Page 34 of Billionaire's Promise
"They did?"
I nod. "Turns out, there’s one thing I am better at than killing, and that’s torturing the enemy for their secrets."
"Torturing?" She swallows. "You tortured people?"
I peer into her features. "That was my specialty, you know?"
"What do you mean?" She frowns.
"That was my job, in the army. To torture enemy soldiers for information. I was so good at it that they gave me a fucking medal for it." I laugh. "They didn’t know that the only time the voices in my head fell silent was when I was sussing out their weaknesses and using them against them."
She sits back on her haunches. "You were still doing your job."
I laugh. "You don’t understand." I lower my hands to my side, "I fucking stood over grown men, used their fears and their life stories against them. I knew exactly how to take their worst terrors and deploy them to find weaknesses in their psyches. I knew how to break them down and rebuild them again."
"You…you brainwashed them?"
My lips twist. "I made them into weapons who could be redeployed undercover. I made them believe in their new identities enough for them to be sent back to their own countries. I sent them to their inevitable deaths."
"And in doing so, you helped many more lives back home."
I frown. "You think you know everything, don’t you? You think you can view me with the same fucking rose-colored lenses as you viewed Edward?"
Her lips thin. "I didn’t have to view him through anything. He was…good, inside and out."
"Oh?" I look her up and down. "And what about you, Ava? Was it good for you with him?"
"I am not answering that." She folds her arms across her chest. "You're hurting, I understand that. Doesn’t mean you need to insult Edward or what…we had."
"And what did you have?" I sneer. "A few fucks before he left? The man was so afraid of what he felt for you, he couldn’t even stay to face the consequences of his actions."
"He…he needed time to sort things out."
"He’s so weak, he couldn’t even stick to his chosen path. He walked away from the very profession that he claimed meant everything to him."
"He did it for me," she snarls. "Everything he did, he did it for me."
"He did it for himself." I allow my grin to widen. "You were just an excuse. Just easy pussy that he couldn’t resist, he—"
She swoops out her hand and I grab her wrist.
"Don’t even think about it," I warn.
"And what will you do, huh?" She holds my gaze. "You going to torture me like you did those prisoners? You going to pull your gun on me? Or better still," she reaches for my other hand and brings it to her neck, "you going to finish what you started? You going to choke me, Baron?"
I place my fingers in the exact same marks where my fingers had rested a few minutes ago. "Do you want me to…?" I wind my fingers around her neck. "Do you want me to choke you, Ava? Is that what this is about?"
"No." She swallows and the action sends vibrations shuddering across my palm. My dick twitches. Fuck, what the hell is wrong with me? Why does her fear, her wide-eyed gaze, the way her breathing speeds up—why does all of it only arouse me more?
"You’re lying." I lower my voice to a hush, "You want me to hurt you, don’t you? You want me to show you how it could be to walk that thin path between pleasure and pain."
"No." She shakes her head.
"You want me to tip you over the edge so you can forget him, so you can discover parts of you which you don’t even know exist."
Her chest rises and falls. "You’re wrong." She licks her lips; her gaze darts to the side then back at me.
I rise up on my knees, and loom over her. "You want me to fuck you."
