Page 7 of Wild Devil
“Smile, little girl.” His finger digs brutally into the corner of my mouth, making me grimace. I snap my teeth, barely missing his index finger. Looking at the digit in question, he laughs. “I think we’re going to have a lot of fun together.”
It takes me a few moments to recover from the fear, at least until I recall something Daze said to me. Reacting out of fear is what Silas wants.
“You can’t touch me,” I say, imitating his swagger.
In a rare display of shock, he cocks his head. “Is that so?” He reaches out, pressing his calloused hand against my cheek. “I think I’m touching you now.”
My heart quivers. Breathe Frey. I can’t stand how cold he is. Every cell in my body crawls with disgust. I want to run. Scream.
“You know what I mean,” I reply, meeting his gaze directly. “You think that because my father lets you do his dirty work, he trusts you? No. You’re merely the hired help. If you leave so much as a mark on me, he’ll punish you for it.” My voice sounds so confident that I almost believe it.
It’s hard to tell whether Silas is fooled despite his sly grin. “I don’t know if you’ve already forgotten, sweetheart, but I’ve left my mark on that pretty little face more than once.” He prods the still-sore spot from when he slapped me, but I don’t flinch. “Maybe I didn’t make it hurt badly enough. Don’t worry. We can always try again.”
“That was because my father gave you your marching orders, and you carried them out like a good soldier.” I feel my body go numb as his eyes flash and alarm courses through me. A heartbeat passes, but he doesn’t move. Bravado or not, I wasn’t too far off.
He can’t touch me.
“You know it, don’t you?” I choke out a hollow laugh. “You can only obey him and follow the rules he sets out. He’s put you back on your leash—” My head held high, I step forward. “So, you can’t touch me.”
Instead of moving, he chuckles. “It seems like you learned some tricks on how to use that smart little mouth. I have to give Daze his credit. He’s managed to teach you a lot in a short amount of time. Imagine what you and I will learn when we have all the time in the world to play.”
My breathing hitches. “A bold claim,” I manage to croak. “Seeing as how you aren’t even fit enough to be by his side tonight. I’m sure Colton is,” I add, thinking of what he’d hinted at earlier. “My father trusts him. Honors him. Sees him as an equal. You? You’re just a useful tool.”
“Is that so?” Something dark falls across his expression, and another trill of alarm runs down my spine. Then he starts to laugh, shaking his head as if in disbelief at my naivety. Instead of moving, he chuckles.
“I’m glad you find it amusing,” I say. “That you know your role to play, and?—”
“Listen, little girl.” With one hand, he grips my throat. I feel my eyes bulge from the pressure he applies before he releases it a heartbeat later. “You think you have my balls in the palm of your hand, and that you’ll be able to hide behind your daddy forever. Now, I may not know shit about politics, but most elected officials don’t seem to last too long in the grand scheme of things.”
I swallow hard, ignoring a twinge in my throat. Breathless, I ask, “Is that a threat?”
“No, sweetheart.” He starts to stroke through my hair, and this time, I don’t let myself so much as flinch. He wants to get a rise out of me. The only way to beat him is to deny him the satisfaction of knowing he’s affected me. At least until he tugs, wrenching my face closer to his.
“That was a promise,” he warns. “Your daddy won’t be king for long, but I’ll play along. Bide my time. I just hope there’s something left of you when that pretty boy is finished.”
His confident tone catches me off guard. It’s as if he knows something I don’t regarding Colton’s true intentions.
A good, obedient hostage would remain silent. Luckily, more than a little of Daze’s personality has rubbed off on me. It’s easier now to think the way he does, and analyze things from a different perspective, even while afraid. Silas is counting on my fear to let him get away with dropping these little tidbits of information, thinking I won’t notice. I need to play on that.
“As if he’d ever let you touch me,” I say with every ounce of superiority I can muster. Hearing my own words echoed back to me makes me cringe. God, I sound like Colton. Or worse, my father. “Don’t you get it? You’re just a flunky for their benefit, but they will always regard you as trash beneath their feet.”
“Is that so?” He cups my chin, wrenching my face within a mere hairsbreadth of his. I can feel his breath on my skin, hot and tinged with cigarettes. Ironically, he smells so much like Daze, but still different. What is an appealing musk on the latter, smells acrid and hostile on the man in front of me. My entire body reacts to him the same way I figure it would respond to a wild bear, or some dangerous predator. Every cell and pore is screaming at me to do only one thing.
Run.
“You’ve been spending too much time listening to your daddy’s little sermons, sweetheart,” Silas tells me. “You have a warped sense of what happens in the real world versus those scriptures he relies on so much. I’ll enlighten you. He thinks he’s a big shot now and that he holds all the cards. But how does that one saying go? Pride cometh before the fall?”
As he draws back, I fight to school my face into a blank expression. My mind is going a million miles a minute. He doesn’t sound cocky or smug. No, he sounds convinced, as if he knows something I don’t, and he’s relishing in my stupidity.
“From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re a good boy taking orders from someone with more power,” I say.
“Oh really?” It makes my stomach churn when he laughs. “What is power but a fickle friend? It changes hands, sweetheart, sometimes more quickly than you’d think.”
“Bold words.” I don’t miss the honesty in his voice. “What if I told my father that you were plotting behind his back?”
He smirks, amused by the threat. “Do you really think he’d believe you? After all, I’m just a dutiful little soldier. For the record, honey, I think your daddy has bigger fish to fry at the moment.”
“What do you mean?”