Page 40 of Poisoned Pawn
“Let me go or fucking kill me like you were hired to!” I growl, dropping my head back to the ground and turning away from him. Emotion raw and powerful claws its way up my throat, and I fight back the tears that come with it. I don’t want him to see my pain. I don’t want him to know my fears.
I don’t fear death. I only fear the pain my death will bring to others.
I’ve seen death before. Looked into his eyes the night my mum was murdered. Walked alongside him the night my innocence was stolen from me and I was branded. Felt him breathing down my neck the night Don Rogers held a gun to my sister’s head.
“Look at me, Star,” he demands. “Look. At. Me.” Comes again when I don’t comply, each word a punctuated growl. He daren’t release one of my hands to force me to look at him because he knows that free hand is going to smack him right in the face. He can feel it.
Finally turning my head to stare up at him, I say, “Why aren’t I dead, Carter? Are you too pussy to kill the Lawler-Kavanagh princess you’ve deemed me as? Or maybe you found yourself a target with a much higher price than me.” My words are the catalyst that burns through the last of his restraint, and the reason I find myself with his hand wrapped around my throat.
He squeezes, cutting off my air supply, his jaw ticking as he grinds his teeth, and I welcome it.
“Do…it,” I manage to say in a stuttered whisper.
His eyes narrow as he scans my face, fingers tightening just a little bit more. I can see the pulse in his neck thrumming away with anticipation and excitement, the thrill of a kill, just like that night at my house when he killed another hired to take me out.
“I should fucking kill you,” he grinds out, face twisted with rage. Then he’s up and on his feet as quick as he had me under him, cursing and running his hand over his shorn hair.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
I lay there for a moment, filling my lungs. Rain continues to fall, plunking off the trees above. With my breathing evened out, I roll to the left, preparing to climb to my feet. My eyes catch on something across the path as I move, and at first I’m not sure I saw it at all. But when I drop back down a little and tilt my head, it comes back into view. A wire that runs from one side of the path to the other. It’s so close to the ground that you’d never see if you were walking by. Certain that it’s a trip wire of some sort, I climb to my feet and turn around. I expected to see Carter still pacing, so I’m surprised when I find him sitting on a large rock at the side of the pool of water.
“Did you know there’s a—”
“A trip wire? Yeah, because I set it,” he says, cutting me off.
He remains facing away from me, and I hesitantly step forward, fully aware there could be more.
“Don’t worry there aren’t any inside here, only on the paths leading in. And to answer your next question, exploding bodies are hell to clear up.”
“Oh I feel so much better knowing that. Thanks,” I say, sarcasm lacing my tone. I rub at my neck and know Carter has left his mark there. It sends butterflies fluttering low in my belly. “Carter—”
“I was hired to kill you. And I knew who you were when I came to your house that night,” he states, cutting me off again.
“Did you know who I was the night we met at Illicit too?” I ask, coming to a stop in front of him and wrapping my arms around myself. The rain has slowed to a drizzle, but my wet clothes have me chilled to the bone.
He shakes his head. “Nah, and it wouldn’t have fucking stopped me if I had.”
I sense he’s uncomfortable with being so vulnerable. I don’t blame him. I’m uncomfortable enough with where I know this conversation is going to lead. I wonder whether he’d have been so keen if he knew everything about me. And as I’m finding with him, he reads my question again.
Looking up at me, he says, “I know, Star, and it won’t stop me wanting you. Won’t fucking stop me from sinking my dick into you every chance I get, or making you scream so loud as you come all over my fingers, my cock and in my mouth that you’ll be hoarse. I’ll hunt you, hurt you, fuck you, and you’ll take it all like the good fucking girl you are.” The words roll off his tongue and are a threateningly salacious promise.
I can’t stop the tears this time, and I can’t separate the crazy, contradictory emotions exploding inside me. It’s a full-scale war between shame and arousal.
He knows.
I want to be sick. I want to turn and run from the reality that this man knows a part of my past I wish had died along with my half-brother Don Rogers; the man responsible for everything bad that has ever happened to me.
I didn’t want him to see my pain, my fear, how weak I am, but I can’t hold myself up any longer. I drop to my knees and bury my head in my hands.
This is me.
Unveiled and naked.
Worshiping at the altar of the man who strips me bare and makes me feel less like a freak.
Hands grip my wrists, pulling my hands from my face, then with a finger beneath my chin, he forces my head up.
“Tell me what you need, Star,” he asks, leaning down and licking a path up one side of my face, swallowing my tears. “Tell me and it’s yours.” He does the same on the other side then grips my chin, forcing me to look at only him.