Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,101
give him something that said he had chipped another chink in my armor.
“Now, kitten,” he rasped, the pet name reserved for Dad and Dad alone followed by a cloud of smoke that had me coughing, “I have the same proposition for you—”
“No.” Thunder cracked outside immediately after the last flash of white light, rattling the windows and the bookshelves. The storm had drifted right over us, and what I wouldn’t give to be out there, with the wolves and the tempest, if it meant being far, far away from him. “Same answer.”
Lloyd chuckled, elegant and pompous in the way he tapped his cigarette over an ivory ash tray. “Are you sure?”
My belly roared—traitor—and Lloyd grinned like that was the answer he’d wanted. Rolling my shoulders back, I glanced pointedly at the wall clock.
“You’re going to make me miss dinner, warden,” I insisted. We had another hour before they made us line up and amble down to the cafeteria, but something told me this asshole could waste away much longer than that just listening to himself talk.
“You’ll regret it, little one.” The cigarette’s tip blazed bright orange with his next inhale, the color dancing in his eyes. A tentative glance into them showed the amusement fading—no more teasing and tormenting. My refusal pissed him off, which both terrified and thrilled me. It would probably be my downfall one day, but not today: he still had two more family members to torture me with. Lloyd flicked the ashy tip over the tray, one grey eye narrowing slightly. “I haven’t even begun to apply pressure.”
“Telling me how you murdered my family isn’t pressure?” I demanded, voice cracking despite my best efforts to keep it steady—to sound brave. Lloyd scoffed, his smile cold and cruel.
“Just the tip of the iceberg.” He extinguished his cigarette having only consumed half, as if this particular prop in his theatrical arsenal was no longer needed. “Tip of the fucking iceberg, pet.”
Bring it. I tried to scream it with my eyes, daring him to divulge more horrors from my past. Because Mom and Ewan were out there, floating in the ether, clinging to me like a second skin I would never shed—but I had survived it. With each passing day, Elijah, Rafe, and Fintan made me stronger in their own ways. Knowing they had my back against other inmates was one thing, but our steadily growing bonds, like flowers blooming in the middle of the desert, reminded me that this wasn’t the end. Xargi wasn’t a wasteland, and I hadn’t come here to die. With them, I wasn’t completely alone.
I could endure.
I could survive him.
Never would I ever accept his offer.
Never.
Even the nightmares had stopped now that Tully snuggled up to me each night. My familiar provided a deep, dreamless sleep, and I came to refreshed and resilient. While still not quite the heroine of this depressing story, I walked with my head held higher lately.
And Lloyd Guthrie couldn’t take that from me no matter how many gory details he shoved down my throat.
“Fine,” Lloyd growled with an aggressive nod toward his office door. “Just go. We’ll be seeing each other again real soon, kitten.”
Even though my knees wobbled as I stood, I forced myself to roll my eyes—big and obvious, just for him. The muscles along his jaw flickered, and his grey gaze cut down my face to my lips, then just low enough so that when my hair spilled back over my shoulder, he—
“What the hell is that?”
He saw Rafe’s bite. Panicked, I dragged my hair forward and staggered around the armchair that had once felt so claustrophobic, now small and ineffectual as Lloyd leapt out of his seat and raced around the desk. The damn puncture wounds still hadn’t fully healed—not that I wanted them to. In fact, I usually nodded off after our nightly chats stroking the marks, Tully purring by my side, but I couldn’t understand why they were still there.
Vampire toxin was said to do all sorts of delicious things to their prey’s bodies, and I had experienced that firsthand. Besides the pleasure, the toxin in their saliva was supposed to facilitate healing, especially if their victim’s heart was still beating. Only I’d also had little cuts and burns courtesy of both the bakery and the greenhouse after Rafe bit me that were just distant memories, yet those two perfectly round dots looked so fresh they could have been added to my skin yesterday, not weeks ago.