Page 34 of Cruel Games

That familiar but not-so-familiar feeling in my stomach grew, and I subconsciously tightened my thighs against each other, biting back a moan of frustration and realization.

Torturing these fucks was doing things to me.

I leaned forward to grab the knife back from Jackal, and he chose that moment to jerk around and swing wildly in my direction.

Landing his nose right against my fucking skirt.

Three things happened at once.

He inhaled, a deep, lingering sound punctuated by a low moan of approval. A slow smile spread across his face, growing with every second I stood there, paralyzed, unable to move away. And then?—

“This is turning you on, isn’t it, you sick bitch?”

Those words were like lighting an inferno and dousing it with an ocean of ice water. I felt familiar shame run through me at my uncontrollable reaction, then anger, at being made to feel ashamed of myself. I wouldnotlet this piece of dirt beneath my boot make me embarrassed to be who I was.

So what if the only time I’d gotten wet in the last six years was when I was putting a blade in a man’s shoulder and taunting another with certain death? That was my problem to deal with, and I’d do that later.

Right now, I had men to torture and kill.

Decided, I turned around to grab a new tool from the table, my hand hovering over the hammer I’d picked out to break some fingers with, then swinging over to the tire iron as I debated breaking some bones.

Then, I turned around and spotted Dingo slowly dragging his zip-tied hands up and down the legs of the table, looking for any rough patch on the surface to break his restraints.

Oh, we couldn’t have that.

“Now, now, Dingo, what are you up to over here?” I knelt beside his table and inspected his plastic ties, pleased to find them still intact and holding strong. “You didn’t think I’d make it that easy, now, did you?”

My hand trailed up his arm to his shoulder that I’d bludgeoned earlier, and I was pleased when he let out a whimper as I raked my sharp nails over the sore area.

Jackal’s chains rattled again in his agitation.

“Why don’t you just kill us and get it over with?” Dingo breathed, his teeth clenched tightly against the pain. “Why play with us like this?”

“She’s fucked up, that’s why,” Jackal shouted from behind me, his rage entangled in his tone now. “Gets hot and bothered from stabbing men. Must be our lucky day.”

“You couldn’t please a woman if she gave you a map and the key to her pussy,” I retorted, not even bothering to give him the benefit of my gaze as my fingers trailed over Dingo’s defined, muscled shoulders, appreciating the hours he must have spent in a gym working out to keep them so?—

“Like what you see, bitch?” Jackal sneered, his voice like an ice cube trailing down my back. I shivered despite myself. “I betlooking at you turns men soft. No wonder you have to do this kind of shit to get your rocks off. Real men won’t have you.”

“If you’re trying to insult me, it’s not working,” I hummed pleasantly. Better men than him—or worse, depending on how you looked at it—had tried, and failed, to bring me down before, with their words. Some with their fists.

And I was still standing, and they . . . weren’t.

Take that how you will.

“How long have you been watching us?”

Dingo spoke slowly, as if he were afraid I might not answer if he was too loud or insistent. Distracted by the muscles beneath my fingertips, I traced the outline of his abs, trailing down to where his shirt ended, a sliver of that torso peeking out to taunt me.

Dingo shuddered as my fingernails raked slowly, lightly across it, my mind elsewhere as I watched myself touch him with such brazen moves.

“A long time,” I muttered, watching the way his stomach sucked in at my touch, pre-empting the next movement, anticipating the next soft caress. I turned my fingers and slipped them up under his shirt, walking them up his torso until they came to about mid-chest level. “A very, very long time.” I started to rake my nails down his skin, then applied pressure, increasing the force as I approached his waistband. “I had to know everything so I could get it perfect.”

A groan accompanied his shudder, and then?—

A twitch in his pants. Subtle, but there, and very, very telling.

“Do you like to be touched, Dingo? Or is it the pain that makes your cock hard?”

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