Twisted Games (Twisted, #2)

by Ana Huang

“I wasn’t ogling you. I was secretly praying for you to get heatstroke. If you do, I’m not helping you. I have…a book to read.”

Let Rhys bake in the sun. I hoped he did get heatstroke. Maybe then he wouldn’t have enough energy to be such an ass.

Rhys Larsen was no gentleman. He was the bane of my existence.

“Thank God I have you, sweetie,” I said to Meadow. “At least you can carry on a decent conversation.” She meowed in agreement, and I smiled. I swore cats were smarter than humans sometimes.

Dark, mysterious, piercing. Rhys had the kind of eyes that saw straight into a person’s soul, stripping past layers of elaborate lies to reach the ugly truths underneath.

You’re not here to relate to her, asshole. You’re here to guard her. That’s it. No matter how beautiful or sad she looked or how much I wanted to erase the melancholy cloaking her.

“Glad to see you found your sense of humor, Mr. Larsen. It’s a Christmas miracle.”

“Because I would’ve been there,” I hissed. “I don’t give a flying fuck whether you, Ava, or fucking Big Bird was the target. If I’d been there, I would’ve neutralized the asshole before he ever laid a hand on you.”

“You’ll find out the hard way what happens when you bargain with the devil.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been doing all day.” Rhys’s breath whispered across my skin in a dark warning. “I indulged you this time, Princess, but I don’t like games. Lucky for you, you passed the test.”

A grim half smile touched Rhys’s lips. “I’d rather you hate me alive than love me dead.” He released my shoulders. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.”

“I’d really hoped you were into cosplay. You would make a good Thor, only with dark hair.”

“Second time you’ve tried to get me to take my shirt off, Princess. Careful, or I’ll think you’re trying to seduce me.”

“When you get riled up, your face looks like a strawberry.”

I loved animals, I truly did, but I could not have a butterfly living in my stomach. Not for Rhys Larsen. It needed to die immediately.

I was a princess. He was my bodyguard. I was twenty-two. He was thirty-two. It was wrong, but I couldn’t stop. Rhys’s eyes darkened. Mind reading didn’t exist, but I had the eerie sense he could somehow crawl inside my brain and pick out every dirty, forbidden thought I had about him.

“Bodyguarding?” “It’s a word,” I said. “If it’s not, I’m declaring it one by royal decree.”

“It’s nice,” he said. “What?” “Your real smile.” Forget a skipped beat. My heart skipped a whole song.

“He’s wearing shoe lifts. He deserves to be threatened.”

What am I saying? I hadn’t had sex in so long I was surprised my vagina hadn’t sued me for neglect,

“I suggest you stop lookin’ at me like that, Princess,” I said, my voice lethally soft. “Unless you plan on doing something about it.”

If Bridget were anyone but my client, I’d drag her into the bathroom, bend her over, and spank her ass raw for her insolent tone.

“Do you want me, Mr. Larsen? The princess and the bodyguard. It would make a nice story for your buddies.”

“Because you’re right. I do want you. But I don’t want to kiss or make love to you. I want to fuck you. I want to punish you for mouthing off and letting another man put his hands on you. I want to yank up that tiny fucking dress of yours and pound into you so hard you won’t be able to walk for days. I want all those things, even though I can’t have them. But if you don’t stop looking at me like that…” I tightened my grip on her chin and throat. She stared at me in the mirror, her lips parted and her eyes dark with heat. “I might take them anyway.”

Thousands upon thousands of stars splashed across the sky above us, so numerous and densely packed they resembled a painting more than real life. The Milky Way, right there in all its sprawling, glittering glory.

“One love for every decade,” Rhys said when his mirth faded. “By that calculation, you should’ve been in love twice by now.” The intensity of his stare pierced through the darkness. “So tell me, Princess. Have you ever been in love?” “No.” I returned my attention to the stars. “But I hope to be one day.”

“Can I tell you something, Mr. Larsen?” He dipped his head. “I’m going to miss you.”

I released his hand and swam around to his back, where I brushed my fingers over his skin again before pressing the smallest, gentlest of kisses on one of the scars. “Is this okay?” I whispered. His muscles bunched further, so tense they trembled beneath my touch, but he responded with a tight nod. I kissed another scar. Then another. Everything was silent except for Rhys’s ragged breaths and the faint roar of the ocean in the distance.

But Bridget? She deserved more than me. She deserved the world.

“Rhys,” she repeated in a whisper. The sound of my name on her lips may have been the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

“That’s it,” I growled. “Take every inch down your throat like a good girl.”

I wondered if we would’ve worked in a different life, a different world. One in which I was just a woman and he was just a man, unburdened by the rules and expectations of others. And I hated myself for wondering those things, because Rhys had never given me any indication he was interested in me beyond physical attraction and professional obligation.

None, except for the fleeting moments when he looked at me like I was his whole world, and he never wanted to blink.

Once I saw what was on it, I gasped. It was me. A drawing of me, to be exact, in a pool surrounded by hills with the ocean in the distance. Head tipped back, smile on my face, looking freer and happier than I ever remembered feeling. The curve of my lips, the sparkle in my eyes, even the tiny mole beneath my ear… He’d captured it all in exquisite, painstaking detail, and looking at myself through

his eyes, I believed I was the most beautiful woman in the world.

Rhys had given me the best gift I’d ever received. He was right—it wasn’t a fancy purse or diamond jewelry, but I would much rather have one sketch from him than a hundred Tiffany diamonds.

I knew my truth. I needed to hear his. My truth? There was only one man who’d ever given me butterflies with a kiss. One man whose touch set me on fire and made me believe in all the fantastical things I’d dreamed about since I was a child. Love, passion, desire. “Truth?” Rhys took a step toward me, the hard steel in his eyes giving way to turbulent thunderstorms. I took an instinctive step back until my back hit the side of our SUV. There was another car next to us, and the two vehicles formed a makeshift cocoon that crackled with electricity as he planted his hands on either side of my head. “The truth, Princess, is I came back knowing this was what I signed up for. To see you every day and not be able to touch you. Kiss you. Claim you.” Rhys’s breath was hot against my skin as he lowered one hand and slid it up my thigh. It seared through the thick layers of my skirt and tights until my pussy clenched and my nipples tightened into hard points. “I came back despite knowing the torture I’d have to go through because I can’t stay away from you. Even when you’re not there, you’re everywhere. In my head, in my lungs, in my fucking soul. And I’m trying very hard not to lose my shit right now, sweetheart, because all I want is to cut off that fucker’s head and serve it on a platter for daring to touch you. Then bend you over the hood and spank

your ass raw for letting him.” He cupped me between my legs and squeezed. I whimpered with a mixture of pain and pleasure. “So don’t. Push. Me.”

A small smile touched Rhys’s lips. “I always knew you would make a great queen.”

“I’m not queen yet.” “You don’t need a crown to be queen, Princess.”

“Perhaps…” Rhys’s touch skimmed down my neck and over the curve of my shoulder. I shivered, my skin blossoming with a thousand more goose bumps. “I was always meant to find my way to you.”

We devoured each other like the world would end and this was our last chance to feel something. Perhaps it was. But I wouldn’t think about that now, not when our bodies pressed so tightly against each other we might as well be one, and I was falling, falling into an abyss I never wanted to get out of.

Bridget von Ascheberg was mine and mine alone. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t mine to take. I was taking her anyway, and if I could tattoo myself onto her skin, bury myself in her heart, and etch myself onto her soul, I would.

Her eyes widened, but before she could respond, I closed the distance between us and grasped her chin with my hand. “But first, I want to make one thing clear. From

this point on, you’re mine. No other man touches you. If they do…” My fingers dug into her ski...

kill a man, and I can make seventy...

like an accident. Und...

“Remember. In public, you’re my princess, but in private, you’re my whore.”

Bridget was mine. She wasn’t mine to take, but I was taking her anyway. Her laughs, her fears, her joy, and her pain. Every inch of her body and beat of her heart. All mine.

I’ve seen and done too much shit in my life to believe in forever. But you…” He grasped my chin with his free hand. “You belong to me. I don’t give a fuck what the law or anyone else says. You are mine.