Hunting Julian. Jacquelyn Frank
of restoring her sister to her.
Anything. Even if it meant completely seducing the repulsive beauty of this sociopathic Casanova.
Julian shut the door and dropped his keys on a side table, his eyes riveting onto her as she stood in a pose of proud display for him. Her Amazon’s body tantalized and teased, she knew, the provocative cling of her clothing an amazing lure to his innately male sexual need for visual stimuli. She had watched him and knew his every last preference. He didn’t care for any particular hair color, it seemed, but he tended toward women with long hair. He loved the long-legged ones most of all. He seemed to react very strongly to willfulness, enjoying fire and a bit of fight. Above all, he liked aggressive women. It wasn’t hard to figure out that Julian Sawyer was looking for either a rough ride or a good fight to get himself off.
Asia tipped one spaghetti strap to the very edge of her shoulder, silver sliding low against her breast and threatening to run free from the nipple it clung to.
Julian’s eyes ran dark, like evergreen as they fell to the tempting, teasing display, and she could swear he made a deep, dangerous sound of need and blatant desire. She recalled that she had noted him to be an eerily silent and methodical lover. She had heard woman after woman cry out in satisfaction, attesting that he actually knew what he was doing, but outside of his breathing she’d never heard so much as a groan from him. In fact, he’d been unnaturally quiet and still. She wondered if she should be flattered or afraid of anything different from the norm. Perhaps the more he was provoked, the more likely he was to lose control. Perhaps it was his sexual response getting out of his control that set off his psychosis. The thought only encouraged her to goad him. She wanted him to snap. She wanted him to give her a reason to open up hell on him.
She reached to push aside the opposite strap, but in a quick flash of movement she barely saw, he crossed to her and caught the thin strips of silver fabric, closing his large hands around her arms and shoulders as he kept her dress from sliding free of her body.
“No,” he said deeply at her surprised and questioning look. “When I see you naked for the first time, it will be as a lover, not as a stranger. You will tell me your name first.”
She hesitated at the dictate, knowing it was a very visible pause by the way he frowned so seriously. If he had been anyone else, she would have thought she’d hurt his feelings. But in all the time she had been stalking him, the one thing she had noted above all else was that Julian Sawyer was a man of very few emotions. He was always calm and always steady. Perfectly controlled at all times. Except for tonight. Tonight he was different. Different for her.
“Asia,” she offered at last, the firmness of her tone warning him that was as far as she was willing to go. “My name is Asia.”
He digested that for a moment, and she wondered how long it would take before he considered his condition satisfied and subjected her to the slightly chilly air-conditioned atmosphere of the apartment.
“Asia,” he echoed, his large hands sliding smooth and warm up over her shoulders until, she realized, he had resettled the straps of her dress into a less precarious position. The unpredictability of his actions disturbed her a little. This wasn’t how he had been with the others before her; he had shown no interest in speaking to them. Asia tried to remind herself yet again that a difference was a good thing. Something had set each pair of women of the past seven months apart from all the others. She needed to be set apart if she was going to be among that select class of victims.
In keeping with her character of the night, however, she dropped her hands onto her hips and cocked her head as she bent a knee forward enough to rub her leg between his thighs where it settled against them.
“I thought you were out for a fuck,” she noted bluntly. “You can skip the Mr. Romance routine. I don’t need it.”
He studied her carefully a moment, reaching to trail his fingertips up along her throat. “I think you do need it,” he observed. “I think you have a great many needs you’d rather not share with me. You want this to be uncomplicated and straightforward, where it cannot be.”
“Sure it can,” she forced herself to say even as his uncanny words made her heart race beneath her breast. “You are a man. I am a woman. As long as we have all the interlocking parts required—and I admit, a fair amount of skill would be nice as well—we can get straight to where we both want to be. You haven’t had a hard-on for me for this long because you want to talk to me,” she pointed out.
That earned her a wry smile, Julian’s expression a bit sheepish and fearfully endearing as he ran a hand back through one side of his dark hair. She had thought it was black, but up close she could see it was the darkest possible brown. It bothered her suddenly that there was so much about him that was appealing. It was like roses. Something so fragrant and beautiful that you couldn’t help burrowing your nose into it shouldn’t have things like thorns and bees to hurt you. She appreciated how naïve and unlike her such a thought truly was, but just because she rarely indulged them didn’t mean she didn’t have them.
“My needs go well beyond those of my physical body,” he said to her, those green eyes flicking up from their low position in his bent head. She felt snared by that look, her throat tightening with a strange sense of having gotten in way over her head. She wanted to laugh aloud at the ludicrous idea as soon as she had it.
“Well, mine don’t,” she countered, realizing she didn’t sound as convincing as she should have. She reached out to cover that up with her touch, having already realized how easily it distracted him. She snaked her arms around his neck, drawing herself in tight and snug to his body. “Your physical body will suit me fine,” she whispered softly as her lips brushed against his ear.
Julian groaned softly as she wriggled against him, his hands tightening reflexively against her shoulders. Before she knew it, he had turned his face against her neck and was…
Sniffing her?
Asia’s brows lowered in a perplexed expression of disbelief as she felt him breathe deeply and sigh an extraordinary exhalation against her pulse. Even more unusual was the fine tremor she felt run through him.
“Such a sweet invitation,” he breathed against her softly, his nose nuzzling against her pulse. “Too bad it is a lie.”
He had her by her throat in an instant, his hand locking hard and fast around her as he kicked her feet out from under her and sent her slamming down to the floor on her back. He controlled the entire action, however, keeping the impact minimal, if not shockingly violent, as he ended up with his grip shy of throttling her and his face mere millimeters from hers. He had thrown a leg over hers, firmly pinning her to the hardwood floor as she instinctively reached to grasp the wrist of the hand at her throat.
“For a woman who wants to fuck so badly, you smell decidedly clean of sexual arousal,” he growled harshly. “What game is it you are playing? Why are you here?”
“I don’t…Are you out of your mind?” she rasped, the pressure of his hand just enough to warn her of his strength and the possible consequences if she ticked him off enough. “What the hell are you talking about?” Indignation seemed the way to go. Maybe a little fear. The more she was threatened, in actuality, the calmer and more in control Asia got. His kindness had rattled her much more than this would. This she understood.
This was what she had wanted.
She thumbed the catch on her ring, then grabbed his wrist again so the micro-fine needle injected into his skin. He would mistake the sensation for the cut of her diamond. In a sense it was exactly that. The heavy narcotic serum flooding into him would make him hers in an instant.
“I am talking about this…”
To her shock she felt his hand sweep up under her dress. His fingertips dipped into her panties below the waistband and it was all she could do to keep from freaking out as thick male fingers skimmed over her denuded mound and dove with intimacy between her nether lips.
“Warm. Damp, to be certain,” he observed, “but in no way bearing the heat or wetness of a woman longing