Page 53 of Promise of Destruction (Destruction & Vengeance Duet #1)

fifty

Soren

Card games.

He told me he had much more interesting ways than sleep to pass the time, and like the hussy I’m starting to think I am, I had jumped straight to thoughts of what we could do in the bed besides sleep.

And whether he intended it to be innocent or have a double meaning, doesn’t matter.

I know I’m blushing when he reaches inside his bag and pulls out a deck of cards.

“You want to play strip poker?” I assume, crossing my arms over my chest. It would explain why he told me not to wear a bra— a demand I really should have listened to.

“I was thinking more along the lines of go fish, you naughty girl.”

His deep voice calling me a naughty girl doesn’t reconcile with the idea of playing go fish. And I can’t even admit what it does to me, other than to say that I have to squeeze my thighs together.

I suck in a sharp breath. The air hits the back of my throat, and my gasp turns into a cough. There’s no hiding that sound; I just draw more attention to myself.

The heat doesn’t leave my cheeks even once I get myself steadied and take a sip from the bottle that the stewardess hands me.

Fucking hell, why does him calling me a naughty girl make my skin feel like it’s stretched too tight? A sensation like pins and needles bristles over me from my torso up, at the same time I feel something deep inside of me clench with desire.

I hate him , I remind myself.

I hate the power he has over me.

I hate myself for not walking away from him when he first offered me the job. I hate myself for agreeing to be his slave in exchange for not having to worry about money for a while. I hate myself for not hating him as much as I did before he came into my life.

“Go fish.” I say, nodding. “Okay, but only if you’re prepared to be destroyed.”

He does that infuriating thing where the corner of his lips tip up in some sort of smirk, causing the blood in my body to rush faster and hotter through me, leaving me a bit dizzy, breathless.

“It’s you who will be destroyed.” He says.

I don’t doubt him for a minute.

Despite our mutual over-confidence, neither of us manages to destroy one-another.

It is a children’s game, of course, but I hadn’t expected that we’d essentially match each other round for round.

It lost it’s luster after the third round, but by that time, we’d reached our cruising altitude and when I look out the window, the clouds are vast and unending.

It’s a nice distraction from the claustrophobia.

“So now will you tell me where we’re going?

” I ask, once the silence between us has shifted from stagnant to comfortable.

I shouldn’t have broken it, but the bursts of golden light breaking through cotton clouds that stretch and drift through the infinite sky is putting me in danger of falling asleep.

Declan sets aside the paper he was reading—one of our own, though I can’t see the date to tell if he’s going through old runs to assess something.

He levels his eyes on me. “I already told you.”

“No, you told me where we were going…” I pause, realizing I’ve just admitted he’s right.

“You told me we are going to Costa Rica and you called it a work trip, but that doesn’t tell me anything.

An associate of yours needs help. Are we going to collaborate with some paper from there?

Are we going to source a story to bring home?

Are you just using all of this as an elaborate ruse to get me out of the country so you can get rid of me without any suspicions? ”

The last one was only half a joke.

I feel like a fool from an old fairy tale—the kind the Brothers Grimm wrote.

I feel like I’m being lured to my death, walking blindly toward the edge of the cliff in pursuit of some beautiful sound calling to me.

Declan may have convinced me that he’s not responsible for what happened to us the night Vin died, but I’m not sure he’s innocent either.

I don’t know how I should feel about him when my brain and my body are telling me two different things.

I can’t convince myself yet, but I don’t think that Declan is as dangerous as he seems. It’s hard to explain it to myself; It just feels like he wants me to be scared of him, like he wants me to hate him. I don’t know why he would want that, but that’s least of the things I don’t know about him.

“I can’t really explain it to you.” He says after the silence has started to swallow us. He sounds just as resigned to break it as I was.

Declan doesn’t want to talk about this… or maybe he doesn’t know how.

“Can’t or won’t?” I snap.

“Can’t.” He shakes his head, and for the first time in all of the months of hearing his name and picturing him as a murderer, in the week since I wrote that article and the days since I’ve known him, I see the first flicker of weakness.

“I don’t know how to explain it to you in a way that will make sense.

This isn’t a conversation I’ve ever planned to have. ”

I’m not sure if there’s more coming, but when he doesn’t offer anything, I say “Okay…”, stretching the word into two very long syllables.

He doesn’t even acknowledge it, so I turn my gaze out the window.

It’s a few minutes before he speaks again, his words drawing me out of the thoughts I was lost in. I don’t immediately remember what we were talking about, and my brain doesn’t immediately register what he said.

“There’s one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty.”

“Which is what?”

Declan is quiet a moment more, pressing his lips together like he’s thinking of holding back whatever words are on the tip of his tongue. But he doesn’t. He meets my gaze.

The weakness I’d seen moments before is gone, and the malice I’ve become accustomed to is, too.

“You made a big mistake writing that article about me.”