“Arlo,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“He wanted me to know without saying the words that if they ever called upon me again, if I didn’t comply, it would be easy to bend me to their will through you.” He looked at me then, and he didn’t have to say the words for me to know the truth.

I was his weakness, because he’d lay his life down for me, to protect me, to make sure nothing ever again hurt me.

“You got all that from Nikolai being in the library with me?” I believed him without a doubt, and he’d know these things, the motives with these psychopaths, better than I would. But God… would those men actually do a thinly veiled threat like that?

As I stared into Arlo’s eyes and let his words echo in my head, I had my answer. Yes. Yes, they would.

My heart was racing so fast, my pulse a steady beat at the base of my throat. “Pull over,” I found myself saying before I could stop the words from spilling forth. Arlo didn’t question me, didn’t hesitate. He pulled over on the long stretch of deserted road and put the SUV in park, his focus straight ahead.

“No one will take me from you,” he said in an utterly detached voice, yet I knew him well enough to know how much he meant those words.

He looked at me then, the lights from the dashboard casting a glow across his hard features, the shadows making him seem almost sinister. Yet he’d never hurt me. He loved me. Unconditionally.

I didn’t know what I was doing until I had the seat belt unlatched, pulled up part of my dress so the hem was now above my knees, and crawled over the console to straddle his lap. He didn’t look surprised, and he didn’t stop me. In fact, his hands landed on my waist, his fingers digging into me painfully, possessively.

His nostrils flared slightly, his teeth clenched as I pressed my upper body to his, lowering my pussy down on his already hard dick beneath his pants. I let him feel my breasts against his pectoral muscles, my hard nipples against the expensive material of his tuxedo.

He slid his hand up the center of my body, between my heaving breasts, and curled his fingers around my throat, collaring me with the heavy pressure that made me wet.

“You drive me crazy,” he murmured and lowered his gaze to my mouth. “So crazy I want to slaughter anyone who even looks at you.”

I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs, and it had nothing to do with the tightness of Arlo’s hand around my throat.