Early Sins (Dangerous Games Book 0)

by Jennifer Bene

  “Get. Up.” He ordered her, and her temper snapped.

  “How the fuck am I supposed to do that with your weight distributed?” She shouted at him because she had tried it already, tried to twist free, but her wrists ached from the effort and she couldn’t buck him off while his heavy, muscled body sat on her thighs.

  “You can’t. It’s why I pinned you like this, but I can’t do much in this position either, can I?” His head tilted, jade eyes boring into her as she realized what he meant. Then he took a slow breath like he was preparing for something. “Session isn’t over, C. You fight me, understand?”

  All she managed was a nod before his free hand landed over her throat, cutting off her air, and his knee drove between her thighs. An instant later she could barely breathe, stars sparking behind her eyes as his other knee joined the first and he spread her legs wide.

  Memories.

  Nightmares.

  Too many hands on her, too many times she’d been held down like this, her stomach tried to empty as panic edged in – but she shoved the darkness back, and made herself think. Smith had told her to separate, to evaluate, to survive.

  Think, dammit. Where is he now?

  His hips pressed against hers, his fingers tightening around her throat, and when she let go of the panic, a moment of clarity appeared in the mess of her mind.

  He’s between your legs, and that means his weight has shifted.

  Digging her heel into the ground beside her she lifted one hip sharply and pushed off the ground to throw him to the side. The force of it carried them over, his grip on her wrists breaking without the aid of gravity, and then she was on top. Grabbing his thumb she bent it back sharply and tore his hand from her throat, pulling in air before promptly landing an elbow into the side of his head.

  The hiss of pain that came from him was short, because he was in full work mode – a cold-blooded, very well trained killer. Smith moved fast, landing a hard hit into her ribs, before winding his other fist in her hair to pull her back down, and they tumbled again. Him on top, between her thighs again, but he was still suspended a little above her and that gave her space to move. She planted her foot against his hip and kicked him off as hard as she could. Smith took a chunk of her hair with him as he was thrown off her, damn him, but she was free and she rolled backwards and got to her feet, backpedaling for distance as she pulled raw breaths through her aching throat.

  Her hands itched for a knife, or a gun, everything inside her screaming for blood. Vengeance. The nightmares never ended like this, never ended with her standing above one of them, and it felt good.

  She had fought. She had won.

  Against Smith of all people. It was almost unbelievable.

  Smith stood slowly, wiping his hands off on his pants before he rubbed at his temple. “That was good. You didn’t hold back.”

  “You didn’t either,” she growled. The pain in her ribs, and the ache in her wrists, would take a day or more to fade, and she’d be covered in bruises for a week at least.

  “I didn’t hold back, because they won’t hold back.”

  “I’ve never asked you to fucking coddle me!”

  “No, but you wanted me to train you. Now you can shoot a gun, use a knife, fight hand to hand, run when you need to, long distances and over obstacles, and you can hunt your targets. The right way.” He shook his head slowly, rubbing the back of his neck, visibly favoring his left side. At least she wasn’t the only one in pain. “But now you need to understand the other parts of it. The worst parts, and the nicer parts too.”

  “Worst parts, like what? This?”

  “Yes. This. The pain, the torture – all of the things they’ll do to you to get what they want.”

  “And you’re so sure it’s going to happen to me because… why? Just because those bastards had me before? Before I knew how to fucking defend myself, how to kill, how to fight?” She scoffed, turning away from him to walk a few steps away. The moonlight turned the grass silver in spots, leaving dark pockets of shadows in low places, but it was still just the two of them.

  Together, but somehow completely separate. Like they always were.

  Two people with too many walls around them to be more than strangers who slept in the same room. She growled under her breath and turned back towards him, her anger flashing inside her. “Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I’m going to get grabbed by some asshole on some dickbag’s payroll. You’ve never been caught, so why the fuck do you assume –”

  “I have been caught, C.” Smith took a slow breath, rubbing at his ribs. “I never told you I was perfect, I’ve never pretended to be. I told you I would train you. I told you I would make you strong, and that I would prepare you. And this? The ugly part of this life? That’s the next lesson I need you to learn.”

  “Who? Who caught you?”

  “It’s not import-”

  “WHO!” she shouted it at him, and even in the early morning hours of the park, she knew she’d been too loud, but she couldn’t believe anyone could catch Smith off guard. He was death embodied, he was a fucking shadow, a perfect killer.

  “I took a job once, like any other job, and I killed someone that someone cared about. A someone that had resources, power, money. They sent people after me.” He shook his head. “I had no idea they were coming for me until I was grabbed on the street. Four trained men and only one of me, and trust me I was not perfect. I woke up in a house, cuffed to a chair, and they spent a day and a half trying to convince me to give up the name of who hired me.”

  “And we never give up names.”

  “That’s right. Free agents don’t get jobs if they name names, and they don’t live long either.” Smith tilted his head towards the front of the park. “Come on, we need to walk back. Session is over.”

  “Only if you tell me what happened.” She fell into step beside him, keeping enough distance between them that if he decided to spontaneously start the fight again she could react.

  He sighed as they started moving. “Torture, C. They hit me, electrocuted me, threatened me with guns and knives, but you were right about what you said earlier. Eventually, they get tired. Lazy. They get bored of asking the same questions, and not getting any answers.”

  “So?”

  “So, eventually they decided to move me, maybe to take me out of the house to kill me, but by then there were only two of them. They uncuffed me, I killed them, and I left. The man who sent them after me didn’t bother sending more, and either way I think he knew who had hired me anyway. Just wanted me to verify it.”

  “And if I get in a mess like that, end up cuffed to a chair, when I refuse to name names…” Camille didn’t finish the sentence, and she didn’t need to. They both walked in silence for a minute as the reality settled in. She could be as deadly as Smith, as fast as Smith, and she could still get caught. Still make a mistake that would put her in a situation like that, but they wouldn’t stop with simple torture like they had with him. They would do everything the bastards from her nightmares had done, and probably more.

  Fuck.

  “That’s not the only time people have wanted information from me, C. We trade in information and in lives, and we know powerful people’s dark secrets because of what we do.” His gaze landed on her, and even after everything he’d put her through, after everything he’d said to her, she felt safe next to him. She always did. He sighed, and continued, “So, yes, some day someone will come for you, and I just want you to survive it. That’s what this lesson was.”

  That almost sounded like an apology.

  “I’ll survive, Smith. I always do. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  He nodded and then rubbed at his neck again. “Good. Now, about the other discussion I want to have with you. You know how beautiful you are -”

  “I know that assholes think I am.” Even if you don’t. “And that I didn’t have any trouble making money on the street, and I’ve never had to struggle to find a drink when I want one.”


  “Yes… that’s all true, but your beauty is more than that, more than just some commodity you’ve traded. It’s a weapon too, a disguise, your biggest strength. You’re not the first woman to end up in this line of work, Camille. I’ve known a couple, and the ugly parts will always exist, the extra risk will always exist, but you have something I don’t.”

  “Which is?”

  He stopped them, facing her as he spoke. “They will always want to believe you are weak. That because you are beautiful, you are automatically fragile. They will always underestimate you, will think they can frighten you, break you, and that makes you far more deadly in this dangerous game we play than any man.”

  “How?”

  “Because, no matter what, you won’t break.” His gaze was steady as he said those words, but she couldn’t make herself respond. “You can make them believe anything you want them to. You can be tough and intimidating, like you were when we went on that job in New Hampshire, or you can make it so they never look at you as a threat. You can make it so their eyes skip right over you, or make them so distracted by your beauty that they never see the knife at their throat until their blood is pouring down their chest. That is what I want to show you next, the advantage you have.” He started to walk forward again, his eyes moving up towards the sky where the growing dawn was lightening the clouds. “We’ll talk about it later, after we shower and go back to sleep for a while.”

  For a brief moment she saw his expression clearly, and for once she saw what was hiding behind the mask of cool control he usually had in place.

  He looked proud.

  He was proud of her.

  He’d taken her to the dark side, to the very edge of her nightmares – and she’d won.

  “Okay, Smith. I’m in.”

  He smiled a little. “I know you are, C.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Smith had left a few hours before, claiming he had errands to run, but Camille hadn’t even asked to go with him. It was over ninety degrees outside, and with all the traffic and the asphalt and the people, it usually felt about a hundred and fifty degrees standing on the sidewalk. She would take the fucking weak willed air conditioner over the summer heat any day.

  Especially today.

  They had both gone back to sleep as dawn broke, the lesson he’d started in the park, and the weight of what it meant, seemed to be hanging over the both of them. Sleep was really the only answer, but neither of them had slept long. When she had woken up part of her had wanted to thank him for never lying to her, for refusing to sugarcoat the miserable shit that made up this life, but the other part wanted to wake him up with a knife to his throat. To try and make him understand a fraction of what it felt like to be fucking helpless.

  He didn’t know or remotely understand what that felt like, what Steve and all of the other bastards had made her feel. What it had felt like after she’d escaped, when she was turning tricks, to walk down the street at two AM with just a knife that she’d barely understood how to use. The constant, ever-present fear that it could all happen again.

  But how could he?

  He was strong, and a man, and at the end of the day it didn’t matter. It was her shit to deal with. Her baggage. But one thing had become incredibly clear in the early morning hours of the day – she couldn’t let it all rule her any more. She couldn’t freeze whenever she imagined someone hurting her the way they had, couldn’t get sick every time she had a nightmare, she had to separate – she had to be able to think even if the worst was happening. Smith had made that abundantly clear, and that meant she had some decisions to make.

  Steve, Joe, and Clinton were dead.

  Barry and Roger were still alive, and they had hurt her in terrible ways, and she would kill them, but she couldn’t let them live inside her head anymore. Couldn’t give them any more time than they’d already had.

  Since the day she had met Smith he had told her she had to let go of her anger, to stop letting it drive her, and – of course – he was right. Again. He was always fucking right, and when it came to this she knew it too. If someone had pinned her like that yesterday or the day before, spread her legs to force their way between them, she would have snapped. She wouldn’t have been able to think the situation through, to fight smart, to find their weaknesses and attack them.

  She would have lost because she was too afraid to deal with her shit, to face it head on.

  No more.

  With a deep breath she closed her eyes, leaned back against the headboard, and slowly took down all the internal barriers she’d shakily put up over the years. It was like looking under the bed in a horror movie, something she knew was a bad idea, a dangerous idea, but to make the monsters disappear she had to look. Had to face them to prove they couldn’t hurt her anymore.

  So, she focused on the memories. The feel of their hands on her skin, the way their weight felt above her, holding her down. Relived all of the screaming and begging and crying, the pain and the hate-inducing pleasure she’d experienced as they had moved inside her. Not just in that nightmare of a house, but the ones on the streets too. In bathrooms and cars, alleys and run down motels.

  All of them.

  Every single one.

  Adrenaline flooded her as her stomach twisted and she slammed her head back against the headboard as panic tried to surface, but she refused to mentally run like she always did. Refused to go climb into a bottle of vodka to dull the memories.

  Flashes of Steve, Clinton, and Joe hit her, but they were already fading into grayscale in her mind. They were dead and she knew it. The others though… they were still in full fucking color.

  Roger, who would always bring alcohol and drugs and drink with Steve. Getting borderline drunk before he came for her to drag her downstairs, bend her over the table in the basement and fuck her ass without a word. Like she wasn’t a person. Silent and cruel… and the dickbag would die, but she wasn’t going to let him live in her head anymore.

  And Barry? The sick fuck who used to chant eeny, meeny, miney, mo as he pointed at each of them, mocking them as he chose who he wanted to drag back into the living room. To sit on his lap as they smoked and drank, while Steve did his drugs bought with the cash the others brought, and all the while Barry’s hands were always moving, stroking. He had made a show of everything he did, enjoying the audience and the comments from the others as he’d fucked her throat or taken her on the floor. He was an evil, twisted fuck – but he would die too.

  Lacroix would track them down. He would find them, and they would become nothing but names.

  It had happened, every painful memory, but it was also over.

  She was out.

  She was stronger than the girl in those memories, she was fucking deadly, and most importantly she had survived. Smith said it could happen again, that someone else would hurt her someday, but she would fight, she would always fight. No matter what this secret world of killers threw at her, she would survive, and she wouldn’t break. No one was going to break her.

  “I don’t break,” she whispered, and as she said the words they started to feel real. Climbing off the bed she walked into the bathroom and flipped the switch on. Yellow light flickered to life above her head, and she looked at her reflection for the first time in too many years, really looked.

  Her skin was much more golden than it had been before, when she’d been trapped in that house and even after when she’d spent all her time out at night. Now, her blue eyes were bright, her white blonde hair healthy and shining, even though it was a little frizzy in the humidity. Bracing her hands on the counter she locked eyes with herself, and said it again, “I don’t break.”

  It was a subtle shift of the debris inside her, an empty space in the mess she’d made of her head sifting through memories, but without the lingering rage that had kept her going for so long she could suddenly think a little more clearly.

  The rage wasn’t keeping her alive, she did that. She survived because she did what she had to d
o, and all the anger had done was cloud her, making it im-fucking-possible to be the person she wanted to be.

  So, she let the rest of them go.

  The johns, the assholes on the streets, and all five of the names that had been tattooed on her soul for long enough. There were two left, and they would both die for the things they’d done - but there would be no more nightmares. No more panicked rage.

  No more.

  They had done everything they could to break her, and they had failed, and one by one they would pay the price – but she was done paying it for them.

  “Fuck them,” she whispered to her reflection. “You’ve killed more than a dozen assholes, and people know your name. You’re C. You’re Smith’s partner, an assassin, a free agent, a hitman, a killer for hire – so start fucking acting like it.”

  She stared into her own eyes, and for a brief instant she could see a glimmer of the woman other people must see, the one that people in Bill’s bar avoided, instead of the weak girl she’d seen in the mirror for too fucking long.

  “Be the person you want Smith to see you as… become C, be her.” Even if he’ll never want you back.

  The sound of the door banging against the wall in their low-end hotel room startled her from her staring contest with the mirror. Leaning out of the bathroom she checked to verify it was Smith, and she was surprised to see his arms covered in shopping bags with a large, sleek box in his hands. “Mind giving me a hand?” he asked as he kicked the door shut.

  “Sure, but, what the fuck is all this?” Camille snagged the big box and one of the bags off his arm before moving them to the foot of his bed.

  “Go on, open it.” He had a small smile lifting the edge of his mouth as he dropped the other bags to the floor, gesturing at the big box when she didn’t immediately reach for it.

  She stared at him a moment longer, trying to decipher the strange look on his face, but she finally gave up on gaining any more insight, and turned back to the box. It was a smooth, shiny black, and the top half whispered as she lifted it. Inside was a nest of tissue paper, and under that was a pool of dark blue fabric. As she picked it up it became clear it was a dress. A very nice dress. “What. The. Fuck.”