Page 9 of Hupotasso

Sighing, I rise and walk to the door, testing to see if it’s locked.

It is.

“Oh, you fucking bastard!”

A knock makes me jump back and squeak in alarm.

“Angelina, it’s Jag. May I enter?”

I snort as he unlocks the door and walks in without waiting for my answer.

He frowns when he sees my expression.

“Is everything alright?”

“Alright?” I snap. “How could anything be alright? I’m a fucking prisoner in a cold, rock hole. Please tell me you’ve spoken to Falcon.”

“I did,” he sighs. “Angelina, he’s quite convinced you’re Spider’s minion.”

“And you?” I ask, my voice small.

“I’m undecided. I have to leave the castle and undertake more investigation. In the meantime Falcon intends to keep you here.My advice to you is to try not to raise his suspicions or anger him any further until I return.”

“Any further?” I frown. “I haven’t done anything! Jag, you know him better than anyone. It’s going to take some kind of miracle for him to believe I’m not a spy – and I’m starting to think he doesn’t want to believe otherwise.”

“He has his reasons.”

“Yeah? Well, just between you and me, the last time I looked marriages were supposed to be based on trust. If he still doesn’t trust me by now, he never will.”

“I know he cares about you, Angelina. Even if he won’t admit it. But I also know The Games changed him. Wolf and I both agree he’s not the same man we knew. Just try to be obedient for a time. I need to go now. Is there anything you need?”

‘Obedient? Not fucking likely.”

“You mean apart from my freedom?” I snap.

He narrows his eyes at me and I sigh. The last thing I need to do is alienate the one person who’s been kind to me, the one person who might be able to help me.

“Yes, there is something I need,” I roll my eyes before turning my back to him, pointing over my shoulder at my dress.

“Can you unlace this, please? I can’t do it myself and I feel like I’m suffocating.”

After a pause, a long pause, he begins unlacing. I stand still, waiting for him to finish, but shiver as his fingertips trace my bare skin down the line of my spine to the top edge of my lace panties.

‘Oh, no.’

“Ah, Jag,” I spin, gasping when I see who it was that elicited my goosebumps.

Jag and he exchange what looks to me like angry expressions as the former reaches the door, nods, and leaves without a word.

As the door bangs shut behind him I clutch the front of my gown to my breasts and stare at the man I married. Part of me is relieved it washisfingers running down my back and not Jag’s, which would have been, to coin Jag’s phrase, ‘problematic.’ But the other part of me doesn’t know what to feel now that my husband is here, standing before me.

He looks impassively back at me like a stranger, his eyes intent on mine, but for a moment, just a brief moment, I see a flash of something else. Pain?

“Falcon…”

“No other man undresses my wife,” he snarls. “Remember that.”

Before I can say anything he reaches for me, crushing me to him, his lips claiming mine in a hard, bruising kiss desperate in its intensity. Twisting my head I try to escape his cruel attentions. We need to talk. We need to clear the air. I’m angry as hell at how he’s treated me, and I want him to know it. But he ignores my struggles, looping one hand up into my hair to keep my face still, the other imprisoning my waist and pulling me against the hard length of his body.