Page 22 of Cruel Pawn (Cruel Duet #1)

Priya

M y head pounded, my mouth equally full of cotton and bile as I came to, and realised the world was rocking around me.

Was I on a ship? The hazy thought broke through the traumatic memory that hadn’t haunted my sleep for months, maybe even a year.

It was no wonder it had resurfaced now; my most terrifying out of control memory had been triggered by Arden stealing my control by kidnapping and locking me up.

Arden.

The world wasn’t rocking; Arden had me propped against his chest as he sat against the headboard and he was rocking me, murmuring empty promises of safety.

I didn’t let any of them pierce my heart this time, hardening myself.

This was all a con to get revenge for me hurting him, but he’d find me a much harder target to break than he’d been for me.

It was still dark, only a soft amber glow from a lamp across the room throwing the shapes and shadows of the cottage into soft relief. I could just about make out the sofa, the TV, the blocky shapes of cupboards in the kitchen.

“I’m here, my opera,” Arden murmured, rocking me. “I’m right here. Your nightmares can’t hurt you because I’ll hurt them first. I’ll reach inside this pretty skull and prise them all out with my fingers if I have to, because the only person that gets to hurt you is me.”

“That’s physically impossible,” I remarked, my voice emerging as a hoarse, raw thing I instantly hated.

“I know,” he agreed easily, gently. “I can’t hurt you; you’re too damn pretty. I take one look at those big, brown eyes and forget what I was doing.”

Warm fingers skimmed my jaw, tilting my face up so he could lock eyes with me.

“I meant reaching your fingers into my head and ripping out my nightmares,” I said, swallowing at the sustained eye contact.

The way he watched me made my stomach squirm.

It looked real—his obsession, his care. It looked real.

And I wanted to delude myself into believing he wasn’t a good enough actor to pull this off, but I was still too shaken by my dream.

It was just wishful thinking. Arden was a psychopath, a kidnapper, a murderer, and fuck knows what else—he wasn’t the sweet, harmless cat-daddy I first assumed.

“Tell me what attacked your dreams, my opera,” he murmured, his thumb skimming my cheek, painting warmth across cool skin until I had to fight a shiver, had to fight the urge to lean into that touch.

“I’m not telling you anything,” I snapped weakly, trying to climb off him. His hands clamped on my hips with surprising strength, keeping my thighs wrapped around him. And the harder I fought him, the harder he gripped me, watching me with dark, patient eyes.

“You’re getting off on me fighting you?” I demanded, my upper lip curled back at the insistent hardness that pressed to my hip, growing each time I tried to unseat myself. It swelled further when I gave up on trying to escape and decided to wrap my hands around his throat and kill him instead.

“You really shouldn’t be aroused by a murder attempt,” I muttered, but his cock jolted against my hip like it excited him.

“Tell me what you dreamt about,” he murmured, not attempting to dislodge my strangling hands, as if he liked it. I made a throaty sound and dropped my hands. This wasn’t working. “Tell me,” he insisted, abrasively gentle.

I squirmed, uncomfortable, my skin pickling all over. “Get fucked.”

“Sure, we can do that after, but you’re going to tell me what you dreamt about and I’m going to beat your nightmares into submission first, hm?”

His soft, coaxing tone only made my scowl deepen. I shoved at his chest, and a flicker of something went through me, loosening the grip on my chest by a meagre fraction. I shoved him again, curled my fingernails into his bare chest until I left marks.

“That’s it, my opera. Get it out, take it out on me. I can handle anything you throw at me.”

I clenched my jaw, ignoring the lump that swelled in my throat because I had no explanation for it.

I hated this. I preferred to handle my nightmares alone in the dark, as was natural.

Not clamped in the arms of a clingy octopus that refused to surrender me to the dark.

I shoved at him again, and again, until it was my balled-up fists making contact, until redness spread across his pale chest like a masterpiece, until I was empty and shaky and cold.

Until I had nothing left to fight Arden as he bound me up in his arms and rocked me.

“Tell me,” he murmured, his voice only a whisper louder than the silence.

“I don’t want to,” I muttered into the warm skin of his chest. He was inescapable, all around me, all over me, the lulling warmth and reassurance of him burrowing into my skin like a barb. I didn’t want it, didn’t know what the fuck to do with this ruthless, unbending affection.

“The only nightmares allowed to exist in this clever mind are the ones I put there.”

The fuck kind of response was that? I sighed. Heavily. He was still hard against my hip but we both pretended it wasn’t there, at least for now.

“Why do you care so much?” I demanded, the words too big to keep trapped in my chest. They forced my lips apart and bulldozed their way through my clenched teeth, refusing to be silent. “Why do you give a fuck if I have nightmares?”

“Because you’re mine and I love you.”

I laughed. “This isn’t love, Arden.”

“I wouldn’t go to these extremes for anything less.”

There was no doubt in his voice, not even a waver, and that made me even colder.

There was a logic to his argument, too. I wouldn’t bother doing any of this for someone I only vaguely liked, either.

But he was truly delusional if he thought any of this was real.

Or else the greatest actor the world had ever seen.

Fingers splayed in my hair, stroking pressure across my scalp, and my head thudded into his shoulder.

A groan snuck free. He added more pressure and my eyes slammed shut, a shaking sigh leaving me.

Was I cursed—to feel this good, to discover so many places that brought ecstasy rushing through my body, with a man I’d been destined to kill?

I must be cursed. It was the only explanation for the intensity of every touch, the intensity of my reaction.

“Tell me what happened.”

“It was nothing,” I murmured, aware he was drugging me with those heavenly, massaging fingers.

But as I relaxed into him, melting like chocolate on his fingers, I didn’t bother to fight it.

I wouldn’t tell him everything, but just a little wouldn’t hurt.

And it was a novelty—no one had asked what my nightmares were about before.

“Just an old nightmare. It doesn’t usually bother me. ”

One moment Arden was breathing, stroking my hair, rocking me against him. The next he was as still as a corpse. “I triggered you,” he whispered.

I closed my eyes. “Not exactly.”

“So that’s a yes.”

It should have been. Him keeping me trapped against his body, his arms locked around me, should have been on big glaring, neon trigger, too, but I wasn’t afraid and that was the key difference. On that job when Oliver took me down to the rug, I’d been afraid, but I wasn’t scared of Arden.

“Tell me what you dreamt about, and I’ll give you clothes,” he offered in a voice cut raw, like shards of glass cut into the scar I gave him, but deeper, enough to damage his vocal cords.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” I snapped, pulling my face from the warm haven of his chest. My inner voice screamed at me; he was offering clothes, so why would I fight him?

Because it made me feel like a victim. Made me feel vulnerable and small, and that was a death sentence.

“So, you don’t want clothes?” he teased, some life returning to his voice, to his raw-boned face.

“Of course I want the fucking clothes.”

“Such a filthy mouth for a woman so pretty,” he groaned and kissed me so abruptly that my heart threw itself at my ribs. “I’ll give you all the clothes in the world, my opera, just tell me what haunts you so I can help you fight it.”

Fuck.

All the other shit, the delusions of love, the sweeping declarations, I could handle. But offering to have my back while I fought my demons, rather than keeping me bubble-wrapped in a cage of safety… that shit was catnip to me.

I made sure to glare at him, so he knew I wasn’t particularly happy about it, but I admitted, “When I first started out in the business—”

“The business of killing people?”

“A job went wrong—”

“By job you mean murder?”

“God, you’re an awful listener,” I groaned, fighting the muscles at the corners of my mouth as they tried to tense, to curve, to smile.

“Yes, I was on a job to kill someone, and it fucked up. I was only fifteen, but I was overconfident. I’d already killed my first target, and it was so easy that I let it go to my head, but the second target overpowered me. ”

Arden went still again. This time his hands found my hips and gripped tightly, the smoothness of his skin as much a surprise as his heat.

A man like this should have violent callouses on his fingers, should have blood on his hands.

“Is he dead?” he asked in a voice like steel—cold and hard enough to shatter kneecaps.

“I thought he was,” I sighed, pushing hair back from my face.

When that wasn’t enough, I gathered it into my hands and began to braid it, needing the action to ground myself.

“I stabbed him then he fell, hitting his head on a glass table. I later found out it had only knocked him unconscious, but by that time he’d vanished, and I’d already been paid for the job.

Grandfather let me believe he was dead.”

Arden’s eyes softened, his hands coming up to trace my fingers. I had nothing to tie the braid with, so I let it fall. “He kept it secret to shield you.”

A laugh burst free, staccato and loud. “No.” I snorted. “Definitely not. He’s not that kind of grandfather.”