Page 32 of Cruel Pawn
“So you accept it?” I grinned, victorious. She swore filthily. “Good.” I helped her back to her feet, feathering my palms overthat irresistible flare of curves from her waist to her hips. “I know you won chess competitions as a child. I know you entered championships and destroyed your opponents so brutally, they went home crying or quit chess altogether.”
That smile finally formed, wicked and bright enough to make me fall even harder for her. “I humiliated a former champion so quickly she never played again,” she told me with a laugh.
“You’ll find it much,muchharder to beat me,” I informed her, and delighted in the challenge that entered her expression. “But by all means, you’re welcome to try.”
She sidled closer, peering up at me through her lashes, brushing her bare breasts against my chest. “You’ll never win, my captor. I don’t play fair; I play to win.”
I smiled so wide that my face hurt, my heart a mess of stuttering beats.
She called me hers.
17
Priya
Unsurprisingly, it took me hours to sleep. Being pressed against a naked furnace was such an alien experience that I couldn’t shut off my mind, and said mind refused to let my body relax. Plus, that nightmare beast was still out there, watching, waiting for me to drop my guard so she could scratch my eyes out. She hid for the rest of the night as I utterly destroyed Arden in two chess games and he had the audacity to win the third, but I knew she’d only retreated to plan her next move.
My humiliating escape attempt was the main thing keeping me awake. That, and how my body kept betraying me. How even now, laying wide awake in the dark, I didn’t justnot hatethe weight of Arden’s arm across my middle, I loved it.
I fell asleep feeling like control was slipping away from me, so it was no surprise the old nightmare rose around me like a many-armed monster and sank its claws into my skin.
It was my second job, and even though I was still under the supervision of Grandfather for the most part, the success of my first made me cocky. Instead of waiting for backup to take down the Russian mobster like I’d been ordered to, at fifteen I had arrogance in spades. I’d been training for five years under Grandfather’s tutelage like his other grandchildren had, though everyone knew I was the natural talent, the girl who had poison instead of blood in her veins.
But if that were true, my target would have sank his teeth into my shoulder and drawn his own death. Instead, blood welled, and I bit back a hiss. I grounded my feet against the polished cherry-wood floor in his Chelsea apartment and threw my weight back, ready to spin the second he hit the floor, my fingers already twitching, feeling the weight of the knife I would draw from the secret slit in my jeans.
But Oliver Dobrow was an adult, amanwhen I was still a child. He was twice my weight, at least a foot taller, and built like one of Grandfather’s bodyguards. When I kicked off the floor, I didn’t throw him back. He grunted at all my weight landing on him, but surged forward, knocking me off balance so quickly that I couldn’t catch myself before I fell.
I landed on the woven, diamond-pattern rug, my face pressed to rough fibres, and experienced true fear for the first time in my life. I always thought fear would scald like fire, but it was a rapid, freezing ice, turning my blood to rime, covering my skin in a layer of frost.
His hands burned where they touched me, clashing with my ice, and I snarled, throwing my weight into pushing him off, driving my head back but failing to connect with his nose. This wasn’t like training. This wasn’t like fighting my cousins or even fighting Grandfather’s guards when they stepped into the training ring. This was messy and rough and terrifying. I didn’t know if I could win this fight, but that didn’t stop me trying.
“You didn’t come here for an internship, did you?” Oliver demanded, his breath hot against my ear as he pinned me to the rug.
He was an immovable brick wall above me, resistant to every move I’d practised, every last struggle I had in me. And it wasexhaustingto fight like this. Fear seemed to spread like veins of venom through my strength, bleeding it dry until I was shaky and my efforts to push him off grew brittle and weak.
“You’re one of Rurik’s girls, aren’t you? He knows I like them young.”
Bile scorched my throat and splashed the rug, my stomach cramping, the acidic taste of red wine and vomit curdling my tongue. I hadn’t wanted a drink, but Oliver insisted, and I couldn’t blow my cover, so I’d gone along with it. And now I knew why he was so insistent.
I threw my head back with more force this time, using all the power in my thighs to force my hips off the rug. His low chuckle scratched my skin like the needles of a dozen infected syringes. I wanted that sound out of my ears, the sensation off my skin, and I wanted him dead.
Clearly, Oliver thought me bucking against him was confirmation that I was one of Rurik’s girls—I made a mental note to find this Rurik and turn his internal organs into soup. As I reached for the knife at my thigh, Oliver’s hand slipped past the waistband of my leather trousers. I wore them because they made me feel powerful and dangerous and grown up. I no longer wanted to feel grown up.
His fingers found their goal the same moment mine did, and my whole body recoiled, revolted by the violation. I whipped the dagger free and sank it into his groin with all my fleeting strength. His sick erection had helped me aim the blow perfectly.
Oliver fell back with a howl, then I was free, scrambling for control of my emotions, desperate to claw my power back. Hishead hit the sharp edge of the glass coffee table, and my breath strangled in my throat as I watched his life seep out of him, shaking all over.
He was dead. He was dead, and he’d never touch me again, and I wassafe.
I sat back on my heels with a shaky exhalation.
“You were too slow to unseat him.”
I jumped, that slow, critical voice hitting me as violently as Oliver’s touch had. “You—how long were you there?”
“Two minutes, no longer,” he replied. Heat scorched from my ears down my throat. So he saw Oliver assault me. Saw what he said about being one of Rurik’sgirlsand liking them young. He stood by while a paedophile felt me up.
Why was I surprised? There was a lesson to be learned, so of course he’d never intervene. There wasalwaysa fucking lesson to be learned. But this lesson was the hardest one yet—there was no one coming to save me. No family, no friends, no allies. Certainly not my grandfather. He’d stand by and watch me be murdered just to see if I had the mettle to survive.
