So the little princess wants to play pretend.
Scoffing, I snatch the plate up with one hand and head for the bedroom door. When I wrench it open, she isn’t there lurking on the other side of it. Instead, she’s watching me from the bed,sitting cross-legged on the bedspread. Her head is cocked, but she meets my gaze almost as if daring me to challenge her coy little act. She could have fooled me—almost. But her chest is heaving beneath her sweatshirt. Not only that, but the comforter is slightly off-center as if someone had leaped onto it.
I consider calling her out. Instead, I step forward and drop the plate onto the bed, spraying a glob of macaroni and cheese onto the mattress. “Eat.”
She reaches for a leg of chicken without hesitation, and I catch myself staring. So many women are odd when it comes to food, but she doesn’t seem to care that I watch her rip into the meat with her teeth and swallow down chunks whole. She moans. Her free hand comes to pick a bit of macaroni between two fingers, and she samples that too. There’s something wild about the little lamb when she thinks the wolf isn’t watching.
I wonder what she’s like when she’s with him, the bastard who stabbed his name into her chest. Does she lick her fingers when she’s finished and carefully strip every bone of flesh like she’s doing now? I try to compare this woman to the one Arno kidnapped: the bitch who could watch another being abused and laugh.
I’m not sure which woman is staring back, pushing the now licked-clean plate toward me. I take it and leave to toss it into the sink. When I return, she’s still sitting, watching me, waiting.
Ignoring her, I scan the wall, prepared to pick a corner to sleep in—maybe within those hours of silence, I’ll finally figure out a way to deal with Vinny Stacatto’s whore. I head for one near the window, but the girl surprises me by leaping from the mattress before I can even take a step.
“You sleep.” She jerks her head toward the bed. However, when I don’t move, she staggers backward until she occupies my corner herself. “Yousleep.” She sinks down to her knees, stretching her legs out in front of her.
I should snatch her from the floor and strap her to thefucking bed. I close the door and sink down onto the mattress instead, my back facing her. “Suit yourself.”
She makes a soft sound in response. Part acknowledgment and part satisfaction.Okay, I will.
I can’t understand why the sound irritates me so fucking much as I close my eyes and pretend to sleep.
Prison can teachthe deepest of fucking sleepers how to jolt awake at the slightest noise. Sleep becomes as steady as blinking—you take it in little fucking snatches at a time, always on alert. For hours, I’ve listened to her shift against the floor. I knew the exact moment when she rose to her feet, trying and failing not to make a sound.
I felt the bed shift with her weight. I smelled her. Felt the heat of her skin with every careful move she made toward me. I kept still even as she straddled me, balancing her weight across my stomach, inches away from my already hardening cock.
It’s only when she presses her knife against my throat that I finally let my eyes open.
She doesn’t so much as blink. Her eyes gleam in the grayish light of dawn filtering in through the window. It paints her skin, making her glow. She’s a ghost on my chest, threatening me with a dull-ass blade.
“Do you think I won’t do it?” she asks, jerking her chin at the weapon.
“You won’t.” There isn’t a shred of doubt in my voice. No fear.
Vinny’s whore may have entertained the idea of hacking a man’s dick off, but she can’t drive her knife through my throat—even though it would probably be in her best interest to.
“You would have done it already.”
She doesn’t challenge that. Instead, she tilts her wrist, digging the blade in just a fraction deeper. “If you were Vinny, I would.”As if she’s not quite sure of that, the knife digs in even deeper. “Iwould.”
She’s not ready when I shift my weight and throw her off. Within seconds, I have her pinned beneath me with the hand holding the knife trapped against the headboard. When my gaze meets hers, she lets the knife go, and it bounces across the pillow.
“Are you going to give me back to him?” she demands in that haughty little tone of hers, proving once and for all that she really was listening in last night. “To Arno?”
I choke out something that might be a laugh, but it’s too damn cold. “Do you want me to?”
I expect her to cringe and shake her head no. I expect her eyes to widen at the thought of spreading her legs for Arno or his men. Instead, her frown deepens. She’s thinking.
“I guess...Vinny wouldn’t care how many men I’ve fucked when he gets me back.”
Red flashes across my vision, painting her. I don’t know if it’s anger at the blatant way she assumes I won’t fulfill my promise to kill her or the fact that she’s so fucking cavalier about the possibility of being...fucked.
“Do you want me to give you to him?” My voice is hard. Hard with rage. Hard with a promise. All she has to do is say the fucking word and he can have her. “Do you?”
She holds my gaze, her chin pointed toward the ceiling, her eyes unreadable. Then...she breaks. “N-no.” Real, cold fear spills out of her, and I jerk back, rising up on my knees. “I don’t want to go to him.”
“Then don’t fucking ask me about it.” I climb from the bed and snatch a fresh shirt from the pile Darcy brought. After ripping the old one off, I pull the new one on, but it’s not enough to erase the bitter sting clinging to my skin.
Trust Vinny’s whore to be a good damn liar on top of everything else. Sometimes I can almost believe the little act she putson: the stuck-up mob bitch too hardened by pain to truly fear what might come her way next.
