Page 36 of Cruel Games

“You picked Coyote?” she asked quietly, her lips parted as she trailed her nails down the side of histhroat. “Why?”

“He won’t tell you shit,” Dingo muttered from the table. “He doesn’t talk much at all, to anyone.”

“Shut up, Dingo,” I shouted, hating him for giving up one of our secrets. For outing Coyote like that. “At least he doesn’t cringe every time a fucking woman makes it on our list.”

Dingo’s form went still, and he turned his head away from me, not bothering to deny it or to fight back.

One more thing I was beginning to hate about him.

The people we killed didn’tdeserveour sympathy. And I damn sure wasn’t about to waste a second of my time feeling bad for a single one. If Dingo wanted to be a martyr and take that guilt, more power to him.

The girl, who still hadn’t bothered to introduce herself, let her gaze wander from me to Dingo, then back again, obviously measuring the discord there. The bitch pulled another chair from the shadows and set it right in front of me, a new toy in her hands.

A pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

What, was she planning to smoke me to death or something?

She must’ve registered the destination of my stare, because she laughed, that beautifully broken sound making my cock fucking jump, the traitorous bastard. I was half shocked there was even any blood left down there to fill it.

“Do you smoke, Jackal?” she asked calmly, knocking a single cylindrical stick just far enough out of the pack to put her lips around. I had a sudden, confusing image of her wrapping those lips around a different cylindrical shaped object thrust into the forefront of my mind, and groaned, the rush of blood to my heads–plural–making me a bit woozy.

Her gaze flicked to my hands, which flexed open and closed, and I flinched when she reached out and put her fingers atop my wrist, measuring my pulse. She didn’t look at me while she did it, but I looked at her.

In her eyes, was she just prolonging the pain? Was she checking to see if I’d survive the torture?

“What the fuck did we do to you?” I rasped, the words slightly fuzzy as she cut that piercing gaze to meet mine, then looked away again. It was like she didn’t want to tell us yet, like she was saving it up for some grand reveal.

What was the point in all that? She had us captive. And unless Coyote or Dingo managed to get free, there was no hope for any of us. Obviously, she’d decided I was the most dangerous one here and took extra steps to ensure I wouldn’t get away.

Why me?

“Who are you to ask me questions?” she demanded as she brought the lighter to her lips and lit the cigarette hanging from them. “What right do you have to demand?—”

“Obviously, you hate us, or we wouldn’t be strung up in some torture chamber in who the fuck knows where. So you have to have a reason, right?” My eyes narrowed, and a new thought formed in my head. “Unless you’re just a psycho, and we’re really, really unlucky.”

“I’m not a psycho,” she whispered, more to herself than to me, her eyes on the cherry of the cigarette now resting between her fingers. “I’mbroken.And no amount of glue will ever put me back together again. You can never really line the pieces of shattered glass back up perfectly the way they were before you damaged them, now, can you?” Her eyes glazed over, and suddenly, she was off in her own little world again, contradicting her ‘I’m not psycho’ insistence. “There’s always a shard missing, one that got shoved under the cabinet, or ground into dust beneath a careless booted heel. And without that shard, things will never be quite as they were. It’s like looking through a window at a busy street—the things on the other side will never be exactly the same, no matter what you do.”

Okay, that was it. This bitch was certifiable.

Wait.

Wait.

She’d mentioned we knew her father before. Maybe that was where the overlap was. Maybe I could make her angry and buy the others enough time to figure out an escape plan.

Or maybe it would just make her angrier and I’d end up dead faster.

All in all, both options were absolute shit, and had about the same likelihood of success.

“Did we know your daddy, little girl, or did wekillyour daddy?”

The light in her eyes changed so fast I had to blink to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. There was nothing in their depths now, nothing but anger and rage and hatred so heavy it constricted what little capacity for breathing I had left.

Her hand darted out in a flash, pressing the hot cherry against the sliver of exposed flesh on my neck, and I didn’t have time to prepare for the pain. I cried out in shock, the smell of my own burning flesh turning my stomach as she pulled the cigarette away and admired her handiwork.

Her thumb pressed against the burn, and even as I winced, I had to fight to keep from egging her on more.

When the fuck did I turn into a masochist?

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