Page 6 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

CHAPTER TWO

‘He wanted your body for himself.’

‘Wanted it… for what?’ Kade asks slowly.

Riley Harker is rarely so vulnerable.

Kade watches him carefully, reading every tiny reaction in the expressions of a man who is typically untouchable. They sit on Riley’s bed with their legs crossed, knees touching. No windowsills in here, no windows at all.

They can’t be interrupted. No one would dare.

But Riley is nervous; it shows in a dozen ways only Kade could read.

‘To possess. To live inside of. A literal body swap.’

Riley has barely finished speaking when a vicious surge of pinch-sharp pain seizes Kade’s organs, settling hardest around his heart. It cleanly kicks Kade’s breath from his lungs, leaves him disoriented.

Riley squeezes Kade’s hands. ‘It’ll pass if you let it.’

Oddly enough, it does.

The pain fades to tolerable levels.

Kade nods and returns the squeeze.

He exhales slowly. ‘Fucking hell.’

Riley’s smile doesn’t touch his eyes. ‘Yeah.’

‘What the fuck was that? Felt like a hand around my heart.’

‘That’s the curse.’

A swell of silent sympathy rises inside Kade, but he lets none of it show. Riley Harker will not stand being pitied in any way, shape or form.

‘It stops you from talking?’

‘About certain things, yeah.’

‘Why? Who did it?’

‘Kade,’ Riley says, gently forbidding.

‘No, I need to know.’

‘I’ve spent the last seven years learning how to keep you from feeling it, how to contain it inside just me, along with… other things, but that’s all changing now. I don’t want to hurt you unnecessarily.’

‘I can take it.’

‘That’s not your decision.’

‘Why is it yours?’

‘Because I’m—’

A fresh seizure grips Kade’s insides so hard he actually lets out a pained yelp. His nervous system reels, furiously warning him that whatever he’s doing to cause this has to stop. Riley endures it silently, pale and still.

He barely reacts.