Page 38 of Twice as Twisted

She lets out a snort. “You better not make me shoot. The feds are already all over me. They’re probably watching us right now.”

I think about Jane in the car, her hands manacled. I should have lobotomized her before we left. Then she couldn’t make a scene. She might still be dumb enough to try now, even after everything I’ve done. But I won’t let Mabel see that I’m hesitating, that I hadn’t expected them to be so close. She’ll think I’m scared, and that’s not at all the case.

I smirk at her, raising a brow. “I wonder why,” I drawl. “It couldn’t have anything to do with the extremely low survival rate of the men you date.”

She scowls. “I’m sure it has everything to do with that.”

“Oh, Mabel,” I say with mock pity. “So intelligent, but always so very clueless.”

“You think you’re doing me a favor?” she demands. Her eyes scan back and forth, as if she’s trying to find evidence of surveillance. She found one of my cameras a few months ago, and she must think the FBI planted it. I don’t blame her for being paranoid. I’m just one man, and I have her apartment in Tennessee bugged, her car, her phone, and her computers. After today, I’ll have her aunt’s house bugged too.

The FBI has far more resources and manpower than I do, and they probably have a healthy interest in figuring out why half a dozen men died within a few months of going out with her. Either that, or they haven’t even found the connection, since the deaths don’t happen directly after their encounters with her, and they had no reason to look at a random bad date from two months before.

Mabel releases her grip on the shelving and lands in a crouch, gun still pointed at us. “Do you really want to play this game?” she asks.

“I always want to play,” Duke says, stepping toward her.

I lay a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. Things are just getting interesting. “What’s the game?”

“You’re the game maker,” she says. “You should know better than anyone.”

“We won our game,” I say. “It’s over. We’re here to collect our prize.”

“Are you sure about that?” she asks, cocking her head. “You succeeded in destroying me, I’ll give you that. But if you really won, then why isn’t it over?”

“Because we don’t have you.”

“If you have to have me to complete your victory, then you didn’t really win, did you? Because you don’t have me. I left. I moved on. I started a new life. So maybe I’m the winner after all.”

“You ended up in a loony bin,” Duke says. “Doesn’t sound much like winning.”

“And you couldn’t get to me, so you gave up,” she says. “Doesn’t sound like much of a victory.”

Duke takes a menacing step forward. “You saying the game is still going? You still want to play, don’t you, little weasel?”

“I never wanted to play,” she says, training the gun on him. “But I’m free of you, and you are clearly not free of me, since you tracked me down under my new name, followed me across the country, and still maintain some delusion about us being together after what you did to me. I never even think about you. So who really won?”

“We won,” I say flatly. “We made you love us, and we didn’t just break your heart. We broke your body, your spirit, your will.”

“And you think that means I’ll want to be with you now?” she asks with something that sounds like incredulity.

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” I say. “We won, and you’re the prize.”

“So play by the rules, and put down the gun,” Duke says.

She glances down at the chamber and then up at him. “I’ve got five bullets, but it only takes one to stop a man’s heart.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asks, a grin spreading over his face as he prowls forward. “You think I’m afraid of a little pain? I’ll rub the blood on my dick and use it as lube when I fuck you.”

I know he’s held back his wildness as long as he can. Not just today, but all the days leading up until now. All these months, I had Jane to take out my cravings on. Duke hasn’t had anyone. Now the side of him that he calls his demon is taking control. I can see it happen in every part of his body, from the looseness in his shoulders to his unhinged smile to the determination in his eyes, like a caged animal desperate to make an escape.

“Duke,” I warn, reaching for him. “She’s not afraid to shoot.”

“So?” he asks, shaking me off. “As long as I can die fucking her, I’ll die happy. I need to be inside her one more time. To find out what it is.”

I need him alive, though, and when he loses control of his humanity, he thinks even less rationally than usual. “We’ll find out,” I say quietly. “We’ll fuck her any time we want.”

Mabel’s gaze moves between us, and then in a quick flurry, she spins the cylinder of the revolver, shoves the gun under her skirt, reaches under with her other hand, widens herstance, pulls her panties aside, and shoves the muzzle inside herself.

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