Page 49 of A Game So Reckless

When we get back onto the black beach road, he doesn’t drop me off at my cottage. He pulls into the driveway of his own and puts the vehicle into park.

“OK. Well… Thanks, I guess,” I say. I suppose I really should thank him for taking me into town, even if he did it alongside a bunch of his other usual bullshit. I reach for the bag, only for Darragh to snatch it out of reach.

“Not so fast,” he says. He turns to me in the car, and it’s like the air immediately vanishes. Breathing becomes ten times harder. He’s so close to me in this enclosed space. So big. Carved from shadows.

“What do you mean, not so fast?” I ask, clenching my thighs together ineffectually. At this point, the chance of my denim shorts surviving this night unstained as getting slimmer and slimmer every second. “Pass it over. I said thank you, didn’t I?”

“Didn’t ask you to thank me.”

“What, then?”

Was this all some cruel joke? Taking me all the way into town for stuff I needed only to whip it away at the last second?

“If you want these things, you’re coming inside.”

“Inside… Inside the cottage?Yourcottage?”

“Obviously.”

“Um, no, actually! That isn’t obvious at all! Why the hell would I do that?”

“I already told you.” He rattles the bag, making plastic crinkle. “To get this stuff.”

I squint suspiciously at him, rapidly thinking through my options.

I settle on trying to take him by surprise, my hand darting forward to pull the bag from his grip. But Darragh uses his free hand to catch mine out of the air, his fingers closing hard and fast around my own.

“I’ve been a trained boxer since I was fourteen years old and a scrapper far longer than that,” Darragh murmurs, his voice dark silk and smoke. “You really think you have better reflexes than I do?”

“Apparently not,” I admit.

“Inside.” He releases my hand, holds fast to the bag, then gets out of the car. Before he closes the door, he fixes me with that hungry, empty-eyed gaze and says, “If you’re going to slide something into that reckless little body of yours tonight, it will happen in my house…”

His voice hardens. Grows teeth of its own.

“Or it won’t happen at all.”

Chapter23

Darragh

Apart of me can’t actually believe that Valentina follows me into the house. She looks pissed as hell as she does it, arms crossed over her front and pushing up her pretty tits, her little sparkly flip-flops stomping as she goes. I don’t think she’s come here as an act of obedience to me. I think it’s almost the opposite. She’s followed me because she thinks I owe her something and she doesn’t intend to let me get away with it.

A foolish fucking endeavour, really. I don’t give anything I don’t want to give. And now, the terms have changed. Originally, I just wanted her inside my house.

Now, I’m going to watch her fucking do it.

She makes several more swipes for the bag from behind me – like a pissed-off cat batting at a bit of string – but she doesn’t get very far with that. All I have to do is hold the bag above my head as I open the door and lead her inside.

“For fuck’s sake,” she snaps. “What do I have to do now? Balance an apple on my head for you to throw knives at?”

“Don’t have any apples,” I tell her as we walk through the house’s huge entryway and into the open, modern kitchen. “I do have a peach.” I take it out of the bag and brandish it between us. Then, I take a bite. Hot summer sweetness explodes over my tongue.

“Gross,” she says, watching my mouth. “You’re supposed to wash that first.”

“Not afraid of a little dirt.”

“There are pesticides.”

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