Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 457

I raised the whip again, and she scrambled backward away from me, until her back hit the wall and she could go no further, and she sat there shaking, clutching her dress to her chest, her eyes streaming.

I looked at her, this girl who had walked into my room dressed like a weapon and armed with a script she could not follow, and I felt something close to disgust rise in my throat. Not at the blood on her skin, I had seen worse on people I liked, but at the cowardice. She had come to play a wolf and folded like a lamb at the first crack of the lash.

"This was a waste of my time," I said, and I straightened, coiling the whip in my hand.

Her eyes went wide, and she opened her mouth, probably to apologize, explain, or salvage something, and I cut her off with a glare that made her shrink against the wall.

"Be careful what you wish for, Tasha." My voice came out low and flat, and I let every ounce of the man I was pour into it. "And this is the last time you will ever step into my room without my consent. Remember what your place is in my house, and act accordingly. Now get out."

She got up on shaking legs, clutching the front of her dress together, and she ran out of the room without looking back, and the sound of her crying carried down the hall until her door slammed shut and cut it off.

I stood there for a long moment, the whip hanging loose in my hand, and I realized my mood was thoroughly ruined. Whatever game she and Scarlett were playing, I had just thrown the first piece off the board, and I had no doubt the other woman would come for an accounting before the night was through. I dressed slowly, dark clothes and a jacket, and I let myself out of the house and stood in the yard with the night air cooling my face and the city glittering in the distance.

I lit a cigar and smoked it down while I turned the evening over in my head. I thought about all the times Tasha had stood in front of me trembling and shy, all the times she had lowered her eyes and made her voice small, and I felt the anger build in my chest like a coal fire, because it had all been an act.

The audacity of it, the sheer brass of the woman, to come at me with her hand raised as though I were some common man she could discipline.

I flung her hand aside, and before she could recover, I gripped her neck and slammed her against the wall of the house hard enough to knock the breath out of her, and I leaned in until my face was inches from hers, my voice thundering through the quiet night.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"