Page 44 of War Games

Siren paces through the shore of the lake, dragging her feet through the cool water in nothing but my shirt as I sit on the damp sand, watching her move from left to right. Her little cami and sleep shorts were nowhere to be found, but the second they were removed from her body, I couldn’t care less about them.

Siren is one of those women who should be in a constant state of nakedness. Her body is flawless, absolutely perfect, and I’m going to make it my personal mission to devour as much of it as I possibly can before these twenty days are over.

“Okay, tell me this,” she says, pausing ankle deep in the water and looking back at me. She’s been asking me questions for the last twenty minutes, trying to get to the bottom of all the intel she was able to dig up on me, trying to decipher what’s real and what was fabricated by local enforcement. “What’s your real name?”

Fuck me. I’d be more comfortable asking her to perform a rectal exam on me than giving up that kind of information. I’ve held my name close for a long time, not having to use it in closeto fifteen years. The few people who are closest to me don’t even know it, and yet, for whatever reason, I haven’t told her to fuck right off with her line of questioning. Perhaps it’s the post-nut clarity that’s making me play nice in the hopes she’ll allow me to have her again, because fuck, after that first taste, I’m addicted.

“Oh, come on,” Siren says, walking over to me and dropping down in my lap, her knees on either side of my thighs as I feel the warmth of her sweet cunt through the front of my pants. I have to work hard not to remind myself that she’s not wearing any underwear. “You figured out my name, and not only that, you used it against me. It’s only fair that I know yours.”

I let out a heavy breath. “I don’t use my real name.”

Siren nods, and sadness begins to consume her. “I understand that more than you could possibly know.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She offers me a sad smile, trying to push through the pain of whatever trauma is plaguing her mind. “No, but thanks.”

I nod, not wanting to push her on something that so clearly affects her so much. Instead, all I want is to make her happy, to see just a fraction of a smile pull across her lips, and to bask in the way her eyes light up. “My name,” I say, feeling more vulnerable than I ever have in my life. “Is Nikolai Volkov.”

Her eyes widen in surprise, the sadness in her eyes quickly fading away. “You’re Russian?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I suppose. I never knew my parents or where I came from. I was left at the door of an orphanage in Jersey at six months old with nothing more than a birth certificate and a blanket. I’ve lived in the US all my life.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” she says. “Did you ever try to track your parents down?”

“Once,” I admit. “My mother died a few years after I was born from a drug overdose, and my father . . . He was a piece of shit. Turns out that my mother was trafficked at sixteen yearsold and sold to my father. I guess he raped her until he knocked her up, and after she’d given birth, he either tossed her aside or she made a break for it. I never really got a chance to get all the details before I snapped his neck.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. That was my first kill.”

Siren holds my stare, nodding before dropping her gaze to my chest, a heaviness flashing in her eyes. “Mine was a friend of my foster father’s when I was fourteen,” she tells me. “I apparently needed to be taught a lesson, and he thought he was the one to do that.”

“Shit,” I say, fucking hating when that shit happens to kids. Don’t get me wrong, it’s terrible no matter the age, but when the innocence of youth is involved, it grinds on my nerves. Especially when it comes from someone who’s supposed to protect them.

Siren places her hand on my chest and my body instantly relaxes. “Don’t worry, he was castrated before he could use it on me.”

Thank fuck for that.

She leans back onto my legs, simply staring at me. “I’m curious about you,” she tells me. “What makes you tick?”

“What makes me tick?” I question, unsure how to even answer that. Fuck, I don’t even think I know what that means.

Siren grins. “Yep. What makes you tick? What gets under your skin?”

“Are you trying to figure out ways to best me? Because it’s not going to work. Nothing gets under my skin.”

“I don’t need to figure out how to best you,” she tells me. “The second I cuffed you to my refrigerator, I realized I already had. If anyone is going to bring you down during these games, it’s going to be me. Besides, look at you, Reaper. I got you pinnedon the ground. I could kill you before you even knew what was happening.”

Laughter threatens to burst out of me, and if I wasn’t such a quiet, broody guy, I might have even let it. “There are two things wrong with that statement.”

“Dare I ask what they are?” she throws back at me.

I grin. “Number one. You haven’t got me close to being pinned, and the only reason I’ve allowed you to use me as a bench is because the way you’re leaning back, gives me the perfect view of your sweet little cunt.”

Siren sucks in a breath, grabbing the front of her shirt and pulling it down just enough to cover herself. “And number two?” she prompts.

“Number two,” I say, grabbing her around the throat and gently pulling her into me, her lips barely a breath away from mine. “You couldn’t kill me even if my hands were bound and my cock was buried deep inside you.”

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