Page 19 of Cruel Pawn (Cruel Duet #1)

Priya

A rden was watching me in that intense, constant stare that made my skin burn. It seared my face, my chest, my stomach, lingering on the indents on my thighs like he was imagining fitting his hands to them and—

Nope.

Horny Priya was not winning this time. Cold, calculated Priya was in the driver’s seat now, and I refused to be beaten by a psychopath with a god-level cock and words that made my heart flutter.

It was a relief to escape into the bathroom and not just because my bladder was uncomfortably full.

Like the rest of the room, the décor here was dark and sumptuous, a white clawfoot tub breaking up the deep green of the walls, the dark wood of the cupboards.

Rich, vermillion towels draped over a heated rail and felt like heaven when I ran my fingers over them.

A big, arched window let in veils of sunlight, keeping the place from seeming like a dungeon, and life overflowed from the top of the cabinets in the form of foliage, and ferns draped over the wall from a golden planter, interspersed with vivid red flowers. Ferns and roses. My favourite.

“How the fuck do you know this?” I hissed as I sank onto the toilet, even that expensive and classy.

If I’d ever had the luxury of decorating my own home, it would have looked exactly like this—a little threatening, a little warm, but homely.

Not pristine and carefully arranged. Lived in and welcoming.

I did my business, my bladder thanking me by stabbing needles of discomfort into my gut— bitch —and washed my hands, taking the time to lather the rest of my body to wash off the remnants of sweat. And the cum liberally coating my inner thighs. Jesus, it was like he’d fucked a gallon of it into me.

I glared at the cuffs at my right ankle and both wrists, keeping me attached to the damn chain. I guess I should be grateful both my ankles weren’t wrapped in cold metal.

“The window’s painted shut, my opera,” Arden called through the dark wood door, his voice singsong and sweet.

“I’m not trying to escape,” I growled, passing the warm cloth over myself to be certain I was clean. “I’m getting rid of your fucking spunk.”

“Not a sexy word,” he remarked, closer. I could picture him pressing his face against the wood in a mindless need to get closer to me.

My heart softened. No, you useless fucking organ, you’re supposed to quicken with unease.

“Also, how dare you? I put that cum there, and that’s where I want it to stay.

I’ll have to fuck it much deeper next time so you can’t erase my essence. ”

“Not a sexy word,” I parroted, though snarlier and full of venom.

I glowered at the framed watercolour art on the walls—more roses, royal ferns, and horsetails, interspersed with baby’s breath.

Then a beautiful rendering of a hedgehog, a markhor, and a dark orange fox.

Another had sea creatures alongside dolphins and sharks.

Detailed but simple, the paintings wouldn’t have been out of place in a children’s book.

“Where did this art come from?” I asked suspiciously, drying myself.

Every flower, every plant, every animal was one of my favourites. Just how much about me did Arden McFadyen know?

“They sprang into creation from my own fair hands,” he replied grandly.

My reflection rolled her eyes hard as I inspected the shadows under my eyes, visible now my concealer had washed off. Frown lines cut into my face.

“I know you think that was shameless bragging,” he said through the door, “but I really do have fair hands. Come out and see.”

“I’m busy,” I bit out, staring at myself in the mirror.

I was stalling, nervous to go back out there and be assaulted with his obsessive affection.

I wasn’t sure I could fight it. The woman in the mirror was dark-eyed—not just my irises but the light in them had gone out years ago.

She was always dark eyed. Death-eyed, Silvio called it.

But now they were bright, feverish, excited.

“It was one orgasm,” I whisper-hissed at myself.

“It was more than one,” Arden disagreed.

I whipped around to stare at the closed door, my eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. “You have the bathroom bugged.”

“Well, duh. I’m not going to miss a single moment of my future wife’s existence. There are cameras too, but you’ll never find them.”

I turned on the spot, glaring at all corners of the room. The impulse to destroy every last bit of the bathroom struck me, tainting my heart. But I hesitated. It was too pretty to destroy.

What the hell had happened to me? I killed people for a living, for Christ’s sake.

Speaking of… “You cost me a lot of money, Arden,” I grumbled, giving my middle finger to every last inch of space.

“Cute,” he said with a rolling laugh. “How much? I’ll make it up to you.”

“Fifty thousand,” I grumbled, giving up on my illusion of privacy because it never really existed and twisting the lock. I scorned him by grabbing a big, fluffy red towel and wrapping it around myself, though.

“One second, my opera,” he said when the door groaned open, his attention on the phone in his hand. “Then I’ll kill you senseless.”

“That phone hasn’t even released yet,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest. “And no need for kisses, I’m all good.”

“There is always a need for kisses. And my cousin Damien has a tech hook-up who gets us all new shit before it’s dropped. I saved one for you, but you can only have it when I’m sure you’re not going to run away.”

“So, never.”

Arden’s eyes flicked up to mine, wicked with amusement. “You have everything you could possibly need—orgasms, your favourite food, sheets with as high thread count as physically possible, and a man who adores the very ground you walk upon.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I saw that. Don’t dismiss my love. You’re all I’ve been able to think about for months.

You burrowed yourself into my brain and now I’ll never get out, and I don’t want to.

You’re in my bloodstream, my opera. You’re imprinted on my skin, on my throat, and I’ll proudly wear your mark for the rest of my—”

“I didn’t mark you.”

He narrowed his eyes, lowering his phone. “And what, exactly, do you call this?” He tilted his head back to bare his throat.

“Attempted murder.”

He scoffed. “You wanted to keep me forever, but you were afraid, so you stabbed me. That’s a declaration of love in my eyes.”

“I wanted you dead because I was paid to kill you,” I countered, glaring at the chains that rustled as I stepped forward, a dark look on my face that usually warned people to stay very, very far from me.

“So pretty,” he sighed wistfully, his brown eyes bewilderingly soft.

My anger missed a rung and I faltered. “You… are extremely abnormal.”

“Yup.” He ducked forward to kiss the tip of my nose. “And you’re the proud new owner of fifty thousand pounds. What do you need all this money for anyway? You hoard it like a dragon hoards gold—”

I snatched the phone from his hand when he turned it to show my own fucking bank account. “How the hell are you in my account?”

“You might be skilled, my pretty opera, but I’m better. I know everything about you.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to suspect that,” I grumbled, staring at the new transaction. It had a little note attached that said FOR MY WIFEY. I rolled my eyes and angled the phone closer to my face, swiping the banking app closed so I could get to his phone book and— “Hey!”

He snatched it out of my hand and locked it. My most murderous glare had absolutely no effect. I lunged, throwing a punch at his gut, and a shudder went through me, both ice and fire, when he caught my wrist with fluid ease and pinned me against the wall beside the door.

I had a half second to panic that his fist would ram into my stomach, the fear of a beating instinctual and automatic, but then he was kissing me like a man starved. Against my better instincts I relaxed, sagging against the wall.

As promised, he kissed me senseless. I truly lost all my common sense as he tasted me with long, greedy sucks and undulating licks that turned me to a mess of need.

“I love you more than the sun and sky and every drop of water in the sea,” he professed when I was frustratingly docile, his lips dragging over the harsh angle of my jaw to my throat.

I melted into the wall with a soft sigh when he found the magical spot on the side of my neck, my eyes heavy lidded.

So good. So fucking good. I should be fighting, struggling, probably killing him, but my body had been starved for this for years.

The last three months were even worse because I knew how it felt to be the centre of his world, and I lost it.

Gave it up myself when I drove a kitchen knife into his jugular.

“I love you more than the petals that fall from cherry blossom trees.”

My hips rolled against his, soft molten heat spreading through my core. I’d never felt like this before, a strange contradiction of horny and soft. Needful but… peaceful. What the hell had he done to me?

“Wait, is that a poem?” I moaned when he kissed another line into my skin.

“Mm,” he confirmed, sucking on that spot and rendering me into a malleable puddle instead of a woman. “Like I said, I had a lot of time to make everything perfect. I wrote a lot of poems. Do you like it?”

Are you delusional? Of course I don’t like it.

The only reason you know I exist is because someone hired me to murder you.

“No one ever wrote a poem for me before,” I sighed instead, because, clearly, I’d lost my mind.

Arden with his lips wrapped around my throat was lethal. But when he stroked his tongue over my skin, moving in rolling, suggestive motions, I was sure he killed me. Priya the contact killer died a swift, moaning death, and Horny Priya returned with a flutter of eyelashes and a soft sigh.

“Does my pretty girl need another orgasm?” he asked between sucks of my throat.

I knew he was painting possessive marks onto my skin, but I didn’t care.

No, it was worse than that. I wanted them.

Wanted to be covered in the evidence that someone wanted me.

Me, not a con or pretence or a role I played.

Sharp, cold, cruel Priya who killed because it was what she was good at, what she loved, and all she’d ever known.

“Arden,” I groaned, chains rattling as I settled my arms on his shoulders, sinking my fingers into his hair the way I once did when I was Carmen, when I was playing him. But now it was far too real.

A thought occurred to me, and my stomach tangled in knots, my body tensing, fighting. I put a fraction of space between us; the wall hindered me.

“This isn’t revenge—right?” I asked in a voice too small, too easily broken.

Arden reeled back, a deep furrow carved between his dark brows, that beautifully harsh face full of confusion. “Revenge?”

“Because I lied, and I tricked you and pretended to be someone I wasn’t. You’re not… pretending to want me, just to make me fall in love with you so you can break me, too… right?”

His breath caught, his face full of so many flashing emotions that it was impossible to pick out a single one. “You’re falling in love with me?”

“No, that’s not what I said—”

Hot palms branded my thighs. I was lifted into the air, the towel ripped away in the same motion.

My back met the cool wall, my head spinning at the rapid movement.

He drove his cock in deep while I was still processing the shift in positions, and my mouth dropped open when those fucking piercings stroked every aching, needy spot inside me.

“It’s real,” he said on a groan, his hands tightening on my thighs as I wrapped my legs around him.

I should have fought, or at least put up a token effort, but—fuck, this was hard to admit—I needed him too much to even try to struggle.

So, I sank my right hand into his hair and gripped tight at the roots, all my fear and rage and frustration betrayed in that one clench of my fingers.

His hair still felt like silk, and now it was longer it was more satisfying to get a fistful of strands.

“It’s been real since the very first moment, Priya.

You might have orchestrated that meet cute, but every moment after it was real. ”

“Actually, I faked most of it. I lied about having a cat, Arden, and pretended he was sick—”

His hands suddenly dug into my thighs, something like true anger snapping his hips in his ruthless thrusts.

All the air left me in a rush as he carved his cock through my pussy like he wanted me bruised there, too.

I had to duck my head and bite my lip to contain my wanton, uncontrolled noises as he fucked me like he hated me.

And even as I came harder than I thought fucking possible, the air, the life, the soul ripped out of me… insecurity snuck in.

What if this was his shield cracking and the hate he tried to hide had poured free? What if this really was all an elaborate scheme to break me, not to keep me like he threatened?

The danger was that every time my heart softened when obsessive words poured from his lips, those threats were starting to sound like promises.

And every last promise could be a lie.