Page 30 of Cruel Pawn
“I love you more than the sun and sky and every drop of water in the sea,” he professed when I was frustratingly docile, his lips dragging over the harsh angle of my jaw to my throat.
I melted into the wall with a soft sigh when he found the magical spot on the side of my neck, my eyes heavy lidded.So good.So fucking good. I should be fighting, struggling, probably killing him, but my body had been starved for this for years. The last three months were even worse because I knew how it felt to be the centre of his world, and I lost it. Gave it up myself when I drove a kitchen knife into his jugular.
“I love you more than the petals that fall from cherry blossom trees.”
My hips rolled against his, soft molten heat spreading through my core. I’d never felt like this before, a strange contradiction of horny and soft. Needful but… peaceful. What the hell had he done to me?
“Wait, is that a poem?” I moaned when he kissed another line into my skin.
“Mm,” he confirmed, sucking on that spot and rendering me into a malleable puddle instead of a woman. “Like I said, I had a lot of time to make everything perfect. I wrote a lot of poems. Do you like it?”
Are you delusional? Of course I don’t like it.
The only reason you know I exist is because someone hired me to murder you.
“No one ever wrote a poem for me before,” I sighed instead, because, clearly, I’d lost my mind.
Arden with his lips wrapped around my throat was lethal. But when he stroked his tongue over my skin, moving in rolling, suggestive motions, I was sure he killed me. Priya the contact killer died a swift, moaning death, and Horny Priya returned with a flutter of eyelashes and a soft sigh.
“Does my pretty girl need another orgasm?” he asked between sucks of my throat. I knew he was painting possessive marks onto my skin, but I didn’t care. No, it was worse than that. I wanted them.Wantedto be covered in the evidence that someone wanted me.Me,not a con or pretence or a role I played. Sharp, cold, cruel Priya who killed because it was what she was good at, what she loved, and all she’d ever known.
“Arden,” I groaned, chains rattling as I settled my arms on his shoulders, sinking my fingers into his hair the way I once did when I was Carmen, when I was playing him. But now it was far too real.
A thought occurred to me, and my stomach tangled in knots, my body tensing, fighting. I put a fraction of space between us; the wall hindered me.
“This isn’t revenge—right?” I asked in a voice too small, too easily broken.
Arden reeled back, a deep furrow carved between his dark brows, that beautifully harsh face full of confusion. “Revenge?”
“Because I lied, and I tricked you and pretended to be someone I wasn’t. You’re not… pretending to want me, just to make me fall in love with you so you can break me, too… right?”
His breath caught, his face full of so many flashing emotions that it was impossible to pick out a single one. “You’re falling in love with me?”
“No, that’s not what I said—”
Hot palms branded my thighs. I was lifted into the air, the towel ripped away in the same motion. My back met the cool wall, my head spinning at the rapid movement. He drove hiscock in deep while I was still processing the shift in positions, and my mouth dropped open when those fucking piercings stroked every aching, needy spot inside me.
“It’s real,” he said on a groan, his hands tightening on my thighs as I wrapped my legs around him.
I should have fought, or at least put up a token effort, but—fuck, this was hard to admit—I needed him too much to even try to struggle. So, I sank my right hand into his hair and gripped tight at the roots, all my fear and rage and frustration betrayed in that one clench of my fingers. His hair still felt like silk, and now it was longer it was more satisfying to get a fistful of strands. “It’s been real since the very first moment, Priya. You might have orchestrated that meet cute, but every moment after it was real.”
“Actually, I faked most of it. I lied about having a cat, Arden, and pretended he was sick—”
His hands suddenly dug into my thighs, something like true anger snapping his hips in his ruthless thrusts. All the air left me in a rush as he carved his cock through my pussy like he wanted me bruised there, too. I had to duck my head and bite my lip to contain my wanton, uncontrolled noises as he fucked me like he hated me. And even as I came harder than I thought fucking possible, the air, the life, the soul ripped out of me… insecurity snuck in.
What if this was his shield cracking and the hate he tried to hide had poured free? What if this really was all an elaborate scheme to break me, not to keep me like he threatened?
The danger was that every time my heart softened when obsessive words poured from his lips, those threats were starting to sound like promises.
And every last promise could be a lie.
16
Arden
Adevastating thought struck, hitting my heart with critical impact. My future wife didn’t know how to snuggle.
We sat on the sofa, the plush velvet cushions absorbing us into pure, heavenly comfort, our skin still heated and damp from the bath we shared after I fucked every doubt from her mind. She sat stiffly at my side, even my arm around her back not managing to coax her closer. Surely she’d cuddled before. She was so sweet and affectionate after sex; surely a long, loving embrace couldn’t be so alien to her.
