Page 50 of House of Cards (The Devil’s Den #2)

Smith

I flex my hand as I stride through the casino’s back corridors, feeling the sting where Dylan’s teeth split open my knuckles. I bandaged up my injuries using the kitchen’s first aid kit, cleaning blood from my skin with icy antiseptic.

My black dress shirt doesn’t appear stained, and neither does my dark suit jacket. But beneath my poised exterior, my muscles still ache. My knuckles still throb.

Pain used to center me. Now it’s just a reminder of how quickly I can lose control.

My reflection in the elevator’s polished brass walls tells me everything I need to know. There’s a wild light in my eyes. A muscle ticking in my jaw.

A hunger that has nothing to do with food.

I’ve become the one thing I promised myself I’d never be again.

A monster.

The walk back to my suite feels like pressing rewind on the last decade of my life. One violent outburst and I’m right back where I started. A man at war with his own nature.

And all because I thought I heard Zoey call for help.

This is what she does to me.

This is why she can’t stay.

I have to get rid of Zoey.

Tonight.

It’ll be hard as hell, but I can’t remember when last my life was easy.

I expect to find Zoey in bed. But the mattress has been stripped bare. The closet doors are all standing open. And just as I wonder where the hell Zoey’s hiding, a breeze billows the curtains by the open balcony door.

Where I see Zoey about to climb over the railing.

I’m not immune to the Universe’s black humor, but it’s rare that I enjoy it.

When Zoey whips her head around to look at me, eyes wide, face ashen, I laugh. Maybe she’d been struggling to commit to her harebrained scheme, but I must have been the final push.

Literally.

Her shock, that familiar fear, twists into an angry scowl. Does she think I’m laughing at her?

Zoey shows me the finger and hooks her leg over the side of the balcony.

“Don’t do it,” I call out, still laughing as I stride through my suite.

“Fuck you!” She swings her other leg over the railing, her eyes squeezing briefly shut before she lets go.

I’m surprised her improvised sheet-rope even holds. The rain has started up again, hammering down around us as I tilt to stare over the railing.

“Are you insane?” I yell at her. The rope barely reaches halfway down the building. Even if she makes it to the end without these ridiculous knots unraveling, she still has a bone-breaking drop onto the sidewalk.

“Zoey!” I snatch at her, but she shimmies down the rope with surprising speed for someone who looks like they’re about to shit themselves. “Tell me again how don’t enjoy pain,” I mutter sourly.

I grab the rope, tightening my grip just before the knot at the railing slips.

“Stop it, or I’ll jump!” The rain plasters Zoey’s brown hair to her face as she glares up at me.

“Suicide? Reporters will have a field day.” I drag the rope up a few feet, my muscles burning, but she seems determined to climb all the way down before I can lift her back up.

Are those other knots as pitiful as the one she used for the railing?

I sure as fuck don’t want to find out.

She does a good job of glaring at me as I drag her up, but she’s run out of rope.

There’s one more knot between us, and just before I reach it, it slips.

Zoey lets out a startled yelp as she drops a foot before the knot catches again.

The entire rope swings wildly as she holds on with a white knuckled grip.

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, yanking even faster. “Climb back up before you fucking kill yourself!”

Her eyes flash with defiance, but her lips are trembling, too.

I can’t tell if she’s being stubborn or scared, but she seems unable to move.

I’m seconds away from muscle failure, but I keep at it, one hand over the other, pulling her to safety.

The rain and the wind don’t help—it’s making the railing and my footing slippery as fuck.

When she’s almost within arm’s reach, I lean over the railing and extend my hand.

“Take it!” I yell when she does nothing.

“No,” she grits out.

The knot gives an ominous creak, and I swear I can see it slipping again. There’s just a corner of the sheet sticking out from the top of the knot. A tiny piece of fabric between Zoey and the sidewalk.

“Is this seriously the hill you want to fucking die on?” I snarl, leaning dangerously far over the railing. “Take my fucking hand before?—”

The knot slips.

I lunge forward, catching her wrist the same instant the rope gives way. Her sudden weight nearly pulls me over the edge. Metal digs painfully into my ribs as I hold on to both her and the balcony with all my strength.

“Got you,” I grunt.

My muscles strain as I try to haul her up, but I’m overextended, and I know if I let go of the railing, she’ll pull us both over.

“Climb, Zoey!”

She glances behind her, her cheeks ashen when she faces me again.

“Fuck,” I hear her whimper.

“You can do this.”

She grits her teeth, shaking as she desperately claws her way up my arm. As soon as she has her arm hooked around the back of my neck, I push away from the railing, dragging her to safety.

She scrambles to help, her free hand clawing for purchase, her feet pushing against the side of the building.

With a last heave, I pull her up and over.

The momentum sends us both crashing onto the balcony floor.

We land with a jarring splat . Her body lies sprawled on top of mine for a brief second before I roll, pinning her beneath me. My chest heaves against hers, both of us panting. Her brown hair coils like snakes across the wet floor, her eyes wide and bright with adrenaline.

And something else.

Rage? Fear?

Maybe both.

Her heart hammers against my chest, nearly matching the frantic beat of my own. For a moment, we just stay there, our faces inches apart, the night air cool against our heated skin.

I take in the state of her and realize she’s wearing clothes I didn’t buy for her. Not sure why that pisses me off, but it does.

“The fuck are you wearing?” It looks like a Devil’s Luck uniform, but not quite in her size.

“The fuck happened to your hand?” she bites back, eyes narrowed in challenge as she glances at the bandage around my knuckles.

I prop myself on one hand, grabbing her face with the other.

“You could have fucking died,” I grate.

She tenses, grabbing my suit jacket in both hands. Preparing to fight. But her searching eyes find something in mine, something that makes her slump under me, going limp.

Like Dylan had.

“You should’ve let me,” she whispers.

I squeeze her jaw until there’s a flare of pain in her eyes. So much better than the lackluster defeat I’d just seen.

“Wanna hear something funny?” I murmur.

She shows me her teeth.

“I was going to let you go.”

Her lips go slack.

“Yeah.” I huff through my nose, dropping my lips to her ear, my hand sliding down to her throat. “I was about to absolve your debt. Get you the fuck out of my life before you can do anymore damage.”

“Liar,” she says, her voice wavering. “You’d never do that.”

I push back, keeping my hold on her throat as I kneel, then dragging her with me as I slowly stand. “Is this some feeble attempt at reverse psychology?”

“It’s the fucking truth.” There’s a disgusted twist to her mouth. “You people don’t just get rid of pests. You either kill them, or keep them as pets.”

You people ?

Frustration flashes through me. Because I fucking can’t with this woman. I have her by the fucking throat, yet she still thinks she has even a sliver of control?

More than you’ll ever have.

Using the grip on her neck, I drag her against me, my other hand delving deep into her wet hair, wrenching her head back so the rain makes her eyelids dance.

“I have enough pets.” I glare at her through the water drops streaking down my glasses. “What I want is to know why you’re so fucking desperate to leave when all you have to go back to is a burned down diner.”

She stares at me with incredulity, eyes wide, lips parted.

The hands holding my wrist relax like she’s forgotten I’m seconds away from strangling her. She scans my face, stopping just long enough on my mouth to make my lips tighten. Then she looks into my eyes with a hard frown.

“It was you,” she rasps. “I thought Howler was the monster, but it was you all along.”

When did she figure it out? It shouldn’t matter…but it does, because I’m caught off guard. Something shifts inside me. Not guilt, not shame…but a strange sense of forced exposure.

Which is fucked up, because I wanted her to know it was me.

I wanted her to feel every lash, because pain is how I communicate.

I lay my heart bare to her that day.

But instead of feeling relieved, proud, fuck-knows…there’s just a sudden emptiness where my psyche used to be.

All I can do is watch the hurt play out on her features, watch the betrayal and confusion and anger roiling in her eyes as she challenges me, even now. Throat tightly arched, powerless.

“You whipped me till I bled, but you expect me to want to stay?”

“I didn’t draw a drop of blood.” I turn and drag her inside my suite, sliding the door shut behind me. My ears hum in the sudden silence, and I only now realize how cold I am when the warm air wraps around me.

Zoey’s disdain is fucking blatant in the suite’s warm, diffused lighting. There’s a mark on her jaw—no doubt from her mad scramble over the railing.

I untangle my hand from her wet hair, skate it down the side of her body, and give her ass a hard squeeze. She winces, but I know it’s for show.

“Not a fucking drop,” I murmur, scanning her face, settling on her lips. “But, Christ, I wanted to.”

“Wow. Such restraint,” she says, her hand tightening around my wrist again, nails digging in deep. “But you’re still a sadist. Still a fucking liar. If you’d wanted to let me go, you’d have done it already.”

There’s no use trying to explain to her that I only reached my epiphany a few moments ago. No use trying to salvage a situation that’s already so thoroughly fucked.

So why do I keep trying?

“You’re right. I lied.”

There’s a spark of victory in her eyes, quickly gutted when I add, “I don’t enjoy giving up my pets.”

I release her throat, take a step back, tug my clothes straight, run a hand through my hair and carefully take off my glasses.

“I’d rather break them.”

Her throat moves with a swallow. I’m not sure what she sees on my face, in my eyes, but it makes her bottom lip tremble as she whispers,

“Fine. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You said you were gonna let me go? Then let me fucking go.”

I’m struggling to find a dry piece of clothing on my person to wipe my glasses with. Turning my back on her, I walk over to the nearest closet and open it, pulling a dress shirt off its hanger so I can use the sleeve.

“I will.”

“When?” There’s a frantic edge to her voice.

I glance at her over my shoulder, fully expecting her frown, the hard set of her mouth.

“Are you in a hurry?”

“To get away from a psycho like you? Yeah.” She tilts her head. “Huge hurry.”

My hand comes out of the closet holding a belt. I prefer suspenders, but there’s something so satisfying about the feel of thick leather. The clatter of the buckle. The way it whistles through the air. The crack of leather meeting flesh.

Zoey’s eyes dart to the belt and stick, going rounder and rounder. Even when I step closer, she stays rooted in place.

My heart hammers against my ribs, not just from the effort of pulling her over that railing to safety, but from the fear I felt when I saw her dangling from that shitty makeshift rope.

If she’d fallen…if I’d lost her…

The thought creates a hollowness in my chest that I’ve done everything in my power not to feel again.

It’s not about losing a valuable asset.

It’s about losing her .

Zoey…and everything that makes her the way she is. Her fight, her drive, her stubborn will to survive.

I shove the feeling away, grit my teeth.

I can’t afford weakness. Not in my world.

“Try to rein it in,” I growl.

She flinches when I fold the belt in half and snap it closed.

“There’s something I need from you first.”