Page 31 of A Game So Reckless

“It’s really hard to hear you, Valentina. Can you come in here? Is something- oh, shit.”

I don’t know if she’s dropped her phone or what, but the connection goes instantly dead.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I call her number again, but I don’t get anywhere. Putting my phone into my purse, I weigh my options – try calling Giulia’s phone, go and look for Mateo and ask him to retrieve his cousins, or just leave on my own. I guess I could get a cab home, but abandoning my friends in that club doesn’t sit right. Not at all.

“Why are you here?”

I yelp, nearly jumping out of my skin at the sudden question that sounds like it’s been asked from directly behind me. I spin around, leg muscles feathering with a shaky combination of adrenaline and booze, to find Darragh Gowan standing less than a foot away from me.

How the hell does he do that? Come upon me without me ever fucking knowing, like a ghost?

He didn’t make a single goddamn sound.

Apparition.

I feel the threat of goosebumps tingle along my arms. My breath comes quicker. Darragh’s dressed in all black, looming like a shadow above me in the alley. I swallow hard and try to turn my shock at his sudden appearance into something else. Something bolder. Something more like a shield. Something that doesn’t let me feel like he could strip me bare with nothing but his eyes if he so chose to.

“Why am I here? Why areyouhere?” I exclaim. I sound way more pissed than I have any right to be. Darragh’s an infinitely dangerous man, and I’d do well to remember that. He doesn’t like my family, clearly hated my fiancé, and the fact he saved me once was probably just a fluke. A whim his violent brain just happened to find amusing. The result of a crazy coin toss. It’s not a sign that I am safe around him or that I can afford to offend him.

But anything that feels like common sense seems to fly right out the window in his presence. His gaze is so absorbing, so all-encompassing, I feel like it’s sucking me right out of myself.

The shots in the jeep probably didn’t help.

“I don’t answer questions,” he drawls darkly, “about why I’m at my own property.”

My blood chills. The goosebumps, a mere threat before, expand over my skin with full force.

“Your property?” I repeat back stupidly. “Mateo told me some American owned this club!”

Darragh stares at me like I’m an absolute imbecile.

“An American does own this club.” He leans down until his mouth is right beside my ear, his next words a hot demand against my skin. “But who, exactly, do you think owns the fucking building?”

Crap. Crap crap crap.

“I’m going to take a wild stab at it and say that you do,” I answer. I try to sound casual, but my voice comes out breathy and strange.

“Clever little Titone.” Darragh draws back, but only a little. Just enough to look me dead in the eyes. When he speaks again his voice is lower than before. Taut with deadly warning that makes my breath catch. “Who’s Mateo?”

“What? No one.” I shoot the reply back at him without really thinking, vodka swimming around my quivery heart. It’s making me feel all kinds of wrong. My skin is too hot. My stomach constricts. The air between Darragh’s body and mine is somehow both too thick and too thin. Viscous with tension. And too little oxygen.

God. I wish I was stone-cold sober. Why am I always in a position of weakness in front of this man? I’m either tipsy or in my underwear or choking to death.

“No one?”

There’s a shift between us. Cold dread cuts between our bodies like a knife and sinks into my stomach. I’m overcome with the sudden, screaming instinct that I need to get out of this alley right fucking now if I want to survive the night. That instinct only seems to prove itself right at Darragh’s next icy words.

“The last person who lied to me got thrown off a twenty-eight storey building.” A cruel glint comes into his eyes. “If I’m not mistaken, you were there that day.”

Darragh is huge and dark and angry, starkly silhouetted in August sunlight. Nothing but glass and sky and heat above. Gelo de melone below. My throat tastes like brine and blood. He turns to me then and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe -

My hands and feet go numb.

I half expect Darragh to grab me by the hair and drag me up to the roof of this club.

But he doesn’t.

He simply shoves past me…

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