“Let me lay out your situation for you.” He leaned down until he was inches from her face. His eyes, a rich velvet brown, narrowed into mere slits. His breath, like the rest of him, was warm and clean.

“My men would like nothing better than to use your body in ways a nice woman like you couldn’t begin to fathom. And when they finished with you, they would dump you in a pit in the ground like yesterday’s garbage. No one would find your remains. If you so much as set a foot outside that door”—he pointed to the wooden portal that sealed her off from the nightmare of Ramirez and Christo—“they’ll rape you and you’ll wish for death.”

The trembling began again, starting with her awkward, bandaged hands and spreading out into her arms and legs.

“I’ve claimed you as my woman, and as long as you stay close to me, they’ll respect that. They won’t like it and they’ll want to kill me as well, but they will respect it. ¿Comprendes?”

She stared at him, shaking for all she was worth.

“I won’t let them touch you, but you must do exactly as I say.” He gripped her face between his long fingers, and stared into her eyes. “If I tell you to jump, you’ll do it. If I tell you to be quiet, you will be. If I tell you to touch me, or bare your breasts for me, or touch yourself for me, you’ll do that, too. Do you understand?”

She stared at him in defiance, her mind rebelling at what he was saying, but her body oddly tingling at the same time.

“Do—you—understand?” he growled, his hand squeezing harder.

She nodded.

His mouth came down onto hers, scorching and demanding, and she was certain in that instant he was, indeed, the devil, and she'd just made a pact with him. But then his assault turned from hard to hungry. His tongue flicked out to trace her lower lip, sensuously teased her mouth open, and sought entry.

A jolt of unbridled electricity shot through her when his tongue met hers, twisting and seducing her in a primitive dance. And she found herself, to her horror, ensnared by the passion of it.

This was nothing like Lionel’s cool, sophisticated kisses. This man tasted like unadulterated sex and danger—things that should have terrified her. Yet she moaned into his mouth, and her weightless, inebriated body arched upward of its own free will, seeking his touch. Which he gave, sliding a hand under her almost-bare fanny and lifting her until her silk panty-covered mound pressed against the granite in the crotch of his jeans.

A sudden vision filled her head of what his cock would look like—long, ribbed with veins, impossibly stiff, and eager to fill her, stretch her, fuck her. She groaned.