A/N: y'all, this is my fav chapter so far and things are only getting ✨spicier✨ from here... please show me some Jake and Rayna some support in the comments, I miss hearing from y'all SO MUCH ILYSSSMMMMM xoxo Ami
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twenty-two | paris
the cabaret Le Moulin Rouge originated in Paris's red light district in 1889; it was the birthplace of the can-can dance, originally intended as a seductive attraction by prostitutes who worked out of the establishment
RAYNA
May 8th, 23:11 (GMT +2)
7 days until it happens
JAKE CARTS ME like a sack of potatoes through the shiny lobby of our four-star boutique hotel while I thrash in his arms, my face florid with humiliation. The clerk at reception gapes at us, but Jake flashes his MI6 badge and marches wordlessly up four sets of stairs, his fingers digging bruisingly into my thighs to keep me anchored over his shoulder.
He shoves open his room door and deposits me onto the armchair by the sprawling windows. Through the glass, millions of lights flicker across the city, the distant soar of the Eiffel tower beaming into the inky night sky.
He sheds his holster and drops both our guns onto the desk. I watch him shuck his leather jacket and hang it neatly in his ordered, pristine closet. (What a weirdo. My clothing is spewing out of my suitcase as we speak.)
Behind my back, the steel restraints nip into my wrists. I kick my restless feet against the ground. "Will you fucking uncuff me or do I need to yell?" I shimmy my bound arms uselessly. "Because so help me God, I will shout so fucking loud the goddamn Queen of England will hear me."
Blandly, he arches a dark eyebrow at me. "An empty threat, love. She's used to hearing women scream my name."
A tangle of warmth churns in the pit of my belly at the memory of his fingers pistoning into me a half-hour ago. I tuck my knees together, disgruntled and unsatisfied. "For someone so arrogant, your ego is pitifully fragile." My nose wrinkles. "Everything needs to be exactly the way you want it or else it threatens you, and you get all grouchy and moody! It's pathetic."
He stands there with his arms crossed over his lean chest, imposing, towering, and tall. "I don't give a fuck how you do something," he bites back, "as long as you fucking think before you do it."
I roll my eyes towards the ceiling with a loud scoff. "That's bullshit! You're a control freak."
His bristled jaw tics. "Plans exist for a reason. When people don't follow the rules, bad things happen. You're not invincible, Rayna. You're just lucky."
Even though there's obviously some deep-wrought baggage there, my blood broils. It's the same fucking shit everyone always says. I'm impulsive, not adaptable. I'm short-sighted, not a quick-thinker. The soles of my feet bore into the floor. "I hope you fall off your fucking high-horse and break your stupid neck." My voice goes wobbly. "We would not be having this conversation if I were a dude. Newsflash, Jake, I have bigger balls that you ever will."
Jake shakes his head and throws an aggravated hand through his tousled hair. "You'd be just as irritating with a dick instead of a pretty pink pussy, Rayna."
Thinking about his dick and my pretty pink pussy ignites a squirm at the crest of my thighs. The air between us crackles with a stormy metallic itch, like just before a bolting strike of lightening.
A tight cast of restraint stiffens his neck. I would love to be the reason his careful, controlled armour shrivels to nothingness and see what kind of unhinged beast lurks beneath it.
I tilt my throat to the side and let my legs drift apart invitingly. My boots splay wide against the muffled rug. A tiny spasm rocks his cheekbone. "Set me loose, Jake," I say sweetly. My eyelashes flitter. "Let's make this a fair fight."
Those stone-grey eyes regard me, hot and cold, ice and fire all sworling into chaos. He knows if he frees me I will peel his stupid, gorgeous fucking face off.
He steps towards my chair and looms over me, and instantly it's obvious that even with the promise of homicidal retribution written across every inch of my wired body, he's gonna let me go anyways. Not in spite of the rabid, torrid carnage he's about to unleash, but because of it.
Our gazes clash, roiling, as he reaches behind me to unlock my shackles. His broad shoulders are squared, ready for a fight. Asking for it.
I poise myself onto the tips of my toes, a grenade on the verge of detonating. With a twist of his fingers and a faint, husky pill of breath, he pulls the pin.
I explode.
Punching and smacking and kicking and clawing and ripping and jabbing and biting. He dodges each attack with agile precision. My foot clobbers his thigh but he knocks it swiftly away. My fingernails impale his arm but he mangles my wrist, yanking me by the hair. My elbow cuffs the lean metal of his gut but he locks me by the shoulder, cranking my forearm so far back it creaks and burns.
"Is that all you've got?" I goad, jamming my boot against his shin and drawing a strangled grunt from him.
He cages me against him so my ass hits his crotch and husks into my ear, "I'm a gentleman. If I wasn't going easy on you, darling, you'd already be dead." I head-butt him straight in the nose and he swears crudely, a real gentleman. I break myself from his grasp and watch with a glib thrill as his fingers come away from his nostrils dark with blood.
From the mercury glint circling his pupils, silver and caustic, it's clear I'm succeeding in unraveling him.
With a fluid whip of his wrist, so brisk I don't even see it coming, he snaps me across the face with a large, open palm. My cheek prickles hot, my eyes watering. Low in my tummy, a wave of arousal crashes onto a scraggling, rocky shore.
A pleased smile sneers my smarting mouth.
Looks like he's on the brink of exploding, too.
His oozing nose drips a trail of blood onto the beige carpet as he stalks towards me, his hulking form thrumming with wrath. He swings a blinding punch at my head but I duck, jerking a knee at his groin. He bats my leg away before it lands, striking my stomach with a hurtling fist. It knocks every last wisp of air from my lungs and yet the sheer surge of febrile adrenaline has me buzzing.
Our panting, grunting, hissing clamor erupts through the hotel room. I tear at his t-shirt, scratching a splintery clawful down his neck while he pummels his shoe into the buckling fold at the back of my knee. I pinch a pleated scrap of skin at the junction of his shoulder so viciously it flares purple, and he sprains my hair into a knotted rope, shredding it from my scalp with a deep growl.
His body is lithe and huge and powerful. He's undoubtedly stronger, but I'm faster and more spry. He attacks with brute force, slugging and whamming so that my bones rattle and my muscles splatter. I aim for pressure-points and weak-spots, using my nails and elbows and knees to bruise and shock and dig.
I don't even remember what we're fighting about. I just know that the rush of it is so addicting that I can't stop.
"Had enough yet?" he huffs. His knuckles ricochet into my ear and the world starts ringing.
"You wish," I pant. "Can't keep up, old man?" My teeth find his forearm and chomp, leaving welting red fang-marks.
With the entire weight of his body, he hurls me into the wooden bureau at the front of the room so the brass knobs drill into my lower back. Behind me, the TV bangs into the wallpaper, the Nescafé machine jolts, cups clang. I grab one of the glasses and throw it at him. He deflects it rapidly, sending it shattering against a far wall.
In a single lunging step, he's on me, fisting my shirt, our faces slicing ominously close. Blood clogs his nose, smears his chin, dusts his stubble. A cut mars his eyebrow. His brown hair is bedraggled into utter disarray. Every patch of open skin has been mauled pink from my fingers and teeth. We're both battered and bloodied and bruised, breathing hard, pulsing with pain, on fire. The space between us swelters.
My fingers grasp the handle of a corkscrew from the minibar tray. I propel the spiralled metal prong up towards his chin but he wrings my wrist, prying it from me and flinging it away.
I'm about to spit at him, but with a sharp wrench of my hair, he's dragging our mouths together in a desperate, furious kiss. It's wretched and toxic and starved. Somehow, his lips are more ruthless than his fists. There's no fondness, no sweetness, nothing but feral, untamed lust.
My fury bleeds into a passionate need. Our tongues meld, chests crushing together, my fingers snarling into his hair, his fingers cinching my waist. The merciless assault of his warm mouth sends a burst of heat flooding through me. He tastes like sweat and blood, heady, depraved.
We tug and pull violently, lips and tongues brawling, a flurry of hungry palms and raging fingertips. With a fluid shear of his rugged hands, he cleaves my top clean in half, the cotton withering apart onto the ground. I gasp as cool air hits my skin. I'm still wearing the same bra from the party; strapless, translucent red lace, insubstantial. He gives me a look of such intense, debauched desire that his pupils alone could devour me whole.
With a quicksilver flash, I've plucked my penknife from my jeans pocket. His grey irises burn coal-black when he sees it. "And what the fuck do you plan to do with that, huh?" he rasps.
"Wait and see." I meet his eyes as I click the blade open and lift it towards him. We both watch the gleaming tip of it press precariously into the front of his t-shirt. It pierces through the black fabric. I skim it down, down, carving over his taut pecs, the flat ripple of his abs. A tick of my wrist and the hacked remnants of his shirt flutter away.
His naked chest is tan and wide and toned, a black tattoo slashed across his right bicep and another stripped across the left bend of his ribcage. A trim trail of dark hair drips down his navel and disappears past his belt. His erection strains visibly through thick-clad denim. My insides clench. When I flip my gaze back up to his face, he gifts me a cocky, lopsided grin.
He socks me in the arm so the knife clatters, then boots it so it skates beneath one of the sofas. Then he's on me again, claiming my mouth, our bare stomachs slamming, skin sticking and sliding. I try pushing him towards the bed, but he's like six feet and three inches of pure, solid granite; he doesn't even budge.
New strategy. I plow my teeth into his split lip and he goes rigid with pain. I use his distraction to launch myself at him, vining around him, climbing, trying to take him down with a mighty push, but he recuperates fast, hauling me up his body and mashing me against the nearest bare expanse of wall.
That backfired. I'm hanging two yards in the air, my legs draped around his strong shoulders. His fingers find a tattered gash in my jeans and tear, and tear, and tear, like the black denim is nothing more than a sleeve of construction paper. His face is inches from the softest part of me, my breaths heave from me in weightless tufts, my pants and socks and boots join the army of ruined clothing scattered across the floor.
My thong matches my bra, skimpy red mesh. His fingers curl around the edge of it, plucking it from my skin. "That's a two-hundred dollar piece of lingerie," I warn breathlessly. He looks me right in the eye when he rips the strap to slivers and flicks the savaged La Perla undergarment away like trash.
My ass flattens against the paint as his deft hands wrap around my thighs, spreading them further. Between them, I'm so fucking soaked that he could flounder and sink and drown in it. He takes in how wet and pink I am and groans, deep and husky. Shivers cascade up my body. "Mm," he murmurs against the soft curve of my inner thigh, "You've been absolutely fucking drenched for me all week, haven't you?"
Even though I'd never admit it in a bajillion years, I'm aching for him to touch me. My hips tremble involuntarily. Frustrated, I plunge my fingers through his hair and try forcing his face to close the gap between us, rocking forward, but he just chuckles. He uses his heavy hands to trap me firmly in place. Stupid, arrogant, useless motherfucking bastard... "Ask me nicely," he teases. His hot breaths wash tauntingly along my sopping wetness.
"You ask nicely," I puff, but it comes out sounding weak and adolescent.
All it does is make him laugh. "Aren't you tired of fighting?" He reaches out a coarse thumb and scrapes it directly over my throbbing clit. My body buckles, the soles of my feet digging into his muscular shoulder-blades.
"Jake," I warn, dangerously close to losing my everloving mind. "If you don't stop being an asshole right now, I swear to—ohmygod...!"
With a low, rumbly growl, he buries his face into the very centre of me, licking and kissing and sucking every quivering inch, messy and brutal. His lips are cruel, his tongue is deadly, his strong shoulders flex ferociously as he drives me into the drywall with his filthy, undeniably devastating mouth.
He hums his appreciation. "So fucking sweet, Rayna." He kneads my bare ass harshly in his big hands while he smothers my folds, twists his tongue into me, suckles my pulsing clit until I'm panting for breath. I'm about two seconds from splintering into countless fractured pieces all over him when he pulls away.
"No..." I gasp, clutching his hair needily. "Jake! You fucking... Ugh!" I wriggle, tossing my head back against the wall as the rising crest of my orgasm deflates.
He smirks knowingly, eyes blazing, my arousal shining along his chin. "What makes you think you deserve to come, huh?"
Oh, this asshat is just asking for it... I slap him straight across his smug face, but his stupid smirk doesn't waiver. If anything, it broadens. "What makes you think you can stop me?"
He slips me from his shoulders but catches me with his hips so we're pinned face-to-face with my back to the wall, our noses brushing, his jeans scruffing the tender skin of my inner thighs.
Soft, against my lips, he grumbles, "I have half a mind to chain you to the bed and fuck you til you pass out." He skims his rough fingertips up my leg, slowly, slowly, coming so close to touching me where I need it but not close enough. "Maybe if you beg..." He strokes a lazy thumb along my dripping slit and my clit throbs, neglected, "and plead, and be a very good girl for me, I'll let you come all over my cock."
My teeth sink into my lower lip, my hips straining towards him. Like hell... I reach for him, give his dick a thick squeeze through his jeans and tug until he grunts. My mouth tickles his jaw when I counter, "If you beg, I might let you make it to the morning with your balls attached."
"You're terrible at negotiating."
"This isn't a negotiation."
We glare at each other, at an impasse, neither of us willing to cave in.
I think he might just throw me onto the bed and have his wicked way with me – sure, I'd put up a fight, but I'd surrender quick and easy as long as he finally just fucking fucked me, for God's sake – except there's a crackle of static. Jake winces, jamming a thumb into his ear.
"Anderson," he snaps, his eyebrows knitting together into grim exasperation. An indistinct male voice jabbers into Jake's earpiece. "You're fucking kidding me. There's no one else?" The man says something that apparently pisses Jake off. "None of your bloody business, that's what. It's late." More unintelligible chattering. "Fine. Alright, alright, I'm on my way." He mutters something sour about a cock-block and clicks off the device.
"Jake," I breathe, speering him with a murderous do-not-you-fucking-dare-walk-away-from-me-right-now sorta look. My legs wrap around him tighter and he groans.
"Security threat at the British embassy," he explains, taciturn. "They need back-up." His forehead is locked tense with chagrin. Normally, I would take great satisfaction in his displeasure, but my pettiness isn't gonna make me come. Who the fuck do I need to kill to get a damn orgasm around here?
Suddenly, all I wanna do is kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him, but he's dropping me onto my feet and striding away, leaving me near-naked and reeling without any kind of apology or remorse. My pussy starts weeping.
I watch him strap on his holster, tug on a fresh t-shirt, stuff his cell-phone into his pocket. Disappointment sinks through me. He runs a distressed hand through his unruly hair and glances over at me from across the room. I think he might offer something sweet like, don't worry baby, I'll be back as soon as I can but instead he just says flatly, "There's a box of plasters in the bathroom. You look like shit."
I lob the nearest heavy object at him with a seething hiss, but he's out the door, banging it shut behind him. The TV remote cracks uselessly against it.
A hot stab of frustration smacks me in the chest. I use my knuckle to smear away tears. If his balls aren't blue as a fucking smurf by the time he gets back, I'll pummel them purple like shriveled grapes and make him drink the wine.
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Author's Note [Dec. 16, 2022]:
Fun fact, I fully intended for them to start fucking this chapter but when I was writing it they just DID NOT WANT TO DO IT. Neither one of them wanted to back down and give in first no matter how hard I tried. Stubborn assholes. Consent is key, and I couldn't force them to have sex if they didn't want to...
(Next chapter though, I forced them. Oops.)
xoxo Ami
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