Page 97 of Cruel Games

Jackal snorted. “Are we supposed to wear these over our clothes or something? It kinda clashes with my style.”

I set Coyote’s harness to the side and slipped my fingers to the zipper at the top of his hoodie. “Not exactly,” I hedged, dragging the noisy little piece of metal down the front of his torso so he could slip out of it. “You can wear them over a button-up, if you want, but they also look pretty good against bare skin.”

Which I demonstrated by slipping it over Coyote’s taut muscles.

When the last belt on the damn thing was cinched, all the bells and whistles in their place, I stepped back to admire my handiwork.

Each harness was different—Coyote’s went over his chest, Dingo’s criss-crossed over his torso in a fun pattern, and Jackal’s wrapped around his whole torso and met at his waist, giving him the most dangerous air.

It wasn’t a mistake. In fact, the selections I’d made for them were tailored to their attitudes. And very, very soon, I’d be hooking them to the end of some leashes and taking them for a walk.

My dogs.

Mine.

When had I come to think of them as mine?

It must’ve been a gradual process because it happened so smoothly that I didn’t even notice the transition.Now, here I was, about to walk them like they were actual animals at the ends of these leashes, in front of every person they worked alongside. I was going to emasculate them for the world to see.

What kind of person had I become?

Apparently, the kind who took a slow revenge out on the people who hurt her.

And while they were busy licking the salt from their wounds after the party, I’d be busy sneaking into the archives in search of their contract files pertaining to my father’s hit.

The harnesses and collars were just icing on the cake. A bit of fun to piss them off.

Eventually, I’d grow tired of playing with them, and then I’d have to discard them, dispatching their lives like they were no more than a mouse in a science lab.

Why did that fill me with a sense of disappointment all of a sudden?

THIRTY-SEVEN

COYOTE

I’d never consideredmyself on the same level as other humans. But wearing this getup, harnessed and leashed and collared like some sort of pet, really drove home the differences between us and them. Even though Dingo and Jackal were a bit feral, they had nothing on me.

Something inside me, however, preened at the idea of being led around like a pet.

Especially if it was by a woman like Ivy.

Jackal spent half the time being tugged back into place. He had a habit of disobeying Ivy’s orders and pulling on his lead any chance he got. I lost track of what was intentional and what was just habitual for him.

Dingo spent half his time contemplating the situation he’d found himself in. Once or twice, I caught him muttering under his breath as Ivy stood behind him and ran her fingers through his hair.

When it came time to eat, she had our chairs taken away, and we knelt on the floor like actual fucking dogs, waiting for her to decide to feed us. Dingo was allowed his plate on the floor, much to Lilly St. Clair’s amusement, and me, she hand-fed off her own plate.

Something feral inside me had me licking her fingers whenever I was given the opportunity. The shivers that ran down her spine as she jerked them away from my mouth scratched an itch inside me that I didn’t understand.

Well, that was a lie.

I understood damn well why something inside me preened at the way I affected her. It was because she affected me the same way, too.

The way she smiled when she thought we weren’t looking, the way her shirt rose and bared her flat stomach when she put her hair up, the way the sunlight danced across her skin when she stood in the kitchen and stared out at the back lawn. All of it drove me wild.

And there was the habit she had of strolling through the quarters wearing nothing but an oversized shirt and a pair of barely-there panties, taunting us with her bare thighs and that full, round ass.

I’d never wanted to fuck something as much as I wanted to fuck her. The feeling was foreign to me. The only things I’d ever felt so moved by in life were survival and ridding the world of horrible people who didn’t deserve to be in it.

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