Page 34 of Cruel Pawn
I laughed. “This isn’t love, Arden.”
“I wouldn’t go to these extremes for anything less.”
There was no doubt in his voice, not even a waver, and that made me even colder. There was a logic to his argument, too. I wouldn’t bother doing any of this for someone I only vaguely liked, either. But he was truly delusional if he thought any of this was real. Or else the greatest actor the world had ever seen.
Fingers splayed in my hair, stroking pressure across my scalp, and my head thudded into his shoulder. A groan snuck free. He added more pressure and my eyes slammed shut, a shaking sigh leaving me. Was I cursed—to feel this good, to discover so many places that brought ecstasy rushing through my body, with a man I’d been destined to kill? I must be cursed.It was the only explanation for the intensity of every touch, the intensity of my reaction.
“Tell me what happened.”
“It was nothing,” I murmured, aware he was drugging me with those heavenly, massaging fingers. But as I relaxed into him, melting like chocolate on his fingers, I didn’t bother to fight it. I wouldn’t tell him everything, but just a little wouldn’t hurt. And it was a novelty—no one had asked what my nightmares were about before. “Just an old nightmare. It doesn’t usually bother me.”
One moment Arden was breathing, stroking my hair, rocking me against him. The next he was as still as a corpse. “I triggered you,” he whispered.
I closed my eyes. “Not exactly.”
“So that’s a yes.”
It should have been. Him keeping me trapped against his body, his arms locked around me, should have been on big glaring, neon trigger, too, but I wasn’tafraidand that was the key difference. On that job when Oliver took me down to the rug, I’d been afraid, but I wasn’t scared of Arden.
“Tell me what you dreamt about, and I’ll give you clothes,” he offered in a voice cut raw, like shards of glass cut into the scar I gave him, but deeper, enough to damage his vocal cords.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” I snapped, pulling my face from the warm haven of his chest. My inner voice screamed at me; he was offering clothes, so why would I fight him?
Because it made me feel like a victim. Made me feel vulnerable and small, and that was a death sentence.
“So, youdon’twant clothes?” he teased, some life returning to his voice, to his raw-boned face.
“Of course I want the fucking clothes.”
“Such a filthy mouth for a woman so pretty,” he groaned and kissed me so abruptly that my heart threw itself at my ribs. “I’llgive you all the clothes in the world, my opera, just tell me what haunts you so I can help you fight it.”
Fuck.
All the other shit, the delusions of love, the sweeping declarations, I could handle. But offering to have my back while I fought my demons, rather than keeping me bubble-wrapped in a cage of safety… that shit was catnip to me.
I made sure to glare at him, so he knew I wasn’t particularly happy about it, but I admitted, “When I first started out in the business—”
“The business of killing people?”
“A job went wrong—”
“By job you mean murder?”
“God, you’re an awful listener,” I groaned, fighting the muscles at the corners of my mouth as they tried to tense, to curve, to smile. “Yes, I was on a job to kill someone, and it fucked up. I was only fifteen, but I was overconfident. I’d already killed my first target, and it was so easy that I let it go to my head, but the second target overpowered me.”
Arden went still again. This time his hands found my hips and gripped tightly, the smoothness of his skin as much a surprise as his heat. A man like this should have violent callouses on his fingers, should have blood on his hands. “Is he dead?” he asked in a voice like steel—cold and hard enough to shatter kneecaps.
“I thought he was,” I sighed, pushing hair back from my face. When that wasn’t enough, I gathered it into my hands and began to braid it, needing the action to ground myself. “I stabbed him then he fell, hitting his head on a glass table. I later found out it had only knocked him unconscious, but by that time he’d vanished, and I’d already been paid for the job. Grandfather let me believe he was dead.”
Arden’s eyes softened, his hands coming up to trace my fingers. I had nothing to tie the braid with, so I let it fall. “He kept it secret to shield you.”
A laugh burst free, staccato and loud. “No.” I snorted. “Definitely not. He’s not that kind of grandfather.”
I didn’t like the way Arden watched me, those dark eyes seeing too far, too deep, but I felt better for the laugh, for the relief of the pressure on my chest. “What kind of grandfather then?”
“The kind that would have stood by and watched a grown man rape his fifteen-year-old granddaughter to teach her a lesson. To teach her how to be stronger in the future.”
A black rage tightened Arden’s features, and it feltgoodto have someone angry on my behalf, for someone else to recognise how fucked up that was. The rest of my family, all my cousins and fellow trainees, were too warped by him to think it was anything but ordinary, but I’d been raised by my parents for ten years, outside of the brainwashed bubble of Atif Chaudhry.
