Page 24 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

I exhaled and clicked my neck to the side. I’d deal with that later.

She met my gaze as she walked to the chair, settling back down with her legs tucked beneath her. Her eyes slid down my chest and stomach, lingering on the enormous bulge in my trousers, and she smiled. Pre-cum leaked from my head at the devil in her eyes.

“One day, I’ll kill them too. I guess you’re not the only one they should call monster around here.”

I inhaled. Fuck, she might just be perfect. She looked so happy with herself, so adorably proud after her kill, that I couldn’t bring myself to tell her she’d just caused a huge problem for us. When McKenna finds out his favourite ass-licker has been murdered, there will be hell to pay. But that was tomorrow’s problem.

“I guess not.”

“Are you mad that I killed him?”

“No.”

“So you’re not… one of them?”

“One of who?”

“McKenna’s men. Loyal to him.”

“Fuck no. McKenna’s a cunt.”

“Then why do you kill for him? Why do you allow them to treat you like this?”

I glanced away, rolling my tongue over my teeth. “I don’t allow it. I endure it. It’s different.”

She nodded as if she understood that point. When she realised I wasn’t going to elaborate, she changed the direction of her questioning.

“What’s your name?” She rested her chin on her hand and stared at me. “The one on your birth certificate.”

My stomach dropped. The weight of a memory flickered in my subconscious, but I pushed it away before it became too real. That was the effect of a lifetime of trauma, head blows in the cages and weekly injections of Raw Mercy. Fragmented, repressed memories. I knew my name. But if I said it out loud, I wasn’t sure what it would drag from the darkness with it.

“It’s not important.”

She frowned. “Of course it is. It’s your name.”

“It’s someone else’s name. Someone who no longer exists.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

I tapped my temple. “Too many blows to the head will do that.”

“Do you want to know my name?”

Did I? Not really. What would be the point? I’d never known or cared about any captive’s name before, not even those I’d killed. It was better not to know.

When I didn’t answer, she answered for me. “It’s Soraya. Raya for short.”

Of course it was. The prettiest fucking name I’d ever heard for the prettiest fucking girl I’d ever seen. Maybe this talking shite wasn’t such a good idea. The less I knew about her, the better for both of us. We weren’t friends. We weren’t anything. Just two bodies sharing a prison. Yeah, I’d keep them from harming her, but that didn’t mean we had to do this. To learn about each other. The more I knew about her, the harder it would be to keep her at arm’s length.

I rested my head against the wall and closed my eyes.

“Oh, that’s a lovely name,” she replied, mockingly. “Such a pleasure to meet you.”

“Is it?” I groaned, refusing to look at her. “A pleasure, or your worst fuckin’ nightmare?”

There was a pause, as if she had to consider it, before she answered. “It could be a pleasure.”

My heart thudded wildly in my chest at her suggestive comment. I cracked an eye open to find her still staring at me, that fire in her eyes mingling with a spark of innocence. That look was a talent. She had no idea what she was doing. She just needed to open her eyes to what lay beaten and bloodied before her, then look in the mirror. We didn’t belong in the same universe.