Chapter 12

12

Nick

With nothing more than a bed between my hands and her throat, I stared at Aubree Culling in her flashy, expensive dress and three carat diamond ring, and tried to process her spewed bullshit about losing a loved one, as if she had any concept of giving a fuck about anything more than herself.

The rational side of my brain tried to convince me that she didn’t know a single thing about my past, didn’t know who I was, so how could she possibly be taunting me?

The irrational side urged me to use her comment as an excuse to cross her off the list. Maybe she did know. Maybe she and her husband sat in their hot tub, drinking champagne, toasting every life they’d stolen for their own personal greed. Maybe the two of them fucked to crime scene photos and the steady drip of coin in their wallets—their own personal pornography for the rich and remorseless.

“On the bed. Now.” The words pushed through my clenched teeth while a round of gunfire sat cocked at the back of my throat. Should she say one fucking word.

One word.

Her neck bobbed with a swallow, and she slid onto the bed.

Yeah, I knew all about losing loved ones. I’d lived the shit every day for three years, but I wasn’t about to fall victim to her manipulation. Even I could see she’d become a master of two faces—the bright white smile for the camera concealing the forked tongue of a serpent.

Standing beside the bed, I bent over her, placing a hand firmly at either side of her head. Below me, she seemed to press her head back into the mattress, as if to get away. I’d have laughed, except that her knee smashed my groin and her head collided with my nose.

Jolts of electricity raced to my nuts and I cupped my nose with one hand. “Fuck!” Ignoring the pain, I smacked aside her flailing arms and random kicks to my side and nabbed both of her wrists, pinning them hard against the bed.

“Fucking let me go!” She writhed beneath me, her knee pounding into my side.

Holding both wrists captive with my right hand, I pushed her assaulting thigh flat, climbed onto the bed, and straddled her body, crazed with the desire to knock her out. Beneath me, she bucked and arched with more strength than I’d given her credit for, until I pressed into her, my forehead pushing against hers, and at last, she stilled.

With heaving breaths, I stared into her eyes, teeth grinding, breaths mingling. It was in that moment I became aware of the way her breast had popped from her dress in the struggle and pressed against my chest. The salty taste of blood coated my tongue as it trickled into my mouth. Lifting my head away from hers, I lowered my gaze to the perfectly rounded globe, set pert with her arms stretched above her head. I licked my lips and swallowed hard, taunted by her bare skin so close to my mouth.

She made a pathetic attempt to nudge me. “Don’t you fucking dare,” she growled, and I came to my senses.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You don’t do anything for me.” I slipped her dress back over her breast and, still pinning her wrists, pushed off of her. “You want to live? Do exactly as I tell you. No fucking around.”

Eyes wide, she trembled, nostrils flaring with rapid breaths, as if she expected me to inflict pain. The sight of her fear cast a ripple of adrenaline through my body, warming my muscles.

I tipped my head, leaned over her, inwardly laughing at the twitch of her eye. “Are you afraid of me, Aubree?”

Her answering snarl kicked my lips into a grin. The woman put on a good front, I’d give her that.

“You should be.” Tugging her arm toward the headboard, I froze. One long scar stretched vertically down her forearm, the edges irregular, crooked. Across her wrist was a tattoo that, by the words, suggested the death of someone close to her. I hadn’t noticed it the night before, when I’d tied her the first time. Didn’t take a genius to recognize a suicide attempt.

My gaze shot to hers, and she narrowed her eyes, chin inclined in defiance like she had no intentions of explaining.

What did I care if she’d tried to kill herself? Except, the longer I stared, the more she seemed to get increasingly uncomfortable with the display, turning her head away from me.

“What’s this?”

Her head snapped back in my direction. “What? Not as perfect when you peel the layers back?”

Evidently, she had something deeper going on, but I had neither the ambition, nor the interest, to give a shit. Aubree served a single purpose—revenge. So what that some fragment in her past didn’t match the perfection of her present life?

“Everyone has scars. What makes yours special?”

“I never said they were special. In fact, they’re my daily reminder that nothing is as special as people choose to believe.”

All the alarms inside my head screamed at once—abort fucking mission. I didn’t need Aubree Culling snaking her way beneath my skin, the way she had with the question about her husband hiring me to kill her, and then the scar, but something darker, deeper whispered below the noise in my head.

I quickly tied her hands to the bed, ignoring that nagging thought, but still, it persisted. Perhaps I’d missed something. All those hours logged, watching the Cullings, studying them day in and day out for over a year.

Maybe Aubree Culling wasn’t who I’d thought she was.

Get the fuck out.

I hauled ass out of that room. Wouldn’t let her shit infect me. She was the smiling face behind The Culling propaganda. The gentrification of inner city trash, and the driving force behind the brutal deaths of my wife and son.

A faithful, loving Stepford wife who served her husband’s every morally corrupt whim. Scarred or not, she remained the enemy, for the same reason every soldier under Hitler’s rule deserved to go down with the bastard dictator—they believed in the lies.

Alec and I had plotted for too long, to let some manipulative piece of work destroy it with her fake tears and pleas for sympathy. I’d lost the ability to sympathize long ago.

Still seething, I made my way to the kitchen and braced my hands on the countertop. Reel it in. A part of me’d never subscribed to the part of the plan that included kidnapping her. I had a feeling that spending too much time with Aubree was a bad idea. Didn’t help that she was a natural beauty, with her long chestnut hair, honey-toned skin, golden eyes, and that dimple in her cheek that gave her a sort of playful, youthful appearance—something the cameras and news reports hadn’t fully captured.

Throwing back the cupboard door, I nabbed the bottle of tequila, popped the cap, and tipped it back. After taking a long swill, I slammed the bottle onto the countertop and shook off the burn in my throat. From beside the sink, I grabbed a rag, flipped on the faucet, and soaked the corner of it before holding it to my nose, daubing away the drying blood where she’d gotten in a good punch.

“You play a nice game of bullshit, Mrs. Culling, but you’re not going to bullshit me.” Pinching the rag to my nose, I squeezed the remaining blood and, sniffing, I swiped up the bottle and tossed back another swig. I set the bottle down, glanced over in the direction of the staircase. S’pose I should feed her something. Much as I’d have liked to starve her, Alec would probably go apeshit.

It’d been a long time since I’d cooked a meal for a woman, though, and I had no idea what the hell they ate.

In a palette of color, I arranged cut strawberries, eggs, salsa, avocado, toast and sausage on a plate. All things Alec claimed he’d observed watching her eat. Back upstairs, I reentered her room, grabbing the chair propped against the wall on my way, and took a seat beside her.

The tracking of her eyeball from the corner of her eye had me inwardly chuckling. Only the liquor kept me cordial. With the fork, I stabbed a strawberry and placed it to her lips.

She snapped her head away from me. “I’m not hungry.”

“I didn’t ask you if you were hungry. Eat.”

“Fuck you,” she spat back.

My tongue raked across my teeth as my grin widened at her pathetic act of rebellion. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

She cut her gaze back to me, chin inclined again, and I knew something feisty was itching to fly from her mouth. “I’d rather walk a mile with a cucumber up my ass than fuck you.”

“I can arrange that.” Hell, I’d have paid to see that shit. “You’re something else, Pistol Lips.”

Her eye twitched. “What did you call me?”

“Pistol lips.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Firing off at the mouth. Seems to be your signature trait. Should’ve grabbed a muzzle instead of the chains.”

“I—”

As soon as her mouth opened, I shoved the strawberry inside.

Nostrils flared, she chewed and swallowed. “You’re—” Another word, another strawberry slipped past her lips, and she growled, lifting her head up off the pillow, chewing all pissed off and gnashing her teeth.

The strawberry juice trickling out the corner of her mouth damn near broke me, had me choking back laughter, like I’d gotten a glimpse of some kind of rabid animal inside of her, ready to tear me apart. “Got something else to say?” I held up a forkful of eggs.

The corner of her lips lifted, eyes shooting daggers, and she nodded. “You’re a fucking d—”

In went the eggs.

She remained silent while I fed her the remaining plate full of food, until the last bite, when she looked up. “Why me? Why am I here?”

I’d expected the question—was surprised she hadn’t asked it sooner. Didn’t mean I planned to answer her. “Open your mouth.”

The groove of her brow deepened for only a moment before her eyes softened to sadness, and she opened her mouth wide, closing her lids. The sight was incredibly erotic, particularly when the tip of her tongue slid out ready to accept the last strawberry.

Mesmerized, I set it on her tongue, silently chiding myself for the hard-on pressing against my jeans. What kind of sadistic bastard … The kind of arousal I felt for her had nothing to do with feelings, or any level of attraction to the woman. I wanted the opportunity to take from Aubree Culling—something that would cut her as deep as I’d been cut. A hate fuck, where I’d leave her in pain and sobbing, drowning in her own self-loathing, the way I had that first year, before Alec had approached me with the idea of revenge.

I wanted her to feel small, vulnerable, weak.

She opened her eyes, and only then did I notice the way my hand trembled in front of her. I quickly lowered the fork and shot up from the chair.

I might’ve been a killer. A ruthless son of a bitch, but I wasn’t a rapist. To keep from doing something stupid, I had to get away from her.

“I want to see it,” she blurted.

“See what?” I couldn’t hide the disgust in my voice, knowing she’d caught sight of my momentary weakness.

“Your scar. Earlier, you said, we all have scars.” She lowered her head back onto the pillow. “Let’s see yours.”

The woman thought she’d softened me.

“Fuck off,” I said, walking out the door.