Page 40 of House of Cards (The Devil’s Den #2)

Smith

“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”

I give Zoey a slow blink, my mind still reeling from Myles’ parting words. The weight of what I’ve just done encases me like concrete.

I’ve claimed her. Marked her as mine.

It’s an impulsive decision that could cost me everything I’ve only just rebuilt.

Having to choose between the Balmont Boys and this near stranger shouldn’t even be a choice. I don’t need her, but I do need them. They’re the only family I have. The only people who know what I am…and yet have no issue keeping me around.

But I can’t untangle the clusterfuck my thoughts have become. Can’t make up from down. It happens whenever Michelle comes up.

Everyone has a period in their lives they wish they could do over, or erase. Shitty childhoods. Awful high school years. Bad jobs, bad relationships, bad decisions.

Mine was the latter, which led to the former. An Angel who caught my attention, who I then dated.

It didn’t just end in tears.

It ended in a shallow grave, and a visit from the FBI that nearly brought down everything Myles had built.

Yet here I am, risking it all again for another woman who looks at me like I’m anything but the predator who’s going to devour her whole.

And while I’m dealing with those horrific memories, knowing that I’ll have to dispose of her one day soon, Zoey’s asking me irrelevant, loaded questions like why I haven’t fucking kissed her yet.

“Well?” She tosses hair out of her eyes, tilts her head, and demands an answer with sultry, hooded eyes.

“Same reason we haven’t held hands or told each other our star signs,” I snap out.

She watches me with those gorgeous hazel eyes, fingering the neckline of her red silk robe, and then cracks up laughing.

This feels like a fever dream. Her tumble of messy brown hair, the way her eyes scrunch, the hand that shoots up to cover her mouth as she laughs.

Zoey. The perfect, beautiful mess who’s making an even bigger mess of my life. How can this woman not realize she’s a match to the gasoline inside my soul?

I slam my hand against the emergency stop, halting both the elevator—and Zoey’s laughter—in its tracks.

She gasps when I pin her against the elevator’s bronze wall. A sound that cuts off instantly when I close my fingers around her throat. She grabs my wrists, sinks her fingernails into my flesh.

I lean in, murmuring down to her. “Told you, kitten. The harder you fight, the tighter your leash.”

Panic flares in her eyes as I squeeze harder.

A gasp, then a choke, rattles out of her plump lips.

Lips I desperately, desperately want to kiss now that she’s planted the thought.

Fuck, who am I kidding? I’ve been wanting to kiss her since the first time she told me to fuck off.

I tip my head down, breathing over that tempting mouth of hers. I can still picture my cum streaked across her blushing skin. Can still feel her wetness coating my lips and tongue and chin?—

“You’ll have to squeeze harder if you want to shut me up,” she rasps.

A swell of frustration surges through me.

It’s so fucking strong, I’m overcome.

Again.

My fist slams into the metal wall beside her head, and I feel her body jolt with shock. I push away from the wall, hit the emergency stop again, and tug my clothes straight as I turn to face the door.

There’s a dent in the wall. She makes a point of looking at it, then at me.

“Was it something I said?”

“ Enough , Zoey.”

My eyes track the shiver that tears through her, relishing every moment of her sudden fear.

Jesus, why am I so pissed off?

Because I’ve wanted to claim this woman the moment she ran from me, but I fight that need as hard as she fights me.

She’s my toy now. My responsibility.

Mine to kiss, mine to fuck.

Mine to break.

To discard.

…remember to dispose properly of your toy this time…

I lean in so I don’t have to look at her frightened eyes anymore.

But now her smell fills every breath I take.

I’m straining not to press that stop button again. To pin her against the wall again, hike up that excuse of an outfit, and find out just how pretty she sounds when I claim her greedy little cunt.

I should’ve kissed her instead of slamming my fist into the wall like a goddamn teenager. But kissing her would mean losing the last of my tenuous grip on the control I so sorely need to keep myself reined in.

Control I’ve now lost twice.

I hold out my hand, opening and closing my aching fist. Christ, it hurts .

…it really fucking hurts, Smith…

I take my glasses off and rub my eyes. In the darkness, Zoey’s hitching breaths seem louder.

The elevator door opens.

She bolts into the basement parking like a rabbit that pulled its paw free of a trap. And thank God, for my sake and hers, I don’t chase her this time.

She should run. She’s safer outside my reach.

How much easier this would be if I could let her slip away. Just watch her run, disappear, and never come back.

But that will never happen.

She sold her soul to the Devil the day she walked into my casino.

Looks like we’ll both be paying for her bad decision.

And mine.