Page 24 of A Game So Reckless

Even though it’s dark out here, this is the first time I’ve seen Darragh Gowan this close and this clearly. He was right in front of me two weeks ago, of course, but by that point my eyes were blurred and going black around the edges.

He stands before me now and he’s all that I can see.

Tall, tall, tall. Black T-shirt with his jeans this time, stretched tight over hard shoulders and a taut chest. His eyes, which I remember being different colours, both look pure black at night. The moonlight on his hair turns it into something metallic. Bloodstained bronze. Sharp cheekbones give him an oddly regal edge. A hard, wide jaw and a nose that looks like it’s taken one too many punches add a rough and masculine brutality to the effect.

“Hello, Darragh.”

His eyebrows rise, as if he’s surprised I’ve dared to name him. I want to raise my chin and tell him I’m not afraid of him, but that would be such an obvious lie I’m sure he’d see right through it. Anyone with even a lick of sense knows Darragh Gowan is someone you don’t cross unless you want your own balls fed back to you in a horrifically prepared soup.

Because he actually did that once. Didn’t just make the guy eat his own balls, but actually fucking cooked them first.

But despite my fear, despite the dizzy spasms of my heart in my chest, I don’t shy away from my next question.

“Are you here to kill me?”

He could easily make me dying in this fountain look like an accident or even a suicide. Dario’s poor, bereaved fiancé getting too drunk and drowning herself right after his funeral?

It certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibility. A particular type of person would probably eat that shit up, to be honest. Has a certain tragic romanticism to it. Or, it would, if there were anything romantic about my feelings towards Dario.

Darragh takes a long time to answer me. Too long. His eyes are like twin black holes. Like if I get much closer, I’ll fall in and entirely disappear. That gaze is relentless, probing, somehow both eerily empty and yet roiling with emotion I cannot even begin to fathom.

I begin to shiver so hard my teeth knock together. I try to still myself. I don’t want to look like a pathetic little rabbit shaking. He already calls me pet for some insane reason. I don’t need to make myself look any more like prey.

“I’ll scream,” I say suddenly, trying to infuse my voice with strength. “And fight. I won’t make it easy for you.”

It’s the truth. I may be nearly a foot and a half shorter than the monster of a man before me, and I might be terrified, but I plan to go down swinging. Or scratching, slapping, and screaming, I guess, since I’ve never actually punched someone in my entire life. I’d probably shatter the bones of my hand on that jaw the first time I even tried.

“I’m not going to kill you tonight,” he finally says. His voice is so goddamn deep. It curls down my spine and makes me shiver anew. There’s a slight lilt to the words, a rise and fall of rhythm that feels distinctly Irish no matter how subtle the sound.

I’m not particularly comforted by his words. Especially with the specific addition of “tonight” on the end. Would simply saying, “I’m not going to kill you,” be so fucking hard?

Darragh takes a step towards me, and I flinch, but he doesn’t touch me. He merely plunges his hands into the water right in front of my bare legs. It’s too dark, and the water too frothy with his movements, to see exactly what’s happening. But it looks like he’s washing his hands. He sends ripples and waves slamming against my shaking legs.

I really wish I hadn’t taken off my dress.

“And I know you wouldn’t go down easy,” he suddenly says. His gaze, which has been focused down on his hands in the water, rises to meet mine once more. A dark slice of intention that pins me as surely as a metal spike through a butterfly’s back. He raises his right arm and brandishes his dripping forearm in front of my face. “Still hasn’t healed.”

I squint, trying to make sense of the various lines of ink on his skin.

Then, I see them. Four swollen, scabby spots on his arm, in an angry curving arc.

The places where I pierced his skin with my fingernails.

“They’re probably infected,” I say automatically, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world to be discussing wound care with Darragh fucking Gowan.

“They definitely are.” He lowers his arm and sends that dark gaze sweeping over my half-naked body, as if he can lay the blame for his unhealing arm on my vulnerable skin. “Doesn’t matter what fucking antibiotic ointment I use.”

“Good.” I freeze the moment that it slips out. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Telling a man like Darragh that I’m glad I gave him an infection is as good as begging him to drown me in the water myself.

But to my shock, he grins instead. It splits his face wide. For someone whom I’ve heard fights a lot, he’s got perfect teeth. All straight and shiny and white in the dark mask of his face.

“Not very grateful, are you? No fucking manners. Don’t know why I expected any better from a Titone.”

It’s as if invoking my family name reminds him just how much he should hate me. The smile disappears so fast it’s like someone’s smacked it right off his face. Before I can react at all, he’s vaulted over the edge of the basin and splashes right into the water with me, jeans, boots, and all.

I raise my hands to fight him, just like I promised him I would, but he catches my wrists in an iron grip and yanks them over my head at the same moment that he backs me up against the angel’s back. Hard stone meets my shoulders and ass, and I cry out involuntarily.

Darragh pins my wrists above my head with one huge hand. The other goes to my chin, holding it firmly in place. The touch is so terrible, so foreign…

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