Page 51 of Cruel Games

TWENTY

JACKAL

“Are you fucking kidding me, man?”I shoved Coyote against the wall, his shoulders taking most of the impactas he snarled in my face, and I bared my teeth in response. “What the fuck possessed you to make a deal with a demon like that?”

His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing, all his words from earlier suddenly missing in action. The fucker had the audacity to vow our lives in service to that bitch, the same bitch who’d drugged us, gassed us, tortured us, and then threatened to take our lives.

Oh, no, sorry,promised.This was just an extension on our lives until we outlived our usefulness. Nothing more. Or until one of us found a way to kill her. Not that it’d take much.

But that would mean going against our word, and as much as I wanted to eliminate this thorn in our sides, I was curious why our usually quiet back man suddenly decided to be a free-thinker and make decisions for his packmates.

“The fuck was going through your mind when you decided to speak for all three of us, hmm?”

Dingo leaned against the nearby wall, picking his fingernails with disinterest. “Probably thinking with his dick, honestly, mate. Poor sap’s likely not got his noodle wet in at least a year. Cut him some slack.” He lifted his gaze to the ceiling and whistled low. “Sheisa hell of a looker, though. Won’t be too hard to see her strutting around our apartments every day.”

“She isnotmoving in with us,” I snarled, shoving my fist into the wall beside Coyote’s head. “I draw the line there. Let St. Clair find her a spare room to shack up in. I willnothave that feral bitch living in arm’s reach of the rest of us.”

“Wow, Jackal, tell me how you really feel.”

Her voice drifted over my shoulder from the other side of the narrow storage closet she’d stuffed us in to have a chat about our decision. She’d been kind enough to unchain me andrelease the rest of the guys from their various torture positions, but had locked us in a room while she gathered all the stabby things in the room and hid them from us, most likely. Which gave us time to discuss this very out-of-character predicament Coyote threw us into headfirst.

Now, we had an audience, and I didn’t want to let her see me crack under pressure.

“I said what I said, bitch,” I opted for instead, hoping she wouldn’t see straight through my mocking tone to the excitement that raced through my veins at the possibility of her coming back for seconds of this great dick. “You get bored of waiting and decide to intrude? Thought you were giving us a minute alone.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, boys,” she mocked, her smile too wide to be serious, like the fucking Cheshire cat or something. “Please, if you want to suck each other’s dicks, don’t let me stop you. I like a good show.”

As if to drive her point home, she crossed her arms and propped herself against the wall, waiting for us to continue. And there was no way in hell I was about to let her see me ream out Coyote. That wasourbusiness, not hers.

New member or fucking not.

“We were just finishing up, actually,” Dingo offered slowly, apparently hoping to defuse the situation. “I think we got off on the wrong foot, sweetheart?—”

“You don’t get to call me pet names. To you, I’m eithermasterorma’am.”

This was beginning to sound like some straight-up dominatrix shit. And as much as I wanted another go at that rocking ass body, just to show her how hot she really was for her father’s murderers, I wasn’t about to roll over and show her my belly. That was a bitch move, and I was no bitch.

“I have no master. Certainly not you.”

“You’ll come around soon enough, I think,” she chuckled, grinning like the cat that ate the canary.

Coyote looked like someone had just given him a year’s supply of the world’s best booze or some shit. Motherfucker looked eager to do what she wanted.

Something about that really didn’t sit well with me.

I didn’t want to analyze that strange possessiveness running through my veins.

“So, what are the details of this deal?” I said plainly, mimicking her stance in a power-play move. “What exactly do we have to do for you?”

“Everything and anything I want,” she supplied unhelpfully, as if that clarified the whole matter. “And in return, you can keep your lives for now.”

“That means you still plan to kill us eventually,” Dingo pointed out, his dry tone almost funny in its seriousness. “So, where’s the side of the deal that benefits us?”

“You would have died eventually, even without my intervention. And if you don’t take my deal—” She sighed, pulling a pistol from the back of her skirt, which had me wondering how long that fucking thing had been there. “Well, I’ll just put you down now, and we’ll all go our separate ways. Me, to my life as the killer of the Dogs, and you, to hell, where you belong.”

“Your daddy would beso proud,”I mocked, lips curled back in a sneer. “His daughter, following in his footsteps of debauchery and death.”

The rage that morphed her features nearly made me piss myself. Me, a grown-ass man who’d killed whole-ass men for a living for years now. It felt like watching a demon evolve before my eyes, like watching a human reveal its truth as Satan incarnate. The pistol came down on my temple faster than I could react, and I dropped to my knees, swearing like a sailor as my hand moved to cover the open gash she’d gifted me.

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