Page 80 of House of Cards (The Devil’s Den #2)

Smith

SIX MONTHS LATER

The security footage loops for the third time. A dark SUV pulls to a stop. Then a series of bright flashes as three of my men are gunned down outside a warehouse in broad daylight. A professional hit?—

…clean, quick, merciful…

I pause on the last frame—Aidan slumped against his car, blood pooling beneath him.

Good man. Loyal.

Now dead, because I put a bullet through Elonzo’s throat.

Myles tells me I’m being paranoid. That Bogota’s been targeting us ever since we began encroaching on their territory. That this is just business as usual.

But I know better.

Word is Hernández’s nephew took over Bogota operations in our area. Who’s to say he doesn’t have instructions to pick up where Elonzo left off? Leaving me to play his fucked up game where I have to decide between impossible choices.

Keep Zoey and threaten everything and everyone.

Or send her away, and live the rest of my days in a colorless, tasteless limbo.

Just a short while ago, I wouldn’t even have considered that a choice.

I should pack up Zoey’s things tonight. Put her in a car, and send her somewhere far. She’ll disappear into the wind, and I’ll go back to being the monster who doesn’t have a heart to break.

I’ve been telling myself that for weeks now.

Can’t seem to find the words.

“We’ve spoken about this.”

Zoey’s voice drifts in from the doorway, sulky, raspy. She’s wearing one of my shirts and a pair of sleep shorts, her hair a wild mess from the pillow.

The tightness in my chest loosens. It always does when she’s around.

“Just finishing up.” I close out the video, turning to face her, beckoning her closer.

She pads over on bare feet, crawling into my lap like she belongs there. Like she’s always belonged there.

There’s barely any light left in the room now that the laptop is closed, but I easily pick out the marks on her thighs. Marks made by my knife.

“You’re an hour past curfew. There will be a reconciling of accounts.” She nuzzles against my neck, teasing me with her teeth.

“Is that a threat?” I murmur as I burrow my nose into her hair, taking a deep hit of the floral scent of her shampoo that’s taken over my entire suite.

“God, I hope so. I have no clue what you’re talking about half the time when you bore me with your accounting stuff. We still meeting Myles for brunch tomorrow?” she murmurs.

Myles. Happy for the first time in months because his friend isn’t self-destructing anymore. And Richmond’s just as chipper now that he’s taken over the Angels again. I guess the best thing you can for a person with an addictive personality is give them a meaningful job to do.

“Yup. Ricky joining us again?”

“Yup,” Zoey replies, a laugh in her voice. “Soon as his asshole of a boss approves his leave request.”

That earns her a slap on her thigh. It’s no surprise that Ricky makes such a good dealer.

He knows the card games by heart, and can spot a cheater a mile away.

I thought he would have hated the restrictions I put in place, but Zoey says he loves living in the hotel, and thinks room service is God’s gift to men.

It’s a win-win, because I can monitor him to make sure he doesn’t contact the Bogota cartel again. Fuck knows why he would want to, but I didn’t get where I was today by going around taking everyone on their word.

Everyone’s happy because I’m happy.

Christ, what a thought.

Before I met Zoey, I’d thought happiness was something that happened to other people.

I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Perhaps I’ll always be waiting.

I trail my fingers over the ridges on her thighs, my heart soaring at the memory of each line I carved there. I still can’t believe she lets me hurt her, lets me tend to her, lets me keep her.

“Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no,” she says, pulling back to look at me, cupping my face.

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“You’re thinking about sending me away again.” Her voice is matter-of-fact.

I should lie. Should deflect.

But I can’t. Not with her. Not anymore. It’s harder to lie than it is to tell the truth, and I’m not sure when I became so broken that I thought the opposite was true.

“You’ll never be safe here, kitten. It’s only a matter of time?—“

She presses my lips closed, shrugs. “Let them come.”

I pull my head away, dislodging her fingers. “Zoey?—”

“We’ve been through this. I’m not going anywhere.” She smiles at me in a way that makes my cock twitch. “Now come to bed, Monster,” Zoey teases. “I need to punish you.”

Six months of this and I’m still not used to it. The way she curls against me in sleep, trusting and warm. How I wake up, expecting her to be gone, only to find her lost in blissful dreams.

The way she sees me for who I really am…and not only accepts it, but relishes it. Like she’s smug at the thought that she tamed me.

She kisses me, soft and sweet, and the last of my resistance crumbles. Just like it did the night she forced that confession out of me.

…I love you. I fucking love you and it’s going to destroy us both…

“Oh, by the way,” she says, sliding off my lap, and stretching with a big, fake yawn, “I got my period today.”

“I thought you were only due to start tomorrow?”

She shrugs, grinning impishly at me. “Surprise!”

Every rational thought in my head evaporates.

A desperate need roars to life inside me, dark and hungry. A hard pump of blood makes my cock stiffen until my pants are bulging. I’m across the room before she can blink, scooping her up.

“You’re only telling me now?” I growl.

She laughs, the bright, happy sound sending a painful ache through my chest. “You seemed busy, m’lord.”

“There’ll be consequences.” I carry her toward the bedroom, already planning how I’ll worship every inch of her. “Do you have a headache? Cramps?”

“No headache, and the cramps aren’t too bad, but?—“

“But I’ll make it better.” I carefully set her on the bed and start undressing. “I’ll make everything better.”

“You know what I was thinking about while you were brooding in there?” she asks.

“What?” My voice is muffled as I tug my shirt over my head without bothering to undo the buttons first. She watches me strip, her eyes tracking the movement with lazy appreciation.

“How you looked at me that night.”

She mentions it almost as much as I think about it. We’ve had many sessions over the past months—Zoey’s body is a latticework of healing scars. Some permanent, some that will vanish in the coming weeks.

“How’s that?” I mumble as I plant tiny kisses along the arch of her foot, her ankle, her calf.

“Like I was something precious,” she purrs, back lifting from the bed as I tongue the sensitive spot behind her knee.

“You are.”

She rips her leg out of my grip. “Then stop trying to throw me away. I’m not going anywhere.”

I’m naked already, tugging down her shorts, hiking up her shirt. She moans as I knead her tits, then again as I tease them with my teeth.

We’ve had this argument before, and for once, I let it rest. I’m too hungry for her taste, her touch, her pleasure and her pain.

I lowers myself between her legs, guiding her thighs over my shoulders. She sighs as I pull her closer, as I breathe in her scent.

Still can’t believe she’s real. Can’t believe she convinced me to say those three words that night, to admit what I’d never admitted to anyone.

Can’t believe she stayed.

“I love you,” I murmur against her belly as I tease my lips down lower and lower.

“I know.” Her voice is smug, satisfied. “You told me, remember? Right before I made you eat me out.”

Christ. Even now, six months later, the memory makes me hard. But my dick will have to wait its turn. There’s another need I intend to fulfill before I turn Zoey into my personal fucktoy.

“Best decision I ever made,” I say with a low chuckle.

“Which part? Telling me you loved me, or letting me sit on your face?”

“Both.”

I duck my head, but she catches my hair in a fist, tugging hard enough to make me look up at her.

“Is this real?” she murmurs, frowning. “I keep wondering if I’m going to wake up.”

“Real, yes.” I smooth my hands over her thighs, and crawl up the bed until I’m on top of her, pinning her with my weight. “Normal…? Not even close.”

She gives me a melancholy smile. “Like there was ever any doubt of that. You know I thought I had Stockholm Syndrome?”

My smile is predatory. “Don’t you?”

She shakes her head, a faint frown back on her brow. “No. This feels…different. But it makes me wonder what would’ve happened if we met outside of this whole—“ She waves a hand around, eyes skipping to the ceiling, the door “—mob casino thing.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “Don’t…”

Zoey squints up at me. “You-a makin’ me an-a offer I can’t-a refuse,” she says in the same terrible, wheezy Godfather impression she’s subjected me to the past six months.

I dip my head, groaning into the side of the neck. “You promised, Zoey.”

“Leave-a the gun,” she wheezes, “take-a the ca-nnoli.”

I wrap my fingers around her throat, resting on the other arm. “We met exactly the way we should’ve.”

“You’ve never even thought about it?”

“Of course I have. But no one gets to choose how they meet. They can only choose what to do once they have.”

I tighten my fingers, feeling her pulse respond with a quickening drumbeat.

“Like how I chose to stay,” she says, glancing away before looking back at me with a smile.

“And how I chose to let you.”

“Not everyone sees it that way,” she murmurs, expression serious again.

“Think I give a fuck what this looks like from the outside?” I growl, dropping my head so my lips are beside her ear. “All that matters is that you’re happy.”

“And that you’re happy,” she whispers, turning to nibble my ear.

“My happiness has nothing to do with it.”

“M’lord doth protest too much,” she murmurs, sliding a hand down my chest to grab my cock. “I believe it has everything to do with it.”

I nip the side of her neck, relishing the tug as she tries to hold on to my cock while I kiss my way down her body.

“M’lady might just be right…” I murmur, my words sending warm air over her pussy as I duck down between her legs.

Her laugh turns into a groan as I clamp my mouth over her clit.

I lose myself in her taste. In everything I’ve craved but never dared ask for. I had convinced myself this hunger was a sickness. A perversion that made me less than human.

But here she is, offering herself freely. Bleeding for me without shame, without fear.

Six months ago, I measured my worth in blood and numbers.

Now I measure it in the trust Zoey places in me every time she offers me her body, her pain, her pleasure .

A monster still prowls inside me.

I’m still capable of the violence and cruelty that defined me for so long. But now letting that monster off its chain is a choice, not an inevitability.

Finally, there’s something worth salvaging.

I feel human for the first time in my life.

The irony isn’t lost on me. The thing I thought made me a monster, is what finally saved me.

Because whatever comes, whatever Bogota or the Torrino family or anyone else can throw at me, I won’t face it alone.

I’ll have Zoey at my side.

The woman who saw my darkest hunger and fed it…with love.

My salvation.

My damnation.

My everything .