Page 56 of House of Cards (The Devil’s Den #2)

Smith

The Slice of Heaven diner looks diminutive compared to the picture accompanying the newspaper article. Without the contrast of the smoke captured in the photos, the blackened remains blend with the night sky.

Zoey looked like she was ready to leap out of the car as we pulled up to her mother’s diner, but now she’s just sitting in her seat, face ashen, eyes staring.

She’s obviously terrified, but her body tenses as she visibly steels herself for whatever’s coming.

…remember to dispose properly of your toy this time…

The thought should have been in Myles’s devil-may-care voice, but it’s mine.

Despite what I told her back in my room, I can’t just release her back into the wild. She’s seen too much. Knows too much. And as much as I’d like to believe the opposite, she won’t just forgive and forget.

This road trip of ours ends with me breaking Zoey.

Savagely.

Fatally.

“I’m coming with you,” I grate out.

Zoey doesn’t look at me, her words coming out in a fast, almost instinctive mumble. “I can handle this.”

“I wasn’t disputing that.”

She finally looks at me, confusion pulling her brows together as she scans my face. Wondering what my endgame is.

Christ, so am I.

An electric charge pulses through my lips when she drops her gaze to my mouth. Is she waiting for me to explain myself? Because, fuck, I wish I could.

“Fine.” Her frown deepens. “But none of your cocky alpha-male bullshit. This guy is a lunatic.”

I bite back a laugh. “Alpha-male—?” I look away to center myself with a slow breath. I don’t know why I’m expecting her to stop pushing my buttons.

“I mean it, Smith,” she says in a low voice.

Has this woman really dug herself so deep that her calling me out is all it takes for me to get a semi?

But it’s not her insolence that gets me hard.

It’s the thought of fucking it out of her.

Again…and again…and again.

Because apparently, I still haven’t had enough of her. And Christ, how that thought excites me. I have to force myself not to sit here thinking up creative ways of breaking her. But the second I push those thoughts away, something more insidious surfaces. Something even more dangerous.

My lips tingle again. My dick hardens.

Zoey pipes up again. No idea she’s tempting fate. Always pushing, pushing, pushing.

“Pinky swear you won’t?—“

Fuck it.

I unlatch my seat belt and grab hers. Yank it so hard, she gasps. Only surprise in those big hazel eyes as I lean in close.

So fucking close.

She smells like my shower gel. My shampoo. The familiar scent of the hotel’s laundry detergent.

All mine, mine, mine .

I inhale deep, soaking up that scent, her scent. Different from the cheap perfume she’d been wearing the night I caught her. Different, but the same, because I can still smell her beneath all those artificial scents.

“I’m not promising anything, kitten,” I murmur.

Her lips part, drawing my gaze. And Christ, I have to force myself to look away.

I want to tear into them, destroy them, leave her wrecked and ravaged.

Because that’s what I do.

I break things.

Her eyes flicker, pupils dilating when I give the seat belt another hard tug.

Anything can happen when she walks into that diner. Though the street looks deserted—no cars or people in sight—they could already be inside, waiting.

I’m not taking any fucking chances.

I need to know, right now, what the stakes really are.

How much she means to me.

And there’s only one way I know to find out.

Zoey stiffens when I crush my mouth against hers, her head leaning back until she’s pressed into the crook between the headrest and the window. I follow her, refusing to let her break away.

Attacking.

Zoey whimpers against my mouth, still not reciprocating. Just letting me take what I want, like a wounded animal too tired to put up a fight.

Until my hand slides to her throat. Until my fingers brush her jaw, the sensitive skin beneath her ear. My thumb, the opposite corner of her mouth.

It’s like I cut the rope she was hanging from.

She makes a last furtive, soft little sound that might have been a protest…and surrenders.

Wholly.

So fucking beautifully.

Instead of keeping her lips tightly closed, she parts them, inviting me inside.

My tongue fills her warm, sweet mouth, and the world dissolves into pure white.

White, but not harsh, like the blinding glare when I was caving in Dylan’s skull with my fists.

Soft, like sea foam and cotton-candy clouds.

Soft as her mouth, her lips, her skin.

What I’m feeling isn’t lust anymore. It’s an obsession, not to own her, but to keep her safe. To have her want me keeping her safe.

And I need her to know she can trust me to provide that safety. That I can become the person she turns to when she needs someone.

For the first time in my life, I want to do better.

Be better.

Not for my sake.

But hers.

Her pulse thrums under one knuckle—fast, frantic.

She pushes into me. Her hand goes to my hair, delving deep before tightening. Tightening. There’s a dull ache, stinging pressure, and I groan into the sensation as my fingers grip harder over her throat.

Zoey gives my hair a sharp tug, and I hiss against her mouth, pulled out of the moment by the flash of pain. She leans back, eyes wide with impish delight.

For a foolish moment, I imagine she’s someone else. That I’m someone else. Just a man and a woman. Maybe I met her at a coffee shop or in the park. We attend dinner parties together instead of ransom drops.

I deserve her. And she wants me.

The real me…cloven hooves and all.

A siren starts up somewhere nearby, making her flinch, snapping us both back to reality.

My face hardens, mouth thinning.

The fuck was I thinking? I’m not that man, and she’s most definitely not that woman.

But the ache in my chest tells me I wish we were. That I want something I can’t take by force, or buy with money. I want her to look at me the way she might have in that other life.

Without fear. Without hate.

With something I don’t deserve.

Love.

Her eyes dart to the dashboard, and mine follow.

12:00

She shoves me away with a panicked, “Fuck!”

I sit back in a rush, hard enough to click my teeth together. My mouth pulses angrily, my lips feeling bruised and hot. Zoey throws me a quick, confused look, and then scrambles out of the car.

Grabbing my Glock from the glove box, I shove it in the small of my back as I hurry after her. I catch up with Zoey as she reaches the sidewalk by the diner. When I grab her elbow, she shakes me off. I take hold of her again, and this time she shoots me a glare.

“I said I got this!” she hisses.

“You realize he won’t accept casino chips?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Then I’ll write him a fucking check.”

I want to be angry at her for not thinking this through. For not telling me what was going on. For not trusting me.

But I can’t blame her.

She knows it. I know it.

My mind is still hazy from that fucking kiss. I’m having to physically restrain myself from throwing her over my shoulder and going back to the car. Driving her to the nearest acceptable hotel. Fucking her brains out.

She’d probably fight me.

And Christ, that just makes me want it more.

But Ricky is important to her, else she wouldn’t be doing this. Any of it. She can argue as much as she wants, but she knows no floor manager will sit idly by and let her count cards at one of their tables without serious repercussions.

Zoey hesitates for a second before ducking under a strip of police tape, into the diner. Her sneakers crunch over grit and soot, my oxfords following close behind.

I can sense the place is empty. Either we missed the drop, or the loan shark is running late. In my experience, they hardly ever miss an opportunity to collect monies owed.

“Should be here by now,” I say, flicking back my cuff to check the time on my Nautilus.

“Or they’ve already left.”

“Doubt it.” I follow behind Zoey as she picks her way through the wreckage, her head turning this way and that as she scans the interior.

I spot melted lumps that could have been vinyls seats.

A strip of raised furniture that might have been the counter.

An interior wall has caved in, showing the gutted remains of a kitchen. Another, the restrooms.

This fire burned hot, and fast. The likelihood that it’s not arson is pretty slim.

Especially not with that tag on the wall outside.

“You have any more info about this loan shark? A name, a description?”

“He didn’t give me a business card, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s not what I’m—“ I cut off as Zoey suddenly bolts away.

For a hair-raising second, I think she’s making a run for it. And I’m already tensing for the pursuit, shoulders hunching, thighs bunching…but she stops abruptly in front of the remains of a barely recognizable jukebox.

She reaches inside and rips out a thick envelope. It’s bulging near the bottom, like there’s more than just a note inside.

I stop at her side as she opens it.

“Zoey, wait!”

I bark out the words without thinking.

I recognize that envelope. The bulge in the bottom. I already know what’s going to spill out the moment Zoey tips it over.

A Saran-wrapped finger, mottled blue and rusty red. Red from dried blood, blue from decomposing flesh.

Zoey shrieks, dropping the finger and the envelope. She staggers back, hands an inch away from her mouth, before she shudders to a halt.

I hear her puking behind me as I pick up the envelope and take out the note.

A new drop location, and barely enough time for us to get there. But that’s not what crushes my chest like a vise.

Same handwriting.

Same location.

“That’s Ricky’s, isn’t it?” Zoey asks, voice muffled. She steps back up to the jukebox, as pale as the note I’m still holding, her eyes glued to the severed finger lying in the jukebox’s charred remains.

“Yes.”

“Oh, God…”

“It’s a good thing. It means he’s alive.”

“Is he? Is he?” Her voice cracks. “That looks like they cut it off a dead person!”

“No. He’s still alive.”

I carefully fold the note and slip it into my pocket, my fingers suddenly numb. Place Ricky’s finger back in the envelope, put that in my pocket too. Something hot sears through my chest, incinerating everything that bloomed during our kiss.

That handwriting…It’s not logical. Not fucking possible .

But here we are.

Zoey watches me with wide, horrified eyes.

“We have to go,” I tell her, when I walk to the car, but she doesn’t follow.

“How do you know he’s still alive?” Zoey asks, her voice as far off and tinny as if she was speaking to me through a can on the other side of the room.

“You’ll have to trust me on that.”

“Like I have a choice,” Zoey mumbles, stumbling through the wreckage of her diner as she follows me outside.

My face hardens as I meet Zoey’s eyes, not seeing her, but someone else entirely.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, kitten.” My voice sounds flat and mechanical in my buzzing ears. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

Zoey frowns, taking a small step back. Whatever she sees in my eyes makes her swallow hard.

Good. She should be afraid.

Because I’m not the same man who kissed her in the car.

That man just went up in flames…like this fucking diner.