Page 81 of Cruel Games

God, she was brutal. She didn’t give him much of a choice; instead, she gave the illusion that she wasn’t just going to do whatever the fuck she wanted.

That was hot.

I could admire a woman who knew how to make getting her way look like giving someone a choice.

Wait—

“Please, if you let me go, I’ll double what they’re paying you to kill me.Triple it!I’ll triple it!” The mark whimpered pitifully from the ground at her feet, staring up at her with those unrepentant eyes that said the second she turned her back, he’d just as well rather shove a knife in her spine. But he knew the value of begging for his life.

For a split second, I wondered how much money was acceptable to her to let someone go who deserved to die. How much would tempt her to forego her values and what was right?

And then I remembered she was willing to sacrifice her own life and future to take revenge for someone she believed was wronged, and a slow smile crept over my face.

“Please,” he begged her, his hand extending to climb up her leg. I watched those lecherous fingers get increasingly close to her ass as he rose on his knees, pretending to beg her to cover his roaming hands. “Anything you want, it’ll be yours.”

“Anything I want?”

I didn’t like the look of the smile of pure evil that settled on her pretty lips.

Apparently, our mark wasn’t as quick on the pick-up because he raised those hands even higher, teasing the edge of her shorts, his fingers creeping around the back to sneak toward the middle of her ass.

“Anything at all?” she reiterated, her fingers dragging along his jaw, trailing up the side of his face, moving around the back of his head with a practiced smoothness.

“Anything,” he breathed, staring up at her like she was going to solve all his problems. For a moment, a white-hot jealousy burned in my veins. How dare he think he deserved to put his hands on her like she was his personal plaything. Did he not realize what she was?

His sharp yowl of pain filled the air as Ivy’s fingers knotted in his hair and yanked backward, leaving his throat exposed as she bent at the waist and leaned over him, her teeth bared like she was a beast, not a woman.

“I want you to kiss my feet, you lousy excuse for a man, and apologize for wasting my time.”

Oh fuck.

“What the hell, bitch, let me go!” He clawed at her hand, but she didn’t let up her grip, her grin widening as he backed up the closer she moved, until he was sitting on his ass again and damn near crying from the pain.

“I believe you promised me anything I wanted,” she purred, her voice so sinfully satin-like that it belonged in a bedroom, not on the side of the road in the wharf district in the middle of the night. “And I gave you my demands. So you’ve got two choices, pal. Either you put that mouth to work, or else . . . ”

She shoved him backward with a foot to the chest, laughing as he landed on his back in the dirt. He lay there, sputtering obscenities as she just stood over him, watching curiously, as if she were studying a bug on a rock in the park rather than a dangerous criminal.

I was stunned speechless when he reached out and took herfoot in his hand, his fingers curling around the bottom of her Converse as he leaned down and actually kissed it.

Fucking wild.

I didn’t actually think he’d do it.

And something in me snapped, strangely enough, seeing him put his dirty mouth on her in any way.

If anyone was going to kiss those feet, it shouldn’t be the likes of him.

I landed a boot to the side of his face, shoving him sideways despite his protest. I took pleasure in the sound his head made when it bounced off the concrete from his lack of preparation for the fall.

A sick, unhealthy amount of pleasure.

“What the hell?” he shouted, just as Ivy turned and looked at me with a curious gaze. She didn’t look angry, rather, more on the side of intrigued.

I didn’t know if that was better, somehow, or worse.

Those lips curled again in a slow grin, and a chill ran down my spine this time. That wasn’t a playful smile. That wasn’t even anI’m about to have some funsmirk. No, this was a full-on psychotic break,you don’t want to know what I’m about to do to youbaring of her fangs, as if she were a predator in the wild.

Now I understood what Coyote saw in her.

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