Page 18 of Cruel Games

“Stupid,” I offered in return, gesturing at our partner. “Sheep,” I said next, pointing in his direction. “You might’ve been raised by dogs, but you don’t have to think with that pack mentality all the time, ya know, mate. You’re allowed to have a single thought of your own occasionally.”

Jackal shook his head and wandered off into his room, slamming the door behind him to let me know how much my attitude pissed him off. Which would typically be a drop in the bucket, but right now, while my head was trying to split in two? It was a declaration of war.

I was not about to give in to the urge to be childish like him. Iwasn’t.I was better than that.

But I was just childish enough to roll my eyes at him. Just barely.

Idiot.

Coyote watched me warily, his eyes glued to my body as I rose and stumbled across the room in search of some water.Sure, water would fix me.

Or it was a start, at least.

Of course, there was no more bottled water. I was the only one around here who restockedanything,and far be it to expect these fuckers to do anything outside of kill and sleep and eat andshit.

Dogs. We were all dogs; the letter got that right, at least. Feral fucking animals unfit for society. As a unit, we functioned just enough to get by within the Guild, but if we ever split apart?

Good luck to whoever had to deal with Jackal’s dumb ass. And heavens help anyone who happened to run into Coyote. He was still legally classified as a feral child, even though he was well past the cusp of adulthood. Apparently, the title sticks with you if you go around biting the social workers moving you from house to house.

“What are you looking at, Coyote?” I growled, moving to throw my head under the faucet at the sink. The cups were all in the damn dishwasher, and since I hadn’t turned it on last night, I knew it hadn’t been run. “Got a staring problem, mate?”

“No,” he growled back, his bass-y voice sounding like someone had dragged it over a bed of gravel once upon a time. “Got other problems.”

“Well, I’m no therapist,” I mumbled, drowning myself in the running cold tap water to try and get my body the hydration it lost from all the alcohol I must’ve consumed last night.”Solve 'em yourself. You’re a big boy now.”

“Mmm,” he growled, stalking off in the direction of his room, dripping all the way there from every inch of his soaked frame.

Of course he wouldn’t explain himself. He was Jackal’s loyal little dog, letting his friend take the lead any time he could get away with it. I knew damn well he knew how to talk, but when you had a willing mouthpiece like Jackal, there wasn’t a need to make your thoughts known.

I was damned tired of feeling like I was talking to a wall, though. I needed some fucking human interaction, or I was going to go insane in this place. Ironic, considering we lived in an insane asylum filled with assholes who probably qualified as original residents.

With the determination borne of a man fed up with his situation, and the bull-headedness I kept in reserve for when I needed to kick my ass in gear, I lumbered off into my room in search of some clean clothes, determined to do something outside these four fucking walls for the first time in a long time.

Swizzle Sticks was empty–ararity foranybar in Port Wylde these days. But empty didn’t really mean empty–it meant there were only a few stragglers here for the earliest rounds. A girl in the corner booth, sipping a frozen smoothie thing while she checked her phone almost compulsively; a silent man dead center of the bar, nursing a room-temp beer; two teenagers who had to be just barely legal age, off to one side of the pool tables as they assessed the sticks like they were seasoned pros. None of them screamed unique, and nothing about them made me wanna get up and make friends. Sure, the girl in the corner was cute, but it was obvious she was waiting for someone, and as much as I needed my dick sucked these days, I wasn’t about to go down swinging in a brawl with her jock boyfriend when he finally did show up.

And considering my door only swung one way, I didn’t have any other options. So I raised my hand for another double shot of whiskey and settled in, hoping someone would come through the door soon who would capture my eyes like nobody ever had before.

The place was packedwithin a few hours. My head had already been pounding when I walked in, and the aspirin and Tylenol weren’t making anything better. I had almost begun to debate my decision to come here when a group of very appealing girls walked in; their attire and their high-pitched shouts of shots and bachelor partymarked them as easy targets. Culling one from the herd wouldn’t be hard at all. Girls like these came to places like this to get wasted, get fucked, and remember what the taste of freedom was before their group leader went on to shackle herself to one man for the rest of her life.

Girls like this were looking for trouble in a place like this, with men like me, who weren’t good for them at all.

And then, as soon as I’d imagined fucking the pretty brunette in the back of their little conga line, another woman walked in that stopped my heart in its tracks.

She wore a tiny pair of leather shorts, fishnet stockings with holes just big enough for my fingers to poke through, black leather boots with a hell of a heel on them, and an off-the-shoulder black sweater that looked like it’d been knitted in the eighties and then promptly forgotten about, tossed in someone’s attic until it was dragged out and repurposed. Strands of red ribbon wove through the abnormal-sized holes at the edges of her sleeves and made a neat little bow at the end, a complete contrast to the dark and gothic appearance of the rest of her. She’d cut it off halfway up her ribcage, making it a crop top of sorts.

Fuck all, when the bouncer checked her for weapons, and she raised those arms, I could see the bottom curve of her breasts, peeking out dangerously–and braless–for anyone to see.

I watched her politely sidestep the handsy bouncer and offer her fist up to be stamped, and then she disappeared into the crowd, just another body, another face I hadn’t gotten a good enough look at to find her in this commotion.

But damn, how I wanted to.

I wanted to put my hands all over that girl and make her scream in the bathroom of this fucking dive bar, her noises drowned out by the pounding metal and rock beats that echoed throughout the building’s speaker system. I wanted to get my hands on her, my dick inside her, and make her beg for more.

But in the span of a minute, in the blink of an eye, she was gone, and I wasn’t any closer to getting a good dick-sucking. What Iwaswas harder than a fucking rock, adjusting myself discreetly to avoid being called out for sporting a boner in public.

Fuck.

Two drinks later, I was feeling less hungover and more determined to find that alluring bitch who turned my head when she walked in. But though I hadn’t taken my eyes off the dance floor, she was nowhere to be seen.

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