Page 63 of House of Cards (The Devil’s Den #2)

Smith

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but driving back to the villa like a lovesick teenager might be the worst.

It might be the one that gets Zoey killed.

The villa looms silently in the darkness, exactly as I left it this morning at dawn, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve just sent Elonzo a fucking map pin to her location.

Christ, what kind of monster puts the woman he loves in danger just because he can’t handle being away from her?

The kind that deserves everything that’s coming to him, apparently.

But she doesn’t deserve this.

Absolutely none of it.

Troy is in the hallway outside Zoey’s room, one foot propped on the wall behind him like he could wait there the whole night. When he sees me enter the hallway, he walks away from her bedroom door, meeting me halfway.

“She’s asleep already?” I ask. Fuck preamble.

Troy shrugs. “Went to bed an hour ago.” His mouth quirks. “Said all these expensive paintings were giving her a headache.”

The knot in my chest tightens. “I’m sure she did.”

I suspect it had more to do with what’s coming tomorrow, when she becomes Patricia Dyer and disappears from her life forever.

From my life.

“We might have a problem,” I say, crossing my arms as I share my attention between Troy and Zoey’s door. Even this close, it feels like I’m too far away. “Think I picked up a tail on the way over here.”

Troy straightens. “How sure are you?”

“I don’t know.” I sigh, rake my fingers through my hair, adjust my glasses before I realize what I’m doing. Contact lenses irritate the shit out of my eyes, but at least they’re not a dead giveaway when something’s bothering me. “Only saw them as I turned off the main road.”

If Troy’s judging me for being so careless, he doesn’t show it.

I still feel the need to explain myself when I reluctantly meet his eyes again. “I left in a hurry.”

“You think they followed you from the casino.”

It’s not a question, but I nod anyway. No point lying to Troy.

“Fuck.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Professionals?”

“Dark sedan. Couldn’t make out the plates.” I shake my head, angry at myself for not paying more attention. “What’s our security situation?”

“Two men on the perimeter, cameras on all approaches. But Smith, if—” Troy hesitates. “If they followed you here?—”

“Then we’re fucked.” I glance down the hallway. “We should leave. Head for her safe house now instead of waiting for morning. We could?—”

“Be blowing her cover and risking that safe house,” Troy cuts in calmly.

We stare at each other silently, my jaw ticking, his jaw clenched.

“Double the watch,” I mutter. “Hourly sweeps until we leave tomorrow.”

“We?” Troy shakes his head, glances at my cheek. Only then do I realize I’m touching Zoey’s claw marks again. “That wasn’t the plan.”

“New plan.”

Troy’s sigh says it all, but he’s already reaching for his radio.

I clap a hand on his shoulder as I pass, heading for Zoey’s room.

“Smith?”

“Won’t wake her,” I lie.

“Smith.”

I stop, turn. There’s a deep frown on his brow. “You think it’s him? Elonzo?”

“Who the fuck else?”

It’s dark in Zoey’s room, but there’s enough moonlight shining through a chink in the drapes that I can see the shape of her under the covers.

The villa’s guest rooms are twice the size of my hotel room back at the Devil’s Luck, furnished with a king sized sleigh bed in dark walnut, leather wingback chairs, forest green wallpaper, and a cream carpet.

Seeing her curled up on that massive bed, so tiny, so still, makes my heart kick hard against my ribs. Even though it’s happened once before in my life, I still can’t believe someone can have such a visceral effect on me. That she can command my attention so completely.

I haven’t slept since we found that note in her diner’s jukebox. Since I set fire to her world and told her it was a mercy that I was the one holding the match.

Exhaustion crashes down on me in that moment, making my feet drag as I step closer to the bed.

Troy is right—we can’t leave in the middle of the night. We’d be too exposed out there on the road. In here, we’re protected. It would take a fucking army to reach us.

With him handling the security, there’s nothing to do but wait until dawn. Then we can make sure if the threat I imagined was real or just paranoia.

Nothing to do but wait.

So why not wait right here with her?

I’m already toeing off my shoes. Unbuttoning my shirt. Unclipping my suspenders.

It feels like I rubbed sand in my eyes, so I let them drift closed, relishing the sting as I slide over the cool sheets, seeking Zoey’s warm body.

There’s a moment where I imagine I’ll feel nothing. That the shape under the covers was a bundle of clothing or some spare pillows. That she’s gone, escaped, and all of this was for nothing.

But then my hand glides over her hip, and her heat cascades against my torso, my thighs, my cock.

I’m already slipping away, sinking under, by the time our bodies are flush. I’ve barely nuzzled my nose into her hair before I’m asleep. But just before the dark claims me, I hear a faint sound out in the hall.

Troy pulling the door closed.

I flinch as I wake up, immediately grabbing the arm draped over my chest, on full alert before my eyes have even adjusted to the dark. And dark it is, with barely enough moonlight shining through a chink in the drapes to illuminate the figure on the bed beside me.

Zoey wrinkles her nose in her sleep, and lets out a happy little sigh, in no way indicating she is, or ever can be, a threat.

I place her arm gently along her side so I can sit up without waking her. Rolling onto my side, I slip on my glasses and check my phone for the time.

Three in the morning.

The witching hour.

Christ. I haven’t had this much interrupted sleep in years.

I scratch my ribs, push my glasses up my forehead so I can rub my eyelids, and resist the urge to scrub at the itching marks Zoey left in my cheek. Lousy attempts to wring some motivation into a body that still feels weighed down by sleep when all I want to do is spoon Zoey and go back to sleep.

Switching on the nightstand lamp doesn’t help.

Zoey’s convoy will move out in two hours. The last thing I should do is go back to sleep.

But I can’t make myself stand. Can’t make myself leave.

I feel weak and pathetic and so fucking needy as I lie down and roll back over to Zoey’s still form. If she woke up at any stage of the night, I don’t remember it. In fact, I don’t even think I turned over once in my sleep either.

She’s just as tired as I am.

Which is why I should get up, let her sleep, and definitely not be pull the covers away from her body. I might even have been able to convince myself that I was stronger than this…but then I saw all she was sleeping in was a t-shirt.

Weak. Pathetic.

So fucking needy that my cock’s already stiffening at the glimpse of her bare thigh.

I skate my fingers over her skin, inching the cover even lower.

She makes a grumpy sound, eyelids flickering as she rolls onto her other side and nuzzles deeper into her pillow…baring her plump ass in all its naked glory.

Christ, I couldn’t stop now, even if I wanted to.

I drag her body against mine, burrowing my nose into her hair and inhaling her scent in a heady rush as I mold myself against her. She murmurs something I can’t make out, sighs, and goes limp in my arms.

Zoey needs sleep.

But I need Zoey.

My hand glides over her ass, slips between her legs, brushing her pussy. My cock’s already hard, already twitching like it’s going to thrust into her, whether or not I want it to.

I wrap my fingers around my shaft, close to the crown, and gently nudge and slide the tip of my cock against her pussy.

Within minutes, I’m coated with her warm, slippery arousal.

I push into her, allowing myself barely a quarter inch inside her wet pussy before pulling out. Again. Again.

Until I’m dizzy with the need to fill her.

But I hold back, punishing myself for everything I’ve put her through.

How the hell my soft panting doesn’t wake her, I don’t know. My entire body is tensed up as I fight the urge to ram my cock balls deep inside her.

When I can’t take it anymore, when my body is shuddering and my balls aching, intense pressure building at the base of my spine as I get closer and closer to coming at just the thought of what it will feel like filling her, I grab her hips and force my cock into her.

It’s a violent, brutal thrust.

She wakes with a muffled yell of confusion and pain, bucking away from my cock as she whips her head back to stare at me with wide eyes.

“What the—” she begins hoarsely, but her words dissolve into a guttural moan as I grab her hips and shove into her again.

I stare at her trembling mouth as I grind my hips against her, trying to find another inch of room for my cock inside her wet, clenching pussy.

“Did you really think I was done with your pretty little cunt?” I brush my lips against her shoulder, my eyes locked with hers.

“I was sleeping,” she mutters, pushing her ass out, forcing me to fuck her at a different angle. “But please, don’t let that stop you.”

She gets a hard slap on her ass for her tone of voice, but that just makes her gasp and buck harder into me.

“Fuck!” she whimpers, fisting her hands in the sheets in front of her, pushing back into my thrusts.

Christ, she feels so fucking good. Using her like this—so roughly, so mercilessly—feels like a sin. Every slap of my hips against hers drives a tremor of sensation through my pelvis and into the base of my spine.

I keep one hand on her hip, bruising her hips. The other I shove under her head so I can force her head up off the pillow.

So I can kiss her as brutally as I’m fucking her.

And, Christ, her mouth responds as desperately as her pussy. She moans against my lips, reaching back to leave nail marks on my ass as she tries to pull me deeper into her wet cunt.

Our bodies slap together, frantic, lurid. Both of us chasing a climax, neither caring if we’re the first to get there or not.

Selfish. Animalistic.