Page 7 of Her Wicked Promise (The Devil’s Plaything #2)

Robin

O nce again, the castle looms out of fog like something ripped from the darkest fairy tale as our car winds up the serpentine drive. Stone turrets pierce the gray mists, gothic windows stare down unseeingly, and the whole fortress perches on its cliff like a predator surveying its domain.

It looks like what it is. A trap.

The air cuts sharp against my lungs when I step from the car, scented with pine and the distant smoke of village chimneys. The enormous oak doors swing open silently, as if the castle itself has been waiting. Mrs. Kovacs is there once more to meet us, bowing her head as Eva leads me inside.

“Your room is prepared,” Eva says, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling.

She doesn’t look at me as she speaks, instead addressing Mrs. Kovacs in rapid syllables.

I made an effort to forget what little I learned of their language and none of the words sound familiar, anyway.

Mrs. Kovacs nods and sweeps away to carry out whatever orders Eva has given her.

“Surely you remember your way,” Eva says, as I just stand there.

Silently, I turn and mount the staircase.

And Eva follows me. I feel her eyes on me as we climb, taking me in greedily.

The way I trail my fingers along the banister.

The way I stare up at a tapestry depicting some medieval hunt.

Even the way I hesitate on the upper landing before turning down the hallway to where “my” room waits.

It’s like being watched by a hawk. Beautiful, focused, and utterly deadly.

My bedroom is exactly the same as I remember, except for the clothes. They’re all different from the wardrobe she dressed me up in before. New gowns, new leisure clothes, new shoes.

But they’ll all fit perfectly—I can tell, just by looking.

Eva watches me take this all in, and then says, “Dinner will be served in one hour.”

She leaves the room and, for the first time since I left the hospital, I let out a deep breath and feel my shoulders relax a little.

I can do this.

I can.

Dinner is served in the formal dining room. I sit at Eva’s right hand at a table long enough to park a car on, feeling ridiculously small beneath another glittering chandelier. The staff move around us like ghosts, setting down course after course of food I barely taste.

Eva watches me eat. Watches me sip the wine. Watches me try to make conversation and fail against her stone-wall silence.

When one of the servers—the young woman who tried to teach me words down in the kitchen last time I was here—places the dessert course before me, she grins furtively at me. I offer her a small smile in return. “Thank you.”

Eva’s gaze cuts to her, glacial and sharp. She retreats so quickly she nearly trips over her own feet.

Eva’s fingers tighten around her wineglass. “The staff are not here for your entertainment.”

“I was just being polite.”

“There’s no need for that.”

I meet her stare across the expanse of mahogany and crystal. “I’m not going to act like a jerk just because it makes you feel better about your own behavior.”

For a moment, I think I’ve managed to enrage her.

For a moment.

Then the shutters slam down again. “You will not bother the staff in the kitchen like you did during your last visit.”

And then she goes back to her own meal, dismissing me with a wave of the hand when I sullenly ask if I can go.

And so two days pass in this strange, gilded purgatory.

Eva disappears for most of the day—business calls, meetings, who knows where else.

I think about going down to the kitchens, talking to the staff again, but I don’t want to get them in trouble.

Because when Eva does appear, she always seeks me out reading in the library or walking the grounds, and her eyes rake over me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.

But she doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t even speak to me beyond the bare necessities.

It’s worse than anger. This cold distance makes me feel like I’m being slowly frozen from the inside out. After that first formal dinner, I eat all my meals alone. I get up alone and I go to bed alone.

I call Adrian every time I think of him, or Dane, or Alicia, or Maisie. But somehow, talking to them just makes me feel more alone.

On the third night, after another solo dinner that I asked to be sent up to my room, a maid appears at my door and hands me a note.

Come to my study.

—E

My pulse jumps. “Now?”

The maid just gestures for me to follow her. So I shrug on my robe—I’ve already changed for bed into one of the lush pairs of satin pajamas Eva provided—and I follow, even though I know the way myself.

The study is no smaller than the other rooms in the castle, but somehow, the bookshelves reaching toward a coffered ceiling and the fire crackling in a massive stone hearth make it feel more intimate.

Eva sits behind an ancient desk, perfectly composed in a black silk blouse that makes her pale skin glow.

She doesn’t look up when I enter, and continues writing something into a ledger book. “Sit.”

I take the chair across from her, hyperaware of every detail: the way the firelight plays across her cheekbones, the elegant line of her throat, the scratch of her pen across the page.

And then she sets the pen down.

Her eyes lift to mine.

My mouth goes dry. This is about power. About control. About the way she’s been watching me for three days like a predator deciding when to strike.

And she’s decided tonight is the night.

She stands, moving around the desk, and leans over my chair.

“Lovely little Robin,” she murmurs. Her hand cups my face, thumb brushing across my cheek with devastating gentleness.

Then her mouth is on mine, and it’s nothing like gentle.

It’s claiming, possessive, a kiss that steals the breath from my lungs and the thoughts from my head.

I should resist the temptation to fall into her kiss. Should remember that this is business, that I’m here because I sold myself, that Eva Novak is selfish and greedy and…

I kiss her back.

She makes a sound low in her throat—satisfaction—and her hands slide into my hair, tugging me closer. The chair scrapes against the floor as she pulls me to my feet, never breaking the kiss, until I’m pressed back against the desk, and she is pressed up against me.

Her hands are insistent—tracing the curve of my waist, tugging open my robe, finding the hem of my pajama top and sliding underneath to brush bare skin. I gasp against her mouth, and she swallows the sound, her teeth grazing my bottom lip.

“Tell me to stop,” she murmurs, but her hands are already unbuttoning my top from the bottom, baring my stomach to the warm air. “Tell me you don’t want this. Make me believe it, and I will stop.”

I can’t. Because despite everything—the circumstances that brought me here, the cold distance she’s shown me, the way this feels like another form of captivity—my body is singing under her touch.

She reaches behind me to the desk and makes a wide movement with her arm. Papers scatter to the floor as she presses me back and slides between my knees, her hands framing my face as she kisses me again. Deeper this time, hungrier, like she’s trying to swallow me whole.

The wood is hard against my spine as she pushes me back insistently, her mouth trailing fire down my throat. My pajama top slides away from my breasts and I’m half-naked in the firelight while she remains fully clothed.

“Beautiful,” she breathes, running a warm hand down my breastbone, and the reverence in her voice makes something flutter in my chest.

Her mouth finds my nipple, tongue circling the peaked flesh until I arch beneath her with a soft cry. Her hands grip my hips, holding me in place as she lavishes attention on first one breast, then the other, until I’m trembling and breathless and completely at her mercy.

“Eva, please?—”

“Please what?” She lifts her head, amber eyes dark with desire. “Tell me what you want, Robin.”

What I want. As if it’s that simple. As if wanting anything in Eva Novak’s world doesn’t come with a price attached.

But her hands are sliding up my thighs, her fingers slippery against the satin, and rational thought becomes impossible. “I want…I want you to touch me.”

“Where?” Her fingers trace patterns on my inner thighs, maddeningly close to where I need her most. “Here?”

“Higher.”

“Here?” She’s barely grazing the seam of my pajama pants, and I’m about to combust from the anticipation. Am I already soaked through?

“ Please .”

She hooks her fingers in the elastic at my waist and pulls my pants down and off in one movement. Her fingers find me wet and ready, and she makes that sound again—satisfaction mixed with something like possessiveness. “All this for me?”

I nod, too desperate to speak.

“Tell me.”

“Yes. All for you. I want?—”

“What?” She’s rubbing now, just enough pressure to make me whimper, but not nearly enough to satisfy the ache building inside me. “Say it, Robin.”

“I want you to make me come.”

The words spill out, unbidden, and Eva smiles. “Since you asked so nicely,” she murmurs, and then her fingers are pressing inside me, filling me, making me gasp.

She curls them so that a ripple of pleasure races through me, and I cry out, “Oh God, please.”

Her eyes lock with mine, and for once there’s no mockery in her gaze. No smug superiority. Just an intensity that takes my breath away. I close my eyes, unwilling to give her what she wants.

I don’t want to give in so easily. Let me put up a little fight, at least…

“No,” she says, withdrawing her fingers. “Look at me.” I shake my head, and her free hand grips my jaw, forcing me to face her. “Open your eyes and look at me while I make you come.”

I let them crack open, and clench my teeth as she smiles that self-satisfied smile.

But her fingers resume their slow, torturous rhythm, her thumb tracing slow circles around my clit.

“Do you have any idea how creamy and inviting this sweet little cunt feels? It’s like dipping my fingers into warm honey. ”

I groan, my legs wrapping around her to pull her closer, but she resists. “You’re dripping onto my desk, little bird.” Her smile widens. “Do you know what that does to me?”

She’s talking to me the way she might a lover, and I should hate her for it, but instead I’m just getting even closer to the finish line. She’s staring at me, watching my face, and her fingers pick up speed. “Come for me, Robin. Remind me how pretty you look when you do.”

Her thumb presses down insistently on my clit and I cry out, back arching off the desk. She sets a rhythm that has me climbing toward the edge embarrassingly fast, her free hand gripping my hip to keep me from squirming away.

“That’s it,” she murmurs, voice husky with desire. “Give me everything.”

As if I have a choice. As if my body hasn’t already surrendered completely to her touch, to the dark heat in her eyes, to the way she’s claiming me with every stroke of her fingers.

But I won’t give her the one thing she wants. I won’t let her into my heart again. Even this naive little bird isn’t stupid enough to do that.

The orgasm hits hard, drives through me in waves that leave me gasping and shaking. Eva doesn’t stop, drawing out every last tremor until I’m boneless and spent on her desk.

She withdraws her hand slowly, eyes never leaving my face as she brings her fingers to her lips and tastes me. The gesture is so intimate, so possessive, that fresh heat blooms between my thighs.

She leans down to press a soft kiss to my temple. The tenderness is almost worse than the possession—a glimpse of something gentle beneath the predator’s mask. But I can never let myself forget that the tenderness is the real disguise.

She’s hard stone underneath.

Then she steps back, straightening her silk blouse like nothing happened.

“You should return to your room,” she says, voice once again cool and controlled. “We have an early morning tomorrow.”

We do? I sit up slowly, reaching for my discarded clothes with shaking hands. My body still hums with aftershocks, skin sensitive to the brush of fabric. “What are we?—”

“Goodnight.”

The dismissal is clear. I pull on my robe quickly and bundle up the pajamas to carry, aware of her eyes tracking every movement. I make my way to the door on unsteady legs and force myself not to look back as I exit.

But in the corridor, I lean against the wall and try to catch my breath. My body betrayed me completely in there, responding to her touch like I was made for it.

Like I belonged to her.

I make my way back to my room through corridors that feel different now, charged with possibility and danger. The few staff I pass keep their eyes down, but I wonder if they know. If Eva’s possession is written across my skin for everyone to see.

Back in my room, I pull on my pajamas again and crawl under the heavy covers, but sleep doesn’t come. Instead, I lie awake staring at the ceiling, replaying every touch, every kiss, every whispered command.

My body still throbs where she touched me. Still craves more.

I came here to protect my family. To honor a contract that will secure their future. But as moonlight spills across the marble floor through locked windows, I’m forced to confront a truth I’ve been avoiding.

Eva Novak is going to destroy me all over again.