Broken by a Dangerous Man Read online

  The machine hummed awake.

  As I got on behind him, I wondered what else Bertrand might have told Corbin. At least he hadn’t had a chance to blab about Massimo.

  The motorcycle’s seat tilted my pelvis at a strange angle. I felt like I was going to slide down and end up dry-humping Corbin through the streets of Paris.

  “Have you been on one of these before?” he asked, looking over his shoulder to interrogate me with his blue-green gaze. The entire bike shifted slightly, and a tremor of fear raced down my back.

  “Yes…” I started.

  “But not a motorcycle.”

  “Rob and I had a dirt bike for three days. It was broken, so we’d drag it up to the top of a hill and roll down. Then Mom found out, and that was that.”

  Corbin shook his head in faux frustration. “Put your hands here.” He reached back and arranged my arms around his waist, then he reached farther back to pull the second glove out of my back pocket. Heat followed his lingering touch as he worked the glove onto my hand.

  My hips slid down, toward him. Already the muscles in my thighs trembled from gripping the seat.

  “Relax,” he said. “I’ve ridden a motorcycle through a tsunami while people were shooting at me.”

  Why did that sound familiar? “That’s from a video game!”

  He grinned. “Maybe, but I survived. My point is that nothing bad is going to happen.”

  I thought about the motorcyclists who’d been insanely weaving through the highway traffic on the way from the airport. “If you say so.”

  “I say so. Tap me twice if you need to stop.” His electric blue-green eyes looked steadily into mine. Underneath me, the machine hummed. It felt powerful and intimate. It reminded me of sitting astride Corbin in bed while he held my hips in place and hammered into me.

  The comparison made me smile, and Corbin faced forward.

  “Wait,” I said.

  He turned around and pulled off his helmet.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Just hold on to me and everything will be fine,” he said, staring straight into my eyes, and I knew he wasn’t only talking about the bike.

  He pulled down my visor, and I felt like I was in a bubble, in a video game. The helmet was tight, I realized. The padding pushed into my cheeks, my temple.

  It was like my head was being squeezed, like my face was in its own little coffin. But the rest of me—because of the lack of a seatbelt—felt almost too free.

  Closing my eyes, I tightened my grip around Corbin’s waist and allowed my body to mold against his. He touched my hand, a moment of connection. I exhaled and forced myself to open my eyes as he slowly walked the bike backward into the street.

  I could tell that the bike was heavy. Corbin was a big man, and heaven knew he was strong, but…

  Just hold on to me and everything will be fine.

  We began moving forward, down the street. Rather than stay in line with the cars, Corbin steered the bike around the traffic.

  I sucked in a breath.

  Then one of Corbin’s arms pressed against mine. The bike accelerated, and if I hadn’t been squeezing him, I would have flown off the back.

  But I didn’t. Instead, I held on, and we stayed together.

  Chapter 16

  We traded congested streets for wider boulevards, and I decided that Corbin wasn’t a maniac. He took more risks than I would have liked, but he was definitely in control.

  As always.

  And it was much faster to navigate the city streets while on a motorcycle. If Bertrand had been driving, we wouldn’t have gotten four blocks from the hotel.

  But the thing I liked the most was having my body flush against Corbin. Even through his jacket, I could feel the power of his muscular torso. With the vibration of the machine, and my thighs spread wide for Corbin… It was turning me on.

  So much so that when we slowly coasted to a stop, I was disappointed that our destination wasn’t a little farther.

  I hopped off the back. My legs were simultaneously wobbly and stiff, and as I removed the helmet, I had a moment of disorientation. Then cool air caressed my hair, slightly damp from perspiration.

  We were in a peaceful and lovely neighborhood. There was a quiet sort of museum just ahead, and behind was a little park.

  Corbin hung his helmet on the handlebars, then took mine from me.

  Apparently, we were staying awhile.

  He unzipped his jacket and pulled it off. The blue T-shirt he’d revealed amplified the blue of his eyes. It was almost possible to forget that his eyes had any green at all. At least, until he turned to face me completely and the sun drenched his face in golden light.

  I could see the faint freckles on his cheeks. I wanted to reach out and trace them with my finger.

  “This is where I lived,” he said.

  Confused, I looked around.

  He tilted his head to indicate the museum, and I frowned.

  “Oh. So I guess you really can’t go home again,” I said, understanding.

  Now he frowned. “What do you mean?”

  I took another look at the building just ahead and realized it wasn’t a museum after all. It was just a really snooty, clean-and-proper building. The kind that pigeons were probably afraid to fly near. It looked like an old-timey photo that someone had scrubbed clean. The foliage around the building was well-behaved, every leaf in place. There wasn’t a speck of dirt, a smear of mud, or an ant anywhere near the place.

  And I suddenly realized why Corbin had fallen for Audrey when he’d seen her in the street, working on a broken scooter. Yeah, it would be like if I tried to change my car’s oil right in front of the white house. A woman—a girl, because she was only sixteen then—who did that was ballsy.

  The other Audrey suddenly felt vividly and painfully real to me. She wasn’t just an abstract woman any longer.

  I wondered if Corbin was thinking about her, too. At the moment, he had a soft smile on his face as he looked at the building.

  “Which one was yours?” I asked.

  “The top.”

  “Which side?”

  He pulled me close to him, and I caught the scent of his cologne plus a very faint male musk that made me want to rub my face against his chest. That motorcycle ride had gotten me wet. If he’d tried to bend me over the bike and fuck me, I wouldn’t have resisted.

  Instead of trying, he was surveying the building.

  “The whole top floor,” he said, like it was no big deal that his parents were wealthy enough to afford such a vast space for just three people.

  I looked up. Well, that explained why the elaborate flower arrangements on the top floor matched.

  “Your bedroom was the whole floor?” I asked with a straight face. “Seems rather small.”

  He kissed the side of my head. “The bedrooms are all in the back, away from the street noise.”

  Street noise? There was hardly any traffic at all.

  I wondered which unit Audrey’s family had lived in, but I didn’t ask.

  Corbin started walking toward the building, and since his arm was around me, I came along.

  The entrance was the very definition of grand, and unlike the hotel, there was nothing over the top or tacky about it. The doorway was stone, or perhaps marble. At the apex was a carved lion’s head. Because it was blended into the rest of the stone, it was a regal and restrained statement of power, masterfully presented.

  Before we’d reached the door, a small, rotund man with scandalously skinny arms pushed it open. A smile lit his face when he saw Corbin, and he said something. He didn’t speak quickly, but I couldn’t even guess at the meaning.

  Corbin seemed surprised by something the man had said, and I could hear the question in his voice when he replied. The exchange continued for about a minute, then the man turned and walked deeper into the foyer.

  To my surprise, Corbin followed. He was speaking, and I didn’t want to interrupt him, so instead I took in our g
raceful surroundings.

  I couldn’t imagine living like this as an adult. For someone younger, it must have been strange. I knew Corbin had grown up all over the world, but I’d just assumed he’d been in some rough places. And maybe he had, but this certainly wasn’t one of them.

  If I’d thought that seeing where he’d spent the last years of his adolescence would give me insight, I was sorely mistaken.

  A section of the wall slid away, and I realized we were looking at an elevator. I didn’t see any buttons to call it, and when we stepped inside, there weren’t buttons to tell it where to go.

  The little man got on with us. The doors closed and I could barely feel the elevator moving. When the doors opened, we were inside a lavishly furnished apartment.

  From the slow way he took it in, I assumed this was where Corbin had lived, and I wondered what was to prevent the neighbors from coming in. After all, the concierge had to sleep sometime.

  The man said something, then got back on the elevator. The door closed, leaving me staring at a wall that was indistinguishable from its surroundings.

  “Talk,” I said.

  Corbin’s rich, deep laugh spilled over me. “The politician who’s been living here the last five years is away for two months. My mother charges him almost nothing in the way of rent because she believes in his cause. I don’t share her high opinion of the guy. Full disclaimer: he’s someone she briefly dated.”

  I filed away that bit of information. I hadn’t met Corbin’s mother yet, but assuming I didn’t manage to fuck up the relationship for good, I would by the end of the year.

  “The concierge is tending to the plants in his absence,” Corbin continued. “The politician grows orchids and is very fussy about them.”

  “And the elevator? How does that work?”

  “There’s a sensor,” Corbin said. “From up here, it will just go down. From the ground floor, you need a card. It’s a chip-and-sensor system. It wasn’t in place when I lived here, so I always had to put my key into the reader, but I knew it had been upgraded.”

  “Oh. Are we allowed to be here?”

  “No, but my mother still tips the concierge at the holidays, and the politician only gives a cheap bottle of wine from a third-rate vineyard he uses as a tax deduction. And before you ask, the furnishings are ours. Much of it was custom-made, so it wouldn’t make sense to take it out. Would you like to see my old bedroom?”

  Without even pretending to wait for an answer, he led me through rooms that were so skillfully decorated and so artistically perfect that I wanted to weep. The drapes that ran the height of the room and pooled on the floor, the sofa that curved along with the room, the bookcases that looked like the building had been created around them… all perfect, even to my untrained eye.

  My feet stopped moving in front of a large canvas that hung on the wall. It was a woman holding a child, though the faces of both looked like a scrambled puzzle. “That could pass for a Picasso,” I said, remembering some of the things I’d seen at the museum.

  Corbin leaned close to me. “I should hope so,” he said. His lips brushed against my ear, and I suddenly didn’t care about expensive apartments and masterpieces hanging within arm’s reach. All I wanted was him, the man I loved, the man I was afraid I had lost.

  He seemed to feel it, too, because his lips were on mine. I heard something hit the floor—the jacket he’d been holding, I assumed.

  He peeled my jacket off my shoulders, and it fell to the floor with a soft thud.

  Then he was lifting me, his large hands palming my ass. My arms tightened around his neck.

  Chapter 17

  I pressed my face into Corbin’s neck and inhaled his warm, familiar scent. Just the merest hint was enough to send my hormones into overdrive.

  Corbin pushed open a door and went into a room. The door closed behind us.

  It was completely dark inside, and for a moment he held me to him with one hand while the other tapped along the wall. In the dead quiet, I could hear Corbin’s fingers searching, searching.

  A soft light blinked on.

  “My bedroom,” he said. “We moved here when I was seventeen. If that kid knew I’d have a woman like you in this room…” He laughed quietly, and I accepted his words for what they were: a compliment that had nothing to do with reality. A guy who looked like Corbin and who lived in a place like this would have had as many women as he wanted.

  The bedroom was… vast. It was also sparsely furnished. The same sort of heavy, floor-to-ceiling curtains that adorned the other rooms were in attendance here as well, though the rich color, instead of being neutral, was several shades lighter than a navy blue.

  There were bookshelves, mostly empty. Some trophies in a glass case. I definitely wanted to take a look at those before we left.

  “When we get back, we’ll have to make out in my old bedroom,” I said.

  Corbin carried me to the bed. It was low and wide, the sort of thing I imagined a teenage boy would like. My body sank into the sheets.

  I looked up and gasped.

  “The chandelier?” Corbin guessed, smiling.

  I wouldn’t have called it a chandelier because there was nothing crystal or heavy about it. It looked like an exploding star. It looked like art, and I wanted one.

  Corbin reached over and blindly opened a drawer that was imbedded in the wall. He came out with a remote control.

  The lights went off. There was a faint click, then hundreds of pinpricks illuminated all over the ceiling. They spilled down the walls, and when I looked to the side, they were in the floor, too.

  There was another muted click, then the exploding star glowed a faint red that was frankly terrifying.

  “Oops,” Corbin said. He looked at the remote and clicked again. The red turned to a warm bluish yellow, and I suddenly felt like I was on my back, my arms outstretched as I floated up, up, up into the sky.

  Then Corbin kissed me, and I flew higher still.

  “Allô?” called out a man’s voice.

  I stiffened in Corbin’s arms.

  “Monsieur Lagos?”

  I couldn’t say for sure that it was the concierge, but who else would be walking through the darkened apartment?

  Corbin chuckled lightly, his breath gusting warmly against my skin. Of course he thought it was funny, but I was already humiliated, and even though we hadn’t been discovered yet—hadn’t even been doing anything—I felt like I’d been caught giving a blow job in a house of worship.

  “Shouldn’t we get up?” I whispered.

  “No,” Corbin whispered back, and I remembered the day when Henry came to get me at my old apartment. Corbin, then a fugitive, had fucked me while the seasoned bounty hunter waited obliviously in the other room.

  It had been a hell of a turn-on, but that didn’t mean I was anxious to repeat it.

  “Seriously,” I said. “I feel weird about this.”

  “About what?” he asked solemnly, his voice edged with that deep, dominant tone I knew all too well. I needed to phrase my response carefully, or Corbin would do the opposite of what I wanted, and the only way to stop him would be to use my safe word.

  “In this bed,” I whispered. “It feels wrong. Someone else lives here now.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “It wouldn’t be right to get come all over the clean sheets.” He pushed up, away from me, and I heaved a sigh of relief as he helped me stand.

  “Monsieur Lagos, êtes-vous là?” came the voice, closer now.

  Corbin picked up the remote control, and the room plunged into darkness.

  I sucked in a tense breath as Corbin let go of my other hand. My fingers searched for him, but then his arms were around me, his shoulder pushing into my hips.

  “No,” I gasped, but it was too late. Already I was upside down, Corbin’s arm around the backs of my legs. Corbin seemed to be shaking… laughing quietly. He was walking, but I couldn’t tell where. He changed direction slightly.

  Well, I was gla
d that he found this so amusing, but I figured I was thirty seconds from freaking out. Between the utter darkness and the feeling of trespassing…

  As Corbin set me on the floor, the door opened, and a wedge of light spilled into the room. I still couldn’t see much, but we seemed to be in some kind of little hidey-hole. A lush potted tree stood between us and the door.

  The door closed, and I exhaled.

  “Now I’m alone with the lady,” Corbin murmured into my ear. “So I suppose I’ll have my way with her.”

  His words filled my mind with all sorts of naughty images, and when his fingers undid my pants and yanked them to my knees, I didn’t protest.

  The soft trill of his descending zipper had me licking my lips in hungry anticipation. Corbin ran an assessing hand over my buttocks, and I tilted my hips and hollowed my back, presenting myself to him.

  “Much better,” he murmured.

  There was a light rustling, and Corbin exhaled in a low, male whisper. His cock nudged impatiently, sliding across my buttocks. He jerked my hips toward him, forcing me into an uncomfortably submissive position and leaving me unbalanced.

  I pressed my palms against the wall and was surprised to find that the wallpaper was textured, which I hadn’t noticed earlier. But then I’d been too busy gawking to catalog the details of the luxurious room.

  The swollen, slick head of his cock pressed into my slit. It was all the notice I had before he rammed himself deep into me.

  My toes curled inside the stiff boots, and my face flushed hot as lava.

  “That’s better,” he said, his voice a growl. He slowly pulled back until just the tip rested inside me.

  He thrust forward, and I rocked on my toes. I had to take a small step to keep my balance, which forced my shoulders and face against the wall. He pulled back, thrust again. And again.

  “Suck me.” He leveraged two fingers between my lips and pressed them along my tongue. “Suck,” he said.

  So I sucked like it was his dick in my mouth. I felt his cock pulse in heightened arousal. His other hand came around my hips to rest on my clit.