CHAPTER FOUR

       Imogen

      HE WAS VERY CLOSE, inches away. His broad shoulders blocked out the streetlights coming through the opposite window of the van, his body in that pristine white shirt and black suit trousers, a hard wall of muscle in front of me.

      And his eyes. Electric blue, so vivid against his olive skin. Fascinating in a way I couldn’t describe.

      He was so compelling. He made my heart shudder behind my ribs for reasons I didn’t understand.

      This talk of being ruined... It was all I could think about.

      Since I’d been taught at home by tutors, I’d never gone to high school, never dated. I’d never had a teenage crush, except once, on a guy I’d seen through the window of the car while I was on my way somewhere. I’d constructed a whole set of dreamy fantasies around him for at least a week until I’d lost interest in the whole idea.

      If I’d had any girlfriends I’d have discussed my lack of a sex life with them. But I didn’t even have girlfriends.

      What I did have, though, was an insatiable curiosity about pretty much everything, including all the things I wasn’t allowed to have.

      Such as sex.

      I’d learned how to get around the blocks Dad had put on my Internet years ago and I’d looked stuff up. Sexy stuff. Enough to have an idea of what I might like when it came to men.

      One thing I hadn’t realised, though, was that looking at sex on a computer screen was very different to having an actual man right in front of you, looking at you so intently it made you want to burst into flames.

      Like me, right now, with him.

      ‘S-so,’ I stuttered, unable to keep quiet, my heart racing. ‘You know, how does it happen? Do I have to take my clothes off? Do you touch me or—’

      ‘I don’t have to touch you to ruin you, little one,’ he said in that dark, deep voice I felt right down low inside me.

      Okay, wow. That was...intense.

      My heartbeat ratcheted up another notch. ‘That’s a bit patronising, you know. The whole little one thing.’

      God knows why I was arguing with him. Probably stupid given my situation and the fact that me not being afraid of him clearly annoyed him.

      But too bad. I wasn’t afraid. He might think that all of this would frighten me, but what he didn’t understand was that I didn’t see this as a kidnapping. No, this was a rescue.

      He’d bloody well saved me.

      And, for all his talk of ruining me, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Not a man who’d carried me so gently; close to his chest; holding me as if I were precious.

      He was scowling now, not liking that I was arguing, and maybe I was completely crazy but I loved how growly and fierce he was, though I didn’t really know why. Maybe it was simply the fact that I could get a reaction from him. Me. The sheltered virgin who could never sit still. Who was of no use to anyone except as a tool.

       You’re Ajax’s tool now.

      Yeah, but it felt different somehow. For a start, Ajax was a complete stranger. Unlike my dad, he wasn’t supposed to love me and I wasn’t supposed to love him. I could push back at him with impunity and it wouldn’t matter.

      ‘I don’t give a shit whether it’s patronising or not,’ he said. ‘You’re my prisoner and I’ll call you whatever the fuck I want.’ He paused, his gaze like a searchlight finding all my secrets, all my hidden desires. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I think you like it.’

      I went red. Sadly, I did like it. I’d never had anyone refer to me as anything but Imogen and being called little one made me think of being curled up in his arms, safe.

      Not knowing what to say, I frowned instead.

      He smiled, all satisfied like he’d won a point off me. ‘Of course you do. But that’s not what you wanted to talk about, is it?’

      ‘You were going to tell me how you can ruin me without touching me,’ I reminded him. ‘How does that work? Is it possible to screw someone without touching them? Do you just talk at me? I mean, maybe I don’t know how these things go, but—’

      He leaned forward even more, making the rest of what I’d been going to say catch in my throat.

      The glass of the window was cold against the back of my head, the door handle jabbing my spine painfully. Yet those sensations seemed quite distant, even irrelevant.

      There was only Ajax and his electrifying blue gaze.

      ‘It’s very simple.’ His voice brushed over my skin like soft black fur. ‘First I’d get you to lift up your dress. Then I’d tell you to spread your legs and pull your knickers to the side.’ The words became even deeper, even rougher. ‘Then I’d get you to slide your fingers over your pussy, rubbing that little clit in exactly the way I tell you to, and not stopping until you come. Hard. While I watch.’

      All my breath had vanished, my heartbeat out of control. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from his. My cheeks had to be scarlet and there was a definite pressure between my thighs. A pulse. An ache.

      Those things he said were shocking and yet...they made me hot and restless and I...wanted to do them.

      Except I had a suspicion that he hadn’t said them to get me off. He’d said them to frighten me.

      Unfortunately for him, fear was the last thing I felt right now.

      And it hit me in that moment that Ajax King wasn’t a choice my father would ever have made for me. It was why I’d been at that stupid ball in the first place, to meet a guy that Dad had decided might be a potential ally. To charm him, be the bait in the honey trap Dad had set up.

      Ajax telling me that Dad was using me wasn’t anything I didn’t know. I’d figured out what my purpose was for Dad after what had happened with Cam, and it wasn’t simply to be his treasured daughter.

      I was the Princess, the prize he’d use