Page 63 of Poisoned Pawn

“What’s going on?” Star asks as she takes in her sister.

Roxanne’s eyes meet mine over Star’s shoulder before looking back to Star.

“We have a name for the guy who set the bounty.”

Her words don’t match her expression though, and I’m about to ask her when Star, obviously picking up the same feeling as me, beats me to it.

“And? What else, Roxy?”

“Someone tried to take out Aidan and Parker.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

STAR

Once Roxy assures me that Aidan and Parker are both fine, she leaves, and I get dressed while Carter showers.

When he exits the bathroom ten minutes later, a cloud of steam billowing from the room, I’m sitting on the bed looking at my feet.

“What you thinking about, princess?” he asks sauntering over to me in nothing but a pair of boxers.

I raise my head and meet his emerald-green eyes. “Nothing and everything.”

It’s not a lie. My mind is full of questions, concerns for my family and doubt. My doubts aren’t whether I have feelings for Carter because I couldn’t deny that even if I wanted to. I’m trapped in his snare, and not even the fact he just dismembered a body and dissolved it in a barrel of acid could break the tether he has on me.

My doubts are more along the lines of my own sanity. I’ve spent so long fighting my demons that I’m worried what will happen if I stop fighting and just let them have me.

I’m falling for—no, I’ve fallen for a man that gets paid to kill people. How is he any different to the man hired to kill me. Hell, he was one of them.

But he didn’t.

The words whisper through my mind as clear as if someone had said them out loud, but it doesn’t change the fact he came to my house to kill me that night.

And despite his words about me being beautiful and making his dick hard, I still don’t understand his attraction to me. Why he didn’t kill me.

“That everything and nothing you’re thinking about better not include more damn questions about why I didn’t kill you, Star.” His words are gruff, pissed off.

“How can they not?”

“Because I already told you why.” He turns away, grabbing clothes from his drawers.

“Telling me you want to fuck me isn’t an answer,” I shout, rising to my feet. “Plenty of men have wanted to fuck me and some even ha—” My words are cut short when in less than a blink of an eye, Carter is in front of me, nose to nose with a hand wrapped around my throat, firm yet tentative.

“Those men had their fun, had you for one night, and they will pay the price for touching you in time. But I own you! Each breath, each beat of your heart and every inch of your skin has my name tattooed on it. Every time desire unfurls in your belly, it’s me your body craves. Every time your clit throbs and your pussy begs to be filled, it’s my cock it seeks. And every time you come it will be me that pushes you over the edge.”

I squeeze my thighs together as his words slither into my heart, under my skin, into my fucking blood, creating a flash of desire and ownership so powerful my knees almost buckle beneath me. His eyes never leave mine, but he knows just what his words have done to me.

“If you’re looking for declarations of love and big romantic gestures to confirm what your body already knows, you’re shit out of luck. But I promise you this, for as long as there is breath in my body and blood pumping my heart, no man or woman will ever lay another fucking hand on you in pleasure or pain.”

As if I need any further affirmation of his words, his lips meet mine, raw and demanding, savage and brutal, just like the man who has slain me with his words, cut me open and taken up residence inside my soul.

“You’ve no fucking idea how much I want to fuck you right now.”

“But we need to go,” I say breathlessly as he unfurls his hand from my neck and steps back.

“We do. And I know you want to get back to check on Aidan and Parker.”

His words are a stark reminder of our current reality. One where both sides of me are about to meet head on in the most dangerous way.

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