Page 43 of Cruel Games

SIXTEEN

COYOTE

Heavens a-fucking-bove,this woman was . . .

If there existed a word to describe her perfectly, to capture her essence and explain the chokehold her presence had on me, I hadn’t learned it yet.

I’d need a whole new language to quantify the way she made me feel, the things her baby blues encouraged me to do.

When she took those panties off, my cock came to life behind the zipper of my jeans. The second she stuffed them in Jackal’s mouth, I decided I’d do anything she fucking asked of me. Anything. And when she climbed atop that table, lifted her skirt, and sat her stunning ass on Dingo’s face, commanding him to give her pleasure, the desire to be in his place raced through my veins like molten lava. I was envious, enraged that she hadn’t chosen me, furious with myself for feeling so weak for a woman who’d already made it clear we were nothing more than bugs beneath her bootheel. So many conflicting emotions at war in my soul that I struggled to breathe beneath their weight.

And then she leaned forward, those eyes beckoning me, and I couldn’t contain myself any longer.

It was like a beast had risen inside me, demanding I take what was so close, yet so far out of reach.

You,I had whispered, the word an unintentional sigh on the wind that encompassed everything and nothing in the same breath. And yet she’d responded, perhaps understanding on a primal level what I’d meant by it.

Me.

She devoured my tongue like it owed her something, took her pleasure from my friend’s mouth as she stole the breath from mine, leaving her own moans of pleasure in its stead, the feeling both euphoric and frightening.

I gripped the legs of the table, feeling it lift an inch off the floor as she came, though I didn’t realize at the time it was my strength that had picked it up, with the two peopleatop it, and scooted it a solid half a foot in my eagerness to taste her, feel her, devour her essence.

I wanted her like I’d wanted nothing else in this life, and the thought, while disturbing, felt somehow . . . right.

Like a part of me was coming home. Like I’d finally owned up to a fragment of myself that had been missing this whole time.

I didn’t know what love felt like, but if this was it, I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

She pulled back, panting and sweaty, her hair hanging in her face like tendrils of the smoke she’d taunted Jackal with earlier, and the look in her eyes was so overwhelming I had to tear my gaze away first, or be entirely consumed by her.

This woman was dangerous to our well-being.

“That was . . . fun,” she finally rasped out, tossing her hair back with a contented sigh. “Too bad you’re all still going to die.”

And there was the rub. She still planned to kill us. I wasn’t sure if the others had picked up on exactlywhoshe was, but I had a hell of a photographic memory, and a knack for seeing things I shouldn’t, and keeping my mouth shut about them.

I remembered every single one of our contracts. Names, faces, places, the heinous things they did to land them on our radar. Not a single one slipped away from my memory to date.

Which is how I knew exactly what we’d done to make this woman hate us.

A lone, red-haired figure standing in the window beyond, her hair like a crimson cloud, tousled still from sleep we’d interrupted. Those big, expressive doe eyes, watching as her father’s face was ripped to shreds on the back tire of Jackal’s bike. Tears streaming down her face as she gripped the curtains in her dainty fists, unable to look away, committing us to memory as he whole life was turned upside down.

I never forgot a face. And the night we killed Daniel Cullough, I committed hers to memory.

She looked wildly different from the girl she’d been back then.

“At least I’ll go out with the taste of a woman on my tongue,” Dingo muttered, his amusement plain as day in the tone of his voice. “Thanks for that mercy, at least.”

Jackal groaned around the panty-gag stuffed in his mouth, and I watched with mild interest as Ivy slipped from the table, still a little shaky on her feet, and made her way over to him, one foot in front of the other in an intentionally jerky motion that only heightened her dangerous air.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you not enjoy the show, dog?” Her hand darted out and gripped him by the hair, his eyes wide, muffled shouts of protest echoing around the panties as she used her grip to sit him upright on the floor, leaning him against the wall before she let him go. “That was my oversight. But don’t worry, Jackal. I have plans for you, too.”

As soon as her back was to him, the panties hit the concrete floor with a resounding, moistsplat,and his laughter filled the air.

“You think you can break me, bitch? You couldn’t get a real man hard if you tried.”

Her brow quirked intriguingly, and she turned slowly back to him and at that moment, I think I saw the only person in my entire life that could ever come close to scaring me as much as that bastard sometimes did.

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