Page 11 of House of Cards (The Devil’s Den #2)

There should be a public service announcement about movies, and how wrong they are.

He doesn’t go down like a felled tree.

Oh, no.

In fact, he barely loosens his grip on my throat. But thank God for my assumption that he was going to end up on the floor, writhing in pain, because I surge forward, fully expecting my blow to have ended him.

I’m just strong enough to pull out of his grip, but he’s right behind me when I dart out of the bathroom and head for the hotel room’s door. I dodge the food cart, but it catches on my hip and sends me whirling around.

His hand snatches my throat, swallowing my neck, thumb pressing hard against the pulse hammering out of control beneath his fingers.

I squeak in surprise, hand flying to his.

“Fight as hard as you want, kitten. It won’t make a difference.”

Clawing at him is useless, as he so bluntly pointed out, so instead I hunt around blindly on the food cart with one hand, trying to pry his fingers off me with the other.

Then I find a fork.

Which I stab into his chest.

He lets out a surprised grunt, staring down at the steel prongs protruding from his pec. Red blooms on his white dress shirt when he plucks out the fork. As he tosses it over his shoulder, I grab the domed plate cover and slam it into the side of his head.

He flinches, but that hand stays wrapped around my throat.

I yell as I grab a handful of food and smear it over his face, nearly knocking his glasses off.

He rips them off, glaring at me through a mask of gooey egg yolk.

Then he grabs a handful of food and slaps it over my face.

I spit out a mouthful of hollandaise sauce from an eggs Benedict I’m pretty sure I didn’t order, gaping at him as he rams me into the wall beside the hotel room door.

“You stabbed me,” he grates out.

His grip on my throat tightens just enough to make my pulse hammer harder against his hand, the pressure toeing the edge of pain

I’m not sure if he’s sexier with or without his glasses on. That he’s smeared with food isn’t helping me decide.

“You kidnapped me! What the fuck did you expect was gonna happen?”

He wipes his face with the sleeve of his shirt and then grimaces at the mess on his clothes. “Princesses get kidnapped. You are not a princess.”

I spit at him.

If he didn’t like me stabbing him with a fork, he definitely doesn’t approve of that. With a low-throated growl that makes the hackles on the back of my neck stand up in terror, he drags me back over the carpet and into the bathroom.

“You know what I hate more than liars, Zoey?”

I assume his question is rhetorical, because before I can drum up an answer, he shoves me under the shower head.

Thankfully, it’s not scorching hot anymore. I guess even fancy hotels have a limit on how much hot water they can supply guests. I gasp as lukewarm water pours over my face, reaching back with clawed hands to attack Smith, convinced he’s trying to drown me.

“Waste,” he hisses as he kicks off his shoes. “I abhor waste.” A second later, he’s ripping off his suspenders.

My body goes ice cold when I realize he’s undressing.

Fuck!

I scream, then splutter, then choke as water goes down my windpipe.

“Relax, kitten,” he mutters as he steps out of his pants. “If I wanted to fuck you, you’d be on the bed with my cum leaking out of your ass.”

Shock pulses through my body. I gape up at him, limp as a washcloth as he drags me back under the spray and washes my face. His gentle touch is completely at odds with the furious scowl on his face and the tight grip he still has around my throat.

When my face and décolletage have been cleansed to his satisfaction, he pushes me against the wall and slowly releases me, studying me warily as he strips naked.

A normal guy might give me time to check him out, but Smith just puts out his hand to test the water and then steps inside.

I stay huddled against the cool tiles, my mind endlessly repeating his last words as I watch him clean breakfast food off his face and neck before he tends to the four small holes on his chiseled pectoral muscle.

His what leaking out of my what ?

Moving slowly, so very careful of triggering him into more violence—or him possibly dragging me over to the bed and making good on his threat—I wrap my arms around my chest.

I finally get to see what he was hiding under his expensive suit.

A body built to dominate.

His arms are veiny and lean, the kind that could pin you to his desk without breaking a sweat. Chest of solid muscle, slim but well defined…and scarred. A round, puckered scar that might have been a bullet wound. A long, pale line over his ribs that could have come from a knife.

I can’t stop my eyes dragging further and further down his taut body to his narrow hips, and the trail of dark hair leading down to his thick?—

Holy hell.

What I felt earlier wasn’t even a full erection.

He’s.

So.

Big.

“Eyes up here.” His voice is rough, and when my gaze locks with his, my body quakes at the dark hunger I see in his eyes. “Turn off the water.”

I do as he commands with a shaking hand. He backs up out of the shower, reaching blindly for one of the fluffy white towels on the rack. He drapes it over his shoulders, patting his hair dry before swiping it over his face. Then he wraps it around his waist and beckons me to come out.

Keeping my arms wrapped around my tits, I step out carefully. Smith snatches the second towel from the rack and crooks a finger at me. I reluctantly move closer to him, flinching when he wraps me in the fluffy white fabric.

He studies me for a long moment as we stand there dripping onto the glossy black tiles, making a low rumble deep in his chest.

“As much as I’m enjoying this little game,” he murmurs as he pats the corner of my towel over my face, “I’m too tired for this shit right now.”

“Cry me a river, Grandpa,” I say sourly. He’s way older than me—at least seven, eight years older—but he’s far from old. Which is probably why my insult just slides off him like hollandaise sauce off someone’s cheek.

Despite his advanced age, he doesn’t seem to have much of an issue seeing without his glasses. I was hoping he’d be completely blind without them, because that’s something I could have used to my advantage.

“This? This is unacceptable.” He points to the four small holes in his chest.

I sniff, carefully tugging the towel out of his hand and using it to dab water from my neck. “So is imprisoning someone.”

In a heartbeat, I’m up against the bathroom wall, his arms flush with the tiles on either side of my head, body caging me in.

“Stab me again, and imprisonment’s going to the be the least of your problems.”

The sensation of his wet skin against mine is electrifying. Or is it just the way his eyes darken into black pools, eager to swallow my gaze whole?

His stoic mask fades, and dear God, I wish it hadn’t. Under that stony face is something primal, almost savage. A shiver of fear courses through me before coiling in my belly, where it causes sinister things to happen in my nether regions.

A growing ache. A slow, pulsing heat I’ve never felt before.

With Smith’s wet, hard body pinning me to the wall, I’m trapped. Heat pools low, my muscles clenching tight, and even as I try to will my sudden need away, my body does the unforgivable and tilts toward him.

What the hell am I thinking?

I need to end this before I do something insane…like let him finger me again.

“Parlay?” I ask through a swallow.

He frowns. “I’m not sure you know what that means.”

“And I’m not sure you’re familiar with pirate etiquette.”

“Pardon?” That frown of his only deepens.

“Jesus, watch a movie sometime,” I sigh. “Truce?”

He steps back, and I’d be rejoicing if my insides weren’t still so insanely hot and bothered.

When he moves aside, I take it as an invitation to leave the bathroom. My eyes skip to the food cart, and I feel a tiny stab of guilt at the mess I’ve made. Looks like it would have been an excellent breakfast. They even got the bacon right. Crispy, but not?—

“You spilled the milk,” he says, coming to stop beside me as I stare down at the wrecked plates and lifting the now empty jug of milk. It looks even smaller in his big hand as he upends it, so the last drop splashes down onto an egg-smeared croissant.

“I ain’t gonna cry about it,” I murmur, but it’s halfhearted.

The kitchen was kind enough to send up a newspaper with our breakfast. Or maybe Smith always gets one with his morning cup of coffee.

I have to force myself not to pick it up and stare at it, because something tells me wherever my oh shit meter was last night, it’s just sky rocketed. Or plummeted. Whichever direction is worse.

FAMILY DINER BURNS AS?—

“—lactose intolerant, or do you just prefer plant milk?”

I tilt my head to stare up at my captor, brain scrambling furiously as I watch him cleaning his glasses with the edge of his towel. “Uh…it’s just...nuttier.”

Forget the fucking milk.

What’s happening right now?

The same man who terrified and violated me yesterday standing there in a towel asking me if I’m lactose intolerant as some twisted part of my brain catalogs the fascinating way water droplets trace paths down his chest?

That’s nuts.

Smith puts his glasses back on, his eyes returning to the breakfast cart as if he’s searching for something to eat. My gaze darts back to the newspaper, specifically the headline sprawled in thousand-point type on the front page.

FAMILY DINER BURNS AS TURF WARS HEAT UP

…completely destroyed in last night’s fire…

…marks the third local business destroyed by fire in the past month…

…was rescued from his second-floor apartment and remains in critical condition at…

…suggest mounting tensions between rival organizations…

…possible connections to recent drug-related violence in the area…

I try reading the article, but my eyes keep jumping back to the photo. Blackened, crumbling walls. Columns of smoke.

No!

I curl my hand into a fist when it starts shaking.

This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

But even though it’s only been a week, I know it is. Buzzcut burned down my diner to smoke me out, and I wasn’t even there to be caught in the flames. The cosmic joke that is my life has officially stopped being funny.

With the diner gone, I’ve lost my job, my home, and my last connection to Mom.

If that was all, I’d be okay with it.

But that diner meant everything to Mom. Her pride and joy. Now all that’s left of my mother’s legacy is ash and rubble.

I blink back tears, focusing on the article’s photo.

Only one of the diner’s walls survived partially intact. The photographer captured it at just the right angle to make out the words spray-painted on the bricks.

Good thing I hadn’t been holding anything, because as soon as I’ve deciphered those words, a rush of icy heat surges through my body, following by a wave of numbness.

UR. A$$ IS MINE

Buzzcut’s message is clear. He isn’t just coming for his money anymore, he’s coming for me .

If he wants to kill me, he’ll have to find me first.