Page 13 of Tales You Win (Grim & Beast Duet 1)

Unclicking his seatbelt, he twists in his seat to face me. “So now you want to talk? You’ve been giving me the silent treatment all the way back from the club.”

“You pissed me off.”You made a fool out of me.

“I do that a lot, it would seem.”

I frown. “Don’t pretend you’re upset about it. You love winding me up, makes your day go quicker, right?”

He gives me a half smile, swiping his hand through his cropped brown hair. “You got me there.”

“Yeah, I get it,” I say, smarting a little, but covering up my hurt by rolling my eyes. “I’m just a source of amusement for you. That was well played.”

“Princess…”

I wave my hand in the air pretending I don’t give a shit. “Whatever. I’m already over it.”

He chews on his lip, glancing at his phone charging on the dash. This G Wagon has all the latest electrical gadgets and I briefly wonder how much my dad is paying him. Must be a shit load to be able to afford this beauty and to put up with my antics, I guess.

“This is bullshit,” he mutters after a while.

“Do you want to tell me what's up? Something’s clearly bothering you.”

“Nothing’s bothering me.”

“Tell that to your bottom lip,” I scoff, glancing at the tiny bead of blood where he’s gnawed at it.

“What?”

“You have a tell. You chew on your bottom lip when you’ve got something on your mind.”

“I do-fucking-not.”

“You’re bleeding.” I point out.

He reaches up and swipes at his lip with his thumb, widening his eyes when he sees the blood. “Interesting.”

“What is?” I ask. “The fact that you didn’t realise you had a tell, or the fact I noticed?”

He doesn’t respond, just stares at his thumb like he’s never seen his own blood before, and I have this sudden, inexplicable urge to climb onto his lap and take his mind off whatever’s bothering him. I don’t. Instead, I reach forward and gently press my fingers against his knee. “Beast?”

“I killed a man today,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his face as he looks back at me. There’s a haunted look about his eyes that I haven’t seen before now.

“Ah fuck,” I whisper, drawing my hand back, not because I’m disgusted with him, but because I’m finding it increasingly hard not to smooth my palm up his thigh. Now is not the time to seduce him, or make a fool out of myself for that matter.

“Yeah.”

For a moment he doesn’t say a word but tells me everything with his silence. Beast has a reputation for being a cold-blooded killer, and that’s true, he is. But there’s more to him than that. Over the last year I’ve been watching him closely. He’s loyal, protective, funny when he allows himself to be, and a good leader even if he acts like a caveman sometimes. I know that I’ve only just scratched the surface of who he really is and I want to know more.

“What did he do to warrant his death?” I ask instead.

“Carter needed information,” Beast replies. “The guy I killed had it.”

“Right.” I nod, picking at a piece of non-existent lint on my jean shorts.

It’s not like I don’t know my dad’s a bad man. I do. But he’s still my dad. He’s still the man who took me from a deadbeat mother when I was a baby and brought me up the best way he knew how. He’s still the man who wants to teach me how to be a savvy businesswoman who can survive in a world full of cutthroat criminals.

“He was selling drugs to minors…” Beast says, as though he’s trying to convince himself that killing that man today was a good thing, and given what he just said, it is. Adults can make their own decisions, but it takes an extra special kind of arsehole to deal drugs to kids like they’re fucking sweeties.

“He sounds like a piece of work. What a dick.”

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