Page 46 of A Game So Reckless

He wasn’t even here all day!

“I know everything, pet.”

“If you know everything, then you should know I’m not getting in your goddamn vehicle.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” I repeat incredulously. “You know why not! Because you’re… You!”

One of my family’s most entrenched enemies.

Not to mention completely insane…

“Because I’m me,” he echoes. “Well, at the moment, it’s looking like I’m all you’ve got. You should know by now that there are no white knights in our world, my pretty little Titone. There are no heroes.” He gives me a biting sort of smile. “So you’re going to have to just make do with the villain.”

“Why do you even care about helping me?” It’s become a long-running theme by now. He stopped me from choking. He towed me back to shore in my tube. And now he’s offering to drive me into town for a tampon supply run? Why hasn’t he asked for anything in return yet? What the hell does hewant?

He probably doesn’t even know himself. For the first time in our back-and-forth, he suddenly hesitates. He runs his thumb back and forth along his lower lip, regarding me in silence for a long, tense moment.

Then, he abruptly drops his hand and says, quickly and moodily, like even the mere admission is pissing him off, “Maybe I’m not interested in standing around and letting you bleed.”

Speechless. I’m speechless.

Frankly, I’m not sure that’s ever happened to me before. Not to this degree.

Darragh Gowan doesn’t want to let me bleed?

Darragh Gowan, the man who once cooked up one of his enemy’s own balls and fed them back to him? Darragh Gowan, who’s been known to tie men up with their own innards while they’re still alive? Darragh Gowan, who threatened to cut Deirdre’s fingers off, one by one, so he could send them as a warning to her thieving father?

ThatDarragh Gowan?

“Speaking of which…” His eyes narrow as they fall to my crotch. “Are you going to bleed all over my seats?”

“OK. You know what? We’re done here,” I say, finally finding my voice inside a rising tide of humiliated fury. I take a step towards the road, but Darragh stops me, his fingers closing hard and quick around my wrist. It reminds me so much of our first moments together, when I was the one grabbing onto him.

Only, he isn’t choking. He is quiet, though. His gaze is intense as he stares at the place he touches me.

Then, he lets me go. Before I’ve taken another step, he hooks his fingers under the hem of his black shirt and peels it off over his head.

And I hate it, and I fight it, but the sight of his bare skin seals me to the spot. I remember falling against that skin, that chest, the scorching, inked heat of it. My heart slides all the way down to my clit. Something in me cramps, then clenches.

Darragh folds his shirt into a messy rectangle, then he puts the dark fabric down on the front passenger seat. He pulls the passenger door wider, holding it open for me in silent invitation.

Or silent command.

I bite my lip. Darkness inside the vehicle.

Darkness on the road back home without him.

Am I really considering this?

“If I wanted to kill you tonight,” he says casually, “I could have done it a dozen times over by now.”

There it is again. That specification oftonight. Like he might still change his mind and kill me tomorrow.

I can’t trust a word this man says.

But maybe…

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