Maya Banks - Giving In

“Don’t hold your breath,” she said in a frigid tone. “It will never happen. And so help me, if you ever even hint about this again, I’ll slap a sexual harassment suit on you so fast your head will spin.”

He grinned, surprising her with his reaction. He stared lazily at her, his gaze stroking up and down her body, making her feel as though he’d just undressed her.

“Something else you should know about me, sweetheart. I love a challenge. Telling me no is like waving a red flag in front of a pissed-off bull.”

“I’m not your sweetheart. Save it for a woman who gives a damn because I’m not her.”

His grin got bigger and she swore this was the first time she’d actually seen the man smile. He was always so quiet and brooding. He didn’t frown, but he didn’t smile either. He always wore an inscrutable expression that drove her crazy because she never had any clue what he was thinking.

Only now she got the distinct impression he’d been thinking about her. A lot.

She mentally went through every single one of her favorite four-letter curse words and added a few with extra syllables for good measure.

“Let me make this simple for you since you love a challenge. I’m not a challenge, Jensen. I will never be a challenge because you don’t have a chance in hell with me. You’re out of your goddamn mind anyway. What the hell would a man like you see in me? According to you I’m scared of my own shadow. I’m timid, apparently I look like hell and have as many issues as People magazine.”

He rose, ignoring her outburst, which only infuriated her more. He seemed utterly unfazed by her cutting remarks. Then he leaned over the desk so they were nose to nose. To her surprise he traced one finger over the dark smudges under her eyes.

“Get some help, Kylie,” he said softly. “Go to a doctor. Get something to help you sleep. See a shrink if that’s what it will take. You can’t keep up like this forever. Sooner or later you’re going to crack. And then you’re going to fall apart and shatter. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for the people who love you and are worried sick about you.”

And then before she could respond to that particular bit of nonsense, he turned and strode out of her office, closing the door with a soft bang.

She sagged into her chair and dropped her face into her hands, suddenly so weary that she couldn’t even hold her own head up.

He was right and that pissed her off even more. She was walking a very fine line between sanity and insanity. She wasn’t sleeping. Her sleep was too fractured by nightmares. Of the past. The demons of her past and how they still controlled her present.

But see a shrink? Ask her doctor for sleeping pills? That would be like admitting defeat and she was not a quitter, damn it. Not her. She’d survived hell and she was past that now. Wasn’t she?

Or was she every bit the prisoner now that she’d been as a child? Her father’s abuse was as recent as yesterday in her mind. Because she couldn’t forget. She couldn’t just get over it. Couldn’t make peace with her past.

She closed her eyes, another wave of fatigue nearly flattening her. Sleep. She just needed one night without the nightmares that visited her so frequently. Maybe she’d stop on the way home and get some over-the-counter sleep aids at the pharmacy. Then there would be no embarrassing, weak trip to the doctor and certainly no visits to a damn shrink where she’d lie on a couch and bare her soul.

Oh hell no. Hell would freeze over before she ever allowed anyone to know her torment and shame.

WHAT was it about the woman that drove him to the brink of insanity? Jensen was absorbed in his thoughts as he stalked back to his office. He had a mountain of paperwork, contracts to look over and sign, if no changes were necessary. For the next two weeks, he was solidly at the helm while Dash took Joss away on their honeymoon.

Dash was happy. Disgustingly so. Now that he’d made up for his fuck-up of monumental proportions. Joss was a good woman. The best. Dash was damn lucky to have his heart’s desire. A beautiful, submissive woman who’d granted Dash everything. Her trust, her love and her complete surrender.

In other words, the complete opposite of the woman who preoccupied so much of Jensen’s thoughts lately.

Kylie Breckenridge was as prickly as a cactus and yet every time she sent him one of her withering gazes, he got a hard-on from hell. He wanted her so damn much that he couldn’t breathe around her. And that pissed him off.

She was a woman who was strictly off-limits to him. The complete antithesis of the women he liked to fuck. And he said fuck because that’s what it was. His heart was certainly never involved. His need for control precluded any warm and fuzzy thoughts.

It wasn’t that he was a bastard to the women he dominated. He made certain they were cared for, provided for and that they were sexually satisfied.

But Kylie?

Hell. A dominant, alpha male was the very last thing she wanted. If she wanted any man at all. Not that he could blame her. Dash had told him of Kylie’s childhood. It made him shake with rage that she’d been so abused, so shattered by the one person in her life she should have been able to trust for absolute protection. Her father.

But when he looked at her, he saw past that abrasive exterior and what he glimpsed made his heart soften to the point of aching. It made him want to hold her, cherish her, show her how it could be with a man who had her best interests at heart. A man who cared about her.

Hell, did he care? That was the million-dollar question. He cared, but to what extent? Was she, as he’d said, simply a challenge? Something to conquer before he moved on to the next? He was a man who thrived on challenges. It was what had made him successful at a very early age. So just how much did he care about Kylie Breckenridge? Because she wasn’t a woman to trifle with. She’d had enough hurt for two lifetimes, and he damn sure didn’t want to be yet another man who destroyed her.

He didn’t fool himself into thinking he could “fix” her. No one could do that but her. But she had to want to be fixed, and so far she’d shown no signs of doing it herself. Which increased his desire to step in, take over and push her.

The urge to dominate was powerful. It beat like his pulse, strong with anticipation, even as he knew Kylie was not a woman to dominate. She wasn’t a woman who’d submit. Ever. Not physically. But dominance was so much more than the physical trappings that often accompanied such a relationship. Emotional surrender was much more powerful, and perhaps that was what he craved when he looked into those shadowed eyes of hers.

She needed a man who’d cherish her, protect her from any and all hurts, provide shelter for her. A place of refuge from the rest of the world. She needed a man she could turn to and trust unerringly in his ability to shield her from any threat. Even those that weren’t physical, but emotional, because those were hurts far worse than physical ones.

She was infinitely fragile. So very vulnerable. He watched her. He watched her a damn lot, and when she didn’t realize others were observing her, she lost the icy façade and he got a glimpse of the frightened young girl behind the ballsy exterior.

She was complex, a puzzle, one he had every intention of figuring out. But how?

His normal method of operation certainly wouldn’t work with her. There was no approaching her, taking control, laying down the law according to him and telling her the way it would be. He’d attempted to do precisely that just moments ago and it had been like hitting a brick wall.

She’d remove his balls with a rusty knife if he pushed her that way again and, well, he wouldn’t be able to blame her.