Lethal Sin (Dangerous Games Book 1) (9 page)

“Is this the next step for me?” She asked and stepped backward at an even pace before she stopped just as she was over the drain. Darkness that had been pushed back temporarily surged inside her, threatening to drown her again and drag her even deeper than before. His temporary kindness hadn’t really meant anything. They were on opposing sides in this conflict and neither of them was going to bend. People like them never did. Camille spread her arms. “If this is the next stage then just go ahead and shoot me or stab me. Whatever you're going to do, just do it.”

Mateo growled and stepped forward into the doorframe. “Would you stop telling me to kill you? I’m tired of it, and you’re way too fucking bossy. In fact I'm going to whip your ass for that one. Now get out of there.”

“No!” She clenched her fists at her sides, feeling the sting as her nails pinched into her skin. “I don’t want to play your game anymore. Just shoot me. That’s where this is all heading anyway, because I'm never going to tell you where Callahan is.”

“Why?!” Mateo shouted at her, dropping his mask for a moment to reveal the rage boiling just under the surface. As cold as she felt, his passion and anger was like being near a bonfire. It was almost pleasant even though he was pissed at her.

“Because I can't.” She sighed at having to revisit the same old line again.

“I know you think you can't, but that's ridiculous, Camille.” He shook his head, growling in frustration. “Dammit, just save yourself!”

She didn’t try to stifle the laugh that bubbled up out of her. “You think telling you will
save
me? Even if you didn’t kill me once you have the intel, which is a shaky idea at best, Callahan will make sure all of your tortures and punishments look like a cake walk – and
he
definitely won't be getting me off as part of his torture plan. When he’s done with me I might be lucky enough for him to kill me quickly.” She shook her head. “No way.”

“You could switch. Work for my boss, he would –”

”He wouldn't take me and you know it. Traitors are traitors. Free agents have no loyalties, and I used to be one, but I ended up with Callahan.” She shrugged, a bitter taste filling her mouth. “No matter what I say, no matter what reasons I have, anyone else will just wonder what my angle is. So, just shoot me. Get it over with so you can find some new girl for your twisted little room.”

Mateo flinched back and stared at her for a minute, dark eyes revealing nothing. Then he reached behind himself and she knew even before she saw the shiny, black metal that he was drawing his gun. It was large, much larger than hers, and he was pointing it directly at her chest. His voice was calm again, and his face returned to a stoic mask as he stared at her. “Is this what you want?”

“Do it.”

For a long moment she stood there, her arms limp at her side, waiting. She had nothing on except for his shirt, which smelled like him. A heady mix of the spice of his soap, the masculine scent of his skin, and a hint of his laundry detergent. After he had left the kitchen she had buried her face in the fabric before stopping herself. Instead of thinking of how he had felt inside her, she had toyed with several of his knives, testing the weight of each of them – but she quickly realized there was no way to hide it when she was practically naked, and Mateo had already proved time and again she couldn’t overpower him.

The muzzle of the gun seemed to grow larger as she stared at it and not for the first time she wondered if this was what some of her marks felt like just before she pulled the trigger. Did they feel this strange peace, this resignation that they always knew how they would die, or had they fought it until the last moment? Mateo’s hand wavered, the gun wobbling, and then he dropped it to his side. “Why do you want to die?”

“Want to?” Camille laughed and felt tears burning the edges of her eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me? I'd love for you to let me go and tell your boss I was too damn stubborn to beat intel from, and that he just needs to leave me the hell alone. Find someone else.”

“I can't do that. You know that.” He paused as if the idea frustrated him, and then his dark eyes lifted to hers and she could see pain in them.

Why? Why the fuck do you care, Mateo?

She wanted to scream at him, but Mateo’s voice was soft when he spoke again, “Camille… if you don't want to die –”

She waved her hand at him to cut him off, not wanting to hear kind words out of his mouth. “This was how it was always going to end for someone like me. Don't tell me you've never thought about how this life would end for you. Standing in front of a plastic tarp, or dead in the street somewhere, or in a concrete room with a drain in the floor.” She spread her arms wide. “This is where people like us end up. I always knew it would happen to me one day, and I'm not afraid to die, Mateo. You can't be if you do what we do.”

Silence commanded the room for several minutes. His murder room felt like a lurking monster beneath her feet, waiting for blood. A place like this knew nothing else, and his vacillation between killer and white knight was leaving her brain with whiplash.

“You’re right.” He breathed and she felt her body tense, her eyes focusing on the gun at his side. “We’ll both die someday. Probably violently, and maybe in a room like this. All of that may be true, but that’s not how it’s ending today.” He shoved the gun in the back of his pants, and she laughed. An insane mixture of startling relief that he wasn’t going to shoot her, and astonishment that he had refused the opportunity to clear the slate and report back to Scarpa.

“Really?”

“Yes.” He nodded and she laughed again.

“Alright then,” Camille said, a decision made internally, and then she walked towards him. He didn’t move as she approached and so she shoved him aside, which he allowed her to do because there was no way she was bodily moving him without a hell of a lot more effort. Then she turned down the hall and headed towards the front door.

“Where are you going?” He called after her and she heard him following her.

“I’m leaving.”

His footsteps sped up. “No. You’re not.”

“Yes, I am.” She grinned as her bare feet met the cool tile of the foyer.

“Stop,” he commanded, but she only turned around and kept walking backwards towards the door.

“Why? You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

The rage passed over his face in a cloud, but then it sank down below the calm surface again and he continued coming as she moved towards the door. “You’re not leaving.”

“Actually, I am.” Camille turned around. She’d already had the plan fully formed before she’d arrived so she took action. The front door had a push button lock on the inside too, but the narrow windows to either side did not, and they were just wide enough to let her pass through sideways. There was a small, abstract stone statue on a table against the wall and she snagged it and immediately slammed it into the glass. The sound of it breaking sent a thrill through her as adrenaline dumped into her bloodstream like jet fuel on a fire. She dragged the stone down the edge, knocking glass out of the way and breaking the window further as she moved. That was as far as she got before Mateo’s hand grabbed her arm and yanked her away.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” He shouted into her face, shaking her as he ripped the statue out of her hand and threw it across the foyer. It broke, but she didn’t care – after all, he wasn’t going to shoot her.

“I’m leaving!” She shouted back and he growled and turned them away from the broken glass on the floor to slam her against the wall on the other side of the table. His eyes were wild, his breathing erratic as cold wind whipped into the house, and his fingers dug deep into the flesh of her upper arms.

“You’re
not
leaving.” His voice was a growl as he towered above her and she hated how much she had to crane her head back to meet his gaze. Suddenly, he leaned down and kissed her, hard, capturing her mouth with his as he held her against the wall. She met his tongue as he deepened the kiss and then she turned her face away and broke his distracted grip on her arms to hit his chest hard.

He barely moved an inch.

“Just let me go! There’s no point to this, because I’m never going to tell you shit!” She shouted, but he stepped closer, pressing his body against hers and winding his hand in her hair to force her lips to meet his again. Her body urged her to relax into his hold, to dive into the pleasure she knew he could give her, but her pride was a vicious, power-hungry demon in her brain. Camille kissed him back, tangling her tongue with his, and then she bit down on his lip sharply.

Mateo’s head snapped back and she took advantage of his shock and brought her heel down on his shining shoe. He growled and then his eyes lifted to hers, even darker than before, a bright red swipe of blood below his lip. With a grunt she tried to knock him back, but he captured her hands and slammed them above her head, her wrists aching as his voice rumbled. “Stop it.”

They faced off for a moment, and she hated that the tingling rush of
not
being shot and attempting to escape only turned her on further with his hard body pressed against her. This situation was so fucked, there was nothing sane about any of it, and something had snapped inside her underneath that box. Half of her wanted to fight him until they were both bloody on the floor, and the other half was desperate for his touch. She wanted, needed, to wash away all of those fetid memories – she wanted to be engulfed by him again. “Kiss me.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and then used his free hand to swipe the blood away, holding it in front of him just before he licked the last of it from his lip. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t be a pussy, Mateo, fucking kiss me.” She baited him, and after an intense moment he took it, capturing her mouth in a powerful kiss that had her body warm and tingling despite the cold pumping into the house. Moaning against his lips she reveled in the low, rumbling echo of his pleasure as he pinned her hard to the wall. His cock was an easy outline in his slacks and she wanted to rub herself against it, but he was too fucking tall.

When she tugged her hands he held firm until she lifted one leg to wrap around his hip. In an instant he had let go and between her wrapping her arms around his neck and his strong hands lifting her up, she was quickly in a much better position. The hard press of his erection was perfectly placed for her to grind against him, and she knew she was wet, and likely ruining his pants, but all she wanted was to feel him inside her again.

“Fuck me,” she begged and he laughed low and dark against her shoulder, biting down on her skin until she squirmed and whimpered.

“Say it again, say my name.” He ground his hips against her, each delicious pantomimed thrust sending sparks of electricity from her clit up her spine.

“Fuck me, Mateo,” she gasped, using her own strength to pull him harder against her, reaching for just a little more friction. He leaned his head back and kissed her, his hands massaging her ass where the bruised skin woke up and reminded her of just what he was capable of. Not that she cared. She wanted him to let go, to make it hurt as he devoured her.

He nipped her lip sharply, but she didn’t taste blood as he spoke against her mouth, “Say please, Camille.”

She growled, gripping his hair in one of her hands, the silky dark strands filling the spaces between her fingers as she fought the urge to tell him where to shove his ‘please’, but then he started to rub against her in earnest. Pleasure, low and thrumming, started to pound between her thighs and it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t his mouth on her skin, it wasn’t his cock buried deep inside her.
Fuck, he was addictive, and she needed a fix.
With a grin she repeated his words,
“Please, Camille.”

He laughed and shifted her higher on his waist until she was above him and his tongue ran over her collarbone. “You’re such a smart ass…” Mateo mumbled and then she heard his belt shifting, his zipper sliding, and then he was lowering her onto his cock.

She was soaked and as he slid deep she felt every inch of him brushing against every sensitive point until she was shivering with pleasure long before he bottomed out. In this position he reached much deeper, and as if to prove the point he lifted her and dropped her hard. The spark of pain was overwhelmed by the lightning strike of need that took her over from head to toe. “Harder,” she hissed and he growled against her skin and pinned her to the wall with his shoulders to deliver a merciless thrust that had her crying out and tightening her fist in his hair.

“Is this what you want?” His voice was rough with lust as he used the power of all that hard muscle to pump inside her with long, vicious strokes that made her ache and shudder as she clung to him.

“Yes,” she breathed, whimpering because she couldn’t decide which side of the line of pain and pleasure she was on, or if it had all blurred into one fucking mess and none of it mattered.

“You like me taking you hard?” He punctuated the question with a particularly sharp thrust, and she moaned, his words making her clench him tight. There was nothing to do but hold him to her because he was the only center as everything started to spiral out of control in her head.

“Yes, dammit, now shut up and fuck me.” She groaned and then yelped as he delivered a hard swat to her sore ass, before he squeezed the flesh until she whimpered while he speared her again and again. Every nerve ending in her body was lit up and he didn’t slow as he pounded inside her, lifting her higher and higher until her body felt taut as a cable. “More, please…” she begged and he grunted as he switched his grip so he could reach between them.