Page 24 of Cruel Pawn
MostArdently:
That’s the spirit
Gotta go for real
Love you guys
BeatsPerMinute:
Don’t do anything TOO fucking crazy!
MostArdently:
Me? Crazy?
Never…
13
Priya
The first thing I became aware of was warmth pressed against my skin, trying to lull me back to sleep with its comfort. The second thing was a severe lack of clothes. Huh? I didn’t sleep naked. Why would I—
Freddo, tortured and murdered, with his dick cut off.
A cloth doused in chloroform, then darkness.
Arden.
I lunged upright, my eyes flying open—and cried out at the blunt pain in my shoulders. A rattle of metal made my blood ice over.
“Careful, careful.”
That washisvoice, warm and sultry and decadent. I clenched my jaw, ignoring the traitorous fluttering in my chest. I tried to lift my arms again, carefully this time, and confirmed my suspicions—I was chained to the wall. No. The ground was too pillowy beneath me, a softness cradling my body that was somuch worse than bare concrete would have been. I opened my eyes, and my stomach dropped.
I was chained to a bed.
“Don’t try to escape, my opera,” Arden said, coming into view. I had to fight to keep my breathing even, a sharp, clawing sensation in my chest. What would he do? He had me tied up at his mercy. The last time we were together, I slit his throat and tried to kill him. Would I die tortured, just like my parents?
I couldn’t see much of the room behind him, just a dim impression of a wide, open space, enough to make me think this was a single room. It was appointed in dark greens and sumptuous tans; I glimpsed a window covered in thick velvet curtains, and maybe the dark cupboards of a kitchen. Where the fuck were we? This wasn’t Arden’s glossy, multi-million-figure apartment in Mayfair.
“What are you going to do to me?” I demanded, my panic mounting like a wave that would crush me under its pressure. It was a cliché question, but I needed to know if I was preparing myself for torture or death.
“Keep you,” Arden replied, startling my heart to knock against my ribs as he leaned over the foot of the bed. A memory of him standing over my bed once before flashed through my mind. I ignored the ache that began between my legs. “I’m going to keep you forever and ever.”
I blinked, the only sign of shock I allowed to show. He wasn’t going to kill me? Instead, he was going to keep me locked up here, fuck knows where, as—what? “As your twisted sex slave?” I asked on an expulsion of air, an incredulous laugh.
“Is that all you think you are to me? Sex?”
He came closer, and I had no choice but to look at him, so I finally allowed myself to catalogue his features. Raw, sharply honed beauty was usually softened by a smile, but now he frowned at me as he crawled onto the bed, his heat hitting mynaked body like a bolt of electricity. His hair was a few inches longer, falling rakishly over his forehead, a lock curling into his eye, and there was a crackle of danger to him that was new. An intensity that made my heart pound.
I looked for the slice I’d half-made on his throat, and everything inside me ground to a screeching halt when I found a perfect slash of a scar. It had pink and red hearts inked around it.
He’d surrounded my murder attempt with fucking hearts, like a schoolgirl’s notebook doodles.
“You’re not my slave, Priya. You’re my heart and soul. My future wife. My reason for existence. My dream for the future. You’reeverything.”
The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “You know my name.”
