care so long as she produced an heir. Angrily she turned the water off and yanked a towel from the hanger. She wasn't a piece of property. She was a proud woman with feelings. She deserved to pick her husband. To
choose who she slept with. Choose if and when she wanted children!

Not her father and not Mateo.

The two sides of who she was were often on opposite ends of the vengeance scale. Like love and hate, only a thin line separated the two. On one hand, because she was programmed to be a Dumas, she was honor bound to marry Javier. But as a modern woman, her anger and frustration with her father and his archaic ways, which included forcing her to marry a man she did not love, much less respect, made her want to shed everything Dumas and go somewhere where she could live her life on her terms. All her life her father had made her choices for her. She didn't want him or her husband, regardless of the circumstances of their marriage, to make decisions for her. She wanted the freedom to make them herself.

She looked over at the closed door and thought of the man on the other side of it. He was the key to her leaving this life behind her. He just didn't know it yet. But how to convince him? He'd sacrificed so much to get here and in her bed! She shook her head, still stunned at his audacity. He wouldn't give it up simply because she asked him to. He would need a reason, one that was as enticing as the power her family could bring him. But what?

And time was of the essence. She couldn't continue having unprotected sex with Mateo. She had no doubt his sperm were like little swimming tanks. Her egg would never stand a chance if one of them came close. She'd just gotten over her period the day before she'd gone to the nightclub so she figured she had three days tops to play it safe. Then what?

She'd insist he cover up or refuse him. Ugh, refusing him sex when it was all she wanted from him was going to be near impossible. But she had to. Because a child was out of the question. If she bore Mateo a child, the child would be used against her, just as her father had used her against her mother. It broke her heart the day her mother kissed her good-bye. It broke her heart every day since.

So why, Sophia asked herself, did she stay?

At first it had been easy. She had been indulged. Though heavily guarded—for her protection, her father said—she went to the best schools. Could buy whatever she wanted. She traveled with her father and she saw the world. And each day she stayed it was because she knew that if she left, her sister would be alone. And that she could not do to her. Though Fatima and her brothers were from her father's first wife, she and Fatima were as close as full-blood sisters. They were all they had left in the world.

And then Fatima disappeared, and Sophia was alone anyway.

Now she was trapped.

Sophia smirked as she briskly toweled her long hair. She'd read a book in which the sassy heroine told her friends that men thought they were in control, but it was really the wily women, the ones who understood the power of their vaginas and the dominance it wielded over the penis, who controlled all. Because the penis would do
anything
to get the vagina.

And one thing was for certain, the penis taking up space in her bed wanted her vagina. She tossed the towel into the hamper. Problem was, her vagina wanted the penis just as bad.

She wasn't experienced in this subtle game of sexual chess. She was a girl who wore her feelings on her shirtsleeve.

When Mateo took her in the atrium, it took every fiber of her self-control not to give in to the pleasure of him. She hated that. Her weakness for him. He made it doubly difficult to despise him when he was so respectful of her feelings. She didn't know what to do with that.

That was the saddest thing of all. She had no clue how to respond to a dominant man who gave her choices. As she dressed, much of her anger at the wounded man in her bed dissolved. If anything, she should thank him for breaking her out of the jail her father had constructed around her since the day she was born. Granted, she was in another jail, but this one held promise in the escape department.

Could she gain her husband's trust before her father sank his hooks in deep and pulled Mateo completely over to the dark side, where she would forever be a prisoner with no hope of freedom?

Her heart tightened with emotion. Could she walk away from her father like her mother had?

Her life was in full-tilt mode and she didn't know how to begin to right it.

After slipping on a comfortable white linen kaftan, she strode into the bedroom, but stopped at the threshold. Mateo was lying naked on top of the sheets, his bad arm oozing blood through the pillowcase he'd wrapped around it.

Exasperated with herself for feeling bad for him, she moved to the edge of the bed and sat down beside him. When she reached for his shoulder, he shrugged her away.

“You want another piece of me?” he growled.

“No, I want to look at the wound.”

He held her gaze with hard, glistening eyes. When she touched his shoulder, it was hot. “It's getting infected. Let me take a look.” When he continued to glare at her, she exhaled and scooted closer to him. “I promise, I won't intentionally hurt you.”

“I can handle the physical pain.”

She gently unwound the linen. “I forgot, you're super loco Dark and Dangerous.”

“You ain't seen nothing yet.”

Carefully she pulled the bloody fabric away. The cut was deep. Wrinkling her brow, she said, “This needs to be sewn up.”

“Why not let me bleed to death?”

Sophia smirked, but asked herself the same question. “I may have use for you yet,
esposo loco
. Until I know for sure, it's in my best interest to keep you healthy.” And that was the simple truth, she told herself.

“Stay put while I call for Marta.”

Picking up the phone on the nightstand she pressed one button. “Please ask Marta to bring her sewing kit to my room, and ask Alma to make my husband and me lunch.” Sophia put her hand over the receiver. “Is there something special you would like?”

Despite the pain in his face, he smiled. “Yeah, but Alma can't deliver it.”

“Just whatever's on the menu today.”

When Sophia hung up she said, “You need clothes.”

“There's some in my saddlebags. Have someone bring them here, along with my boots that I left in the atrium.”

Sophia took care of it and made herself busy when Marta bustled in and got to work on Mateo's shoulder. Lunch came as Marta snipped the last thread, followed by Manny, her father's, for lack of a better word, butler, with Mateo's clothes.

When they were alone, Sophia sat down on the edge of the bed and handed him a glass of water and two antibiotics from the vial Marta had left on the nightstand.

He took them and relaxed back into the pillows. But his eyes were on her. He was flushed and, she could tell, in pain. “Would you like something for the pain?”

“No,” he groused.

Sophia nodded, feeling uncomfortable with the silence hanging between them.

“Would you have married him if I hadn't shown up?”

He spoke of Tony. “No,” she answered honestly. “Although on the drive home from the club he made his feelings known to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because my father had already picked a man.”

Not wanting to continue the conversation, Sophia stood and, taking the blanket folded across the foot of the big bed, she drew it up and covered him. “I'll be right back.”

•   •   •

As he waited for Sophia, Mateo wondered at her motives. One minute she was tearing him up and the next she was tending him like a wife should. It put him on guard. His shoulder burned like a motherfucker, but he'd be damned if he'd admit it.

He lay back into the soft, smooth linens. He could never remember being so comfortable in a bed. Hell, anywhere. It was like sleeping on a cloud with invisible support.

He fought the fatigue that stole over him, wondering what his reluctant wife was up to. She was an emotional yo-yo, and he wasn't going to take any chance that between the time she left and the time she returned, she'd changed her mind about killing him.

The door quietly opened.

His heartbeat spiked as she closed it behind her. Her long hair moved in thick waves around her waist. The simple white gown she wore was sheer and shapeless, but her long legs and curves gave it life. Her hard nipples teased the fabric and his imagination. His dick began to thicken beneath the soft blanket.

Her nostrils flared in response.

“How do you know?” he huskily asked, not taking his gaze off of her.

Her cheeks pinked modestly as she set down the clay jar she carried in with her on the nightstand. Once again she sat on the edge of the bed and touched his wounded arm. “It already looks better.”

He brushed her hair from her face and cupped her chin. “Answer me.”

Her eyes darkened to black. “I . . . can see it in the way you look at me. Your face, it changes. It softens and your nostrils flare just a little.” She smiled sheepishly and looked down at the rising blanket. Damned if that bad boy wasn't done for the day. “And there is that.”

He grinned. “Yeah, there is that.”

Her eyes softened but she looked sad. “What?” he asked her.

She took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. “I had dreams of love in my marriage. Not of being forced to marry a stranger.”

“But you knew how it would be, you live the life.” As innocent as she appeared, she took his life as an assassin in stride. To do that she had to know what her father did.

“My brothers and sister were the ones meant to bear the heirs. Their mother was a Bourbon, a descendant of the kings of France. My mother was Papa's second wife. A vivacious American heiress who he would do anything for. I was their only child. My purpose was never to bear an heir but to be the one to fly from the nest, not a care in the world. Because I was not of the correct blood on my mother's side, I was never given a second thought, and therefore I was allowed to dream of a different life.”

“What do you mean ‘of the correct blood'?”

“Correct blood is blood that can be traced back to our European ancestors. Dumas goes back to Bonaparte, my mother is a Swenson, Danish, and not of the correct blood.”

“So if you are not of the correct blood how can your children be heirs?”

“My father is Dumas, he can change the rules or make new rules.”

He had no doubt Dumas would find some kind of loophole. “You talk about love; don't you think you could love me?” he asked, wanting the truth and realizing her love would mean something to him. Mentally he slapped himself. Emotions fucked things up.