Free Assassin by Lexxie Couper Page A

grasp.
    Slicing pain tore at her heart. She blinked, hot tears stinging her eyes. Tears? Tears? How had this happened to her?
    “Jaienna?”
    Zeric’s voice was soft. She looked at him through a blur of salty grief. This was it; he would tell her to leave. “Jaienna, love? What’s wrong?”
    A question? Didn’t she–?
    “Tell me what’s making you sad.”
    The worry was clear in his voice. It completely destroyed her confusion over the never-before failed plant. Her heart gripped harder instead on the cold pain eating at it and fresh tears threatened to wet her cheeks.
    “Don’t ask me questions,” she whispered. “Don’t be nice to me.” Her pussy still held his cock. She could feel his strength and heat inside her, like a charge of life-giving energy. Energy she must deprive herself. “I don’t deserve it.”
    Zeric shifted, never letting their bodies separate as he gently lowered her back down onto the bed. “Jaienna,” he touched her face, tracing her lips with his fingertips. “Let me take away your pain.”
    It was too much. Her heart broke. She clung to him.
    He held her silently, giving her his warmth. Through his arms, his lips. He pressed his lips to her damp cheek, kissing at her tears. “Whatever it is,” he murmured, “I will make it better. I promise.”
    She closed her eyes. Take this one moment, Jaienna. You will never have this again. Take this one moment for yourself and then get the hell away from him .
    I can’t. Not while Bhel’s killer is still alive .
    Opening her eyes again, she met his gaze. “You have no idea who I am.”
    “I know,” he said. “But let me show you who I am.” And he reached for the chains hanging behind her back and placed them in her hands.
     

Chapter Six
     
    The manacles were icy on his skin. It was a shock to his flesh, burning and flushed from the feverous desire coursing through his veins. Without lifting his head, he looked at Jaienna.
    She knelt before him, naked and nubile. The long silky curtain of her hair fell over her shoulders in a cascade of wild copper waves, hiding the expression on her face. He wished he could see her eyes. He would know what she was thinking, feeling, if he could gaze into their clear green depths. Instead, he had to guess what was going through her head as she locked the manacle around his right wrist.
    Jezu, what was he doing?
    A cold metal chink told him his left wrist was now also locked in steel, and without moving his gaze from the woman kneeling before him, he gave the chains a gentle tug. It had been a long time since they’d been put to use.
    He pulled in a long breath, feeling his blood surge through his body. He shot a quick look at his wrists.
    Chained. Contained.
    Controlled.
    He’d never been more vulnerable. Or scared.
    Or excited.
    His control of the beast licking through his veins was becoming shakier. More tenuous. But it was still there. Just. His last orgasm had almost been too much. He’d felt the wild animal struggling to break free, to consume him. But Jaienna’s passion had been stronger. As had his own; an emotion he didn’t want to analyze that scorched through him, choking the thick brutal hunger of the beast and forcing it down.
    He gave the chains another sharp tug. What might happen next would change his life. He couldn’t let it end Jaienna’s.
    Would she stay and make love to him, or would she flee?
    Wordlessly, he raised his eyes and found her studying him. Hot blood flooded into his painfully stiff cock. What smoldered in her clear green irises was a passion so forceful, any thought of telling her to leave—to escape with her life now—vanished. He leant forward, the chains rattling as he offered his body to her.
     Her lips brushed his lightly as her soft warm palms smoothed up his arms, over his shoulders and down his chest. When her fingers touched his nipples, gently at first and then with more pressure, a low groan escaped his throat. She captured the raw sound with her