by RuNyx .
But he was completely in his element now, any trace of the man who’d taken her riding on his bike, given her refuge in his territory, or cooked meals while she’d watched, completely gone.
She realized in that moment how much she’d come to know Tristan Caine without really knowing him. And how much she did not know this man leaning back in his chair, casual, composed, like a sleeping panther, crouching down, readying itself for the strike.
He would’ve realized by now how she’d ended up there. That made her stomach knot. She didn’t know how he would react, didn’t know if he would kill her right at this table or take her somewhere to torture her first.
Her heart hammered in her chest as she kept her eyes on him, her spine straight and every sense in her body on high alert. She was in a jungle of predators and the deadliest was watching her.
The slimy man, who’d dragged her in, loaded the gun at the center with one bullet and put it back on the table, within the reach of every arm, taking a step back.
That was the precise moment Morana realized the game.
There was one bullet.
Her stomach sank.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
She was dead. She knew she was dead. There was no way she was going to live this game through.
“The rules are simple, Ms. Summers,” the man informed her. “You pick up the gun, ask a question. The man does not answer, you pull the trigger. Empty shot, you ask another question. Man don’t answer, shoot again. But he can ask back, and you don’t answer, you eat the bullet.”
Morana knew of this game. She’d heard her father and his men when they’d played it at the house. She’d spied on the games when she’d been a little girl. There were six slots in the gun, and six questions to go between a pair. If she survived all empty shots, she could ask other questions. But so could the other man.
The older man beside Morana picked up the gun, pointing it at an even older man smoking a cigar, the back of his hand wrinkled with age.
“Where is the next shipment going?” the first man asked forcefully. Morana watched as Cigar Guy blew a thick swirl of smoke into the air, refusing to respond.
Morana watched the procession, a bead of sweat rolling down her spine.
Without further ado, the first guy pulled the trigger, but the shot went empty. Cigar Guy stubbed his cigar in a tray and pulled the gun towards himself.
“When did you start licking off Big-J’s shoes?”
The first man pursed his lips as Cigar Guy pointed the gun to his chest and shot.
The loud boom echoed in the room and Morana barely stopped herself from flinching, only years of hearing the sound allowing her to keep her composure as the first guy coughed blood and went limp, his eyes lifeless.
Oh god.
This game was like counting shots, instead of counting cards. She was good at the latter but she had no idea about the first. Looking across at Tristan Caine, she could tell by the easy way he sat that this wasn’t the first time he’d been to a game like this. Hell, she’d be surprised if anyone had actually questioned him. The fact that he sat there told her he’d never lost.
She didn’t want to play. But she knew there was no better time to get information out of Tristan Caine.
She eyed the gun sitting in the middle of the table, loaded again with a single bullet, her heart thudding, and shook herself.
Fuck, she wasn’t a coward.
Steeling herself, she leaned forward and gripped the gun in her hand, letting her palm familiarize itself with the weight, and pointed it at the man sitting across from her, completely still.
The room had gone dead silent – so silent that she could have heard a breath catch. It told her what she’d been suspecting was correct – no one pulled the gun on Tristan Caine. Yeah, well, no one dry humped him against the wall of their father’s house either.
Clearing her face of all emotions, knowing her voice would be steady even as her legs trembled under the table, she pinned him with her eyes and spoke quietly, not knowing if she’d get the answer. She didn’t want to think about pulling the trigger and killing him, and she definitely did not want to look into it, not for now.
“Tell me about the Alliance.”
His blue gaze pinned her to her chair, not a flicker of anything anywhere on his face as his body stayed relaxed, the suit of his jacket parted to reveal the shirt stretched taut across his chest. The collar was parted to reveal the strong line of his neck. Morana watched the vein on the neck, not seeing it flutter or give any indication of distress. It just lay against his skin, kissing his flesh, taunting her for all of his control.
“It’s been dead for twenty-two years,” he spoke quietly, his voice even, tone neutral, like he was discussing the weather with no gun pointed at him.
Morana grit her teeth, knowing she couldn’t shoot because he had answered, yet told her nothing she didn’t know.
Clever.
She placed the gun on the table just as he extended his hand and took it from her, his fingers brushing her, sending tingles up her entire arm.
She saw his eyes take in the bruise on her upper arm, where the brute had grabbed her roughly before he leaned back again. Keeping his hand on the gun, he let it stay on the table. Morana knew, having watched him in action, that he could have the gun up and shooting her dead before she could blink. He was deceptive that way. Dangerous.
“Why are you here?” he asked, his voice leaving no inflection of anything for her to read.
Morana felt a little smile on the inside. He wasn’t the only one who could play on words.
She raised her eyebrows, tilting her head to the side. “For information.”
She saw his one eyebrow notch up slightly, before he slid the gun across the table to her, his hands on the arms of the chair.
Morana picked up the gun, pointing it at him again, aware of all the eyes on them, all the men watching the game shrewdly.
“Why did it end?” she asked, her skin crawling from all the stares of the man, knowing their eyes were lingering on places she’d rather they not see.
Tristan Caine spoke, his eyes never straying from hers. “Mutual interests weren’t so mutual anymore.”
Seriously?
She hadn’t risked her neck for this. He needed to give her something.
Mulling over the next question in her head, her senses alert, she slid the gun across the table, where he stopped it with his hand, keeping a casual palm over it, that huge, huge palm covering the entire gun.
He considered her for a second in silence, before tilting his head to the side, his mouth curling deliberately in the imitation of a smirk even as his eyes remained blank.
“How do you like to be fucked, Ms. Summers?”
Her breath caught in her throat. Shae was aware of the lewd men in the room who started laughing around her. She felt her body flare with anger, the blood rushing through her system in a tornado as her chest tightened, her fists clenching under the table.
And through the haze of red, she saw something that suddenly gave her pause.
His eyes.
Those magnificent blue eyes – not laughing, not cruel, not even heated. Just completely blank.
His face was cruel. His eyes were not.
Clarity returned suddenly with a rush. He was goading her. Trying to throw her off her game. Deliberately doing the one thing she’d been pretty obvious about enraging her. She was handing him the gun to shoot her with.
Morana blinked, taking a small breath to cool herself and deliberately curled her lips up in imitation of his. She let her body remember the time his fingers had been inside her, his breath hot on her neck, his cock pressing into her back.
She gave him a heated look from under her lashes and murmured in a low, sexy, just-fucked bedroom voice.
“Like I’m going to feel it every time I walk.”
Something flared sharply in his eyes for a second before it was gone. She’d have missed it had she blinked. But she hadn’t bli
nked. She’d seen it, and she knew he’d be remembering the question he’d asked her against the wall of her father’s house. The question she hadn’t answered for him.
One of the older men with a wicked mustache whistled loudly before speaking, “Come home with me tonight, baby. You’ll feel it for the next month.”
Everyone chuckled. Fucking bastard. She was fucking another asshole at the moment, so her schedule was full. Tristan Caine didn’t react to any of the men, just slid the gun back to her.
Six shots. Six questions. This was her last one.
Morana thought the question over for a minute, before wording it carefully.
“What happened to break the Alliance?”
She should have known he wouldn’t answer if he didn’t want to.
“The two parties disagreed on matters but didn’t want a war. Alliance ended.”
Morana exhaled, closing her eyes for a second. She’d lost her chance. She’d lost the one chance she’d had to make him answer some questions, and exposed her hand in the process.
She slid the gun back to him when suddenly, her heart started pounding.
It was the last shot. The last question. And something told her he wouldn’t waste it.
Morana felt her heart hammer in her chest as, for the first time, he picked up the gun, leaning back in his chair, completely relaxed yet ready to launch into action in a second, the barrel pointed at her chest.
His intention to shoot her in the heart became clear if she gave an answer he didn’t like.
Her hands shook as she held them together, keeping her jaw locked tight, her gaze trapped in his blue one.
“What do you know about my history and Alliance?”
Morana felt her throat lock.
She knew.
Oh lord, she knew.
She knew his sister had been one of the girls gone missing.
She’d figured it out pretty quickly into her research, knowing it had been twenty-two years ago, which would’ve made him eight. What she didn’t know, however, was what that had to do with the Alliance.
But as she looked at him, looked at the men around the room – all older than him, all afraid of him, respectful of him, of The Predator in a world where reputation mattered more than lives, none of them knowing a thing about Tristan Caine – Morana’s heart clenched.
He’d shared the memory of his sister with her on that rainy night. He’d volunteered that memory, on a lonely night, just a lone man with a lone woman, giving her a truce, a respite for a few hours.
He had the gun pointed at her heart, and his eyes remained hard and cold, but Morana knew she could not die knowing she’d betrayed the one beautiful, powerful memory she had. He’d given her something incredible that night, something that her soul was so immensely grateful for, and she could not rape that for her own means, could not repay that small truce from him despite his hatred, with this betrayal.
He’d cracked a small light for her. She couldn’t suffocate it.
Heart clenching with fear, the decision made, Morana held her breath and closed her eyes, remaining silent.
Silence.
There was utter silence.
No sound except her own blood rushing in her ears. Nothing except darkness behind her shut eyelids.
She was aware of every single man in the room holding his breath as they waited for the bullet to pierce her heart, aware of the blood throbbing in her body. She realized in that moment of facing death – the very death she’d been contemplating mere days ago – that she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die, not when she’d started living for the first time in her life, because of the very man holding the gun at her chest.
Her heart beat in staccato, taking as many beats as it could before it was forced to stop, her shaking hands clenching the arms of the chair, sweat rolling down the line of her spine.
She waited a breath.
Two.
Another.
And suddenly, the loud bang made her flinch –
Her heart stopped –
– right before her eyes flew open on a loud intake of breath. Her teeth grit in pain as fire burned down the length of her arm, flames licking along her flesh as agony seared through her.
Morana looked down at the blood soaking the fabric of her dress, not over her breasts, where she’d expected to see it, but on the outside of her arm.
She’d been shot on the outside of her arm.
Right on the where the bruise had been.
The bullet wasn’t even in her arm.
It was just a graze.
He’d not killed her. Not even injured her severely.
Her eyes flew to his, to find something completely unreadable in his eyes, his gaze heavy and intense with something she had no name for. She recognized the fury, the hatred, but there was something else, something so live, something she didn’t recognize. It pulsed between them, making her realize how utterly controlled he had been, and suddenly, the dam had burst.
His eyes held her ensnared, the blue ferocious in that foreignness. Her breathing stuttered, eyes on his, disbelief washing over her because he’d been pointing to her chest. The rule of the game was to answer or die. And yet, she was merely grazed on her bruised arm.
One of the men would kill her because they played by the rules. She couldn’t be allowed to leave alive after everything.
Yet she knew, she would. Because he’d decided she would live. Because he had shot her, and the men couldn’t argue with that.
Their eyes remained locked over the table, his hand holding the gun loosely and hers pressed down on her bleeding upper arm, her stomach in knots.
She should have felt angry. She should have felt betrayed. She should have felt hatred.
She should have felt relieved to be alive. She should have felt shaky at the close call. She should have felt uncertain about what was to come.
She should have, could have felt so many things…
But as she sat there, watching him, after she hadn’t spoken a word in this jungle of hunters to make him seem less than deadly, she was surprised at herself. Morana didn’t feel a single one of those emotions.
It almost made her want to smile.
Almost.
She should have felt a lot of things, yet what she felt was a change.
Something changed in the moment she chose to kept silent instead of speaking, forfeiting her life, and he chose to shoot her in the arm instead of her heart, sparing her life. Something between them changed, just like it had on that night in the dark, this time in the middle of a crowd of lethal men.
She felt the connection between them that she’d tried to deny so very hard, felt it roll itself round and round, deepening, thickening, choking every shadow it encountered in her mind, strangling every bit of uncertainty.
She’d chosen to not betray him to these people. He’d chosen not to let her die.
She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think of the implications. Didn’t want to acknowledge their connection that just kept folding itself over and over between them, something fundamental had shifted with her both their decisions.
Because she realized, she wasn’t the only one reckless between them.
Things, while the same, had changed. Inadvertently, tonight, they’d both decided.
She was bleeding.
A drop of blood slid down her arm.
Morana turned her head and watched in slight fascination, as the drop rolled over the curve of her elbow, leaving a fresh streak of red over her skin. Her eyes followed the lone drop as it traveled down smoothly, down the back of her hand, down her empty ring finger, right to the tip. It hung on the precarious edge, teetering, trembling in the slightly cool conditioned air, fighting gravity with all its little might to keep clinging to her skin.
It lost.
The drop lost the battle with a force that was much stronger than itself – a force it did not even understand – and fell to the clean floor of the elevator, splattering in d
efeat, marring the clean white lines with its crimson.
Another drop took its place and joined its brother on the ground.
And another.
Morana stared at the drop of blood for a moment, her arm throbbing where the gash from the graze was open, the entire evening and the consequence of it finally sinking into her mind slowly.
That she had made it out of the casino alive was a miracle in itself. That she had made it out alive with nothing but a graze was a bigger miracle.
But now, in the privacy of her own mind, when the adrenaline had left her body cold and logic had rooted itself, Morana swallowed. Because there, on that seat in the dim casino, she’d made a choice, a choice that she’d had no idea she would make until that very moment. And her choice had incited a decision in the man who’d become the bane of her existence. Had it been a private choice, known only to herself, she wouldn’t have fretted so much. It would’ve been disconcerting for sure, but knowing that the knowledge of her choice lay solely within her would’ve been much better.
But it wasn’t so. Not only had her choice been obvious to him, his had been obvious to her as well, and she couldn’t imagine he liked it any better than she did at the moment. Frankly, she had no idea what the hell that could even mean.
The elevator doors opened, jolting her from her thoughts, and Morana took a deep breath, stepping out into the living room, the skyline of the city glittering like colorful diamonds outside the huge windows. Keeping her hand elevated to staunch the flow of blood, she walked straight to the kitchen, dumping her bag and phone on the counter, and pulled out the clean dish towel from the rack. Turning the faucet on, she wet the towel, and slowly cleaned the area, hissing at the slight pain the pressure caused, before pressing the towel hard down on the arm.
Pain shot up her shoulder, down to her fingers, and she grit her teeth, breathing evenly as the pain subsided into a low throb, the flow of blood already lessening.
Keeping the towel pressed on her arm, looking out the windows, Morana let her mind drift to that moment in the casino, that moment after he’d shot her. That moment when the man who’d brought her in had protested that she hadn’t taken a bullet, much to the agreement of the other men present.