Flawless Danger (The Spencer & Sione #1)
Read Flawless Danger (The Spencer & Sione #1) Online
Authors: Rachel Woods
chapter 1
The Woodlands, Texas
Players’ Woods Community
Thin ice skimmed along the surface of her skin.
Lids fluttering, Spencer Edwards opened her eyes and then immediately closed them, regretting her decision to escape the unrestrained darkness of unconsciousness.
She preferred the black void of dreams she would never remember.
But the cold line trailing across her cheek was too confusing to ignore.
She opened her eyes again. Sun streamed into the room from three large rectangular ceiling-to-floor windows across from the king-sized bed.
Annoyed by the harsh morning rays, she turned her head from the windows. Spencer frowned, her heart kicking as she stared at the sun reflected on the gleaming blade of the knife hovering inches from her face.
“Good morning, sweet girl,” Ben Chang said. Lying next to her, propped up on his left elbow, he held the knife with his right hand. “How did you sleep?”
Spencer couldn’t answer him, couldn’t take her eyes off the razor-sharp blade. He held the knife casually, almost carelessly, as though it was some benign trinket, as though he couldn’t use it to slice her throat open, or slash her face to ribbons.
“Do you recognize this knife, sweet girl?” Ben asked.
Hardly able to breathe, Spencer followed the blade as it inched closer to her face and then descended beyond her line of sight.
Her heart slammed.
Cold steel skimmed the curve of her jaw.
Panic, terror, and confusion converged upon her, leaving her unable to speak or move, incapable of any coherent, logical thought.
Trailing the flat part of the blade across her cheek, Ben said, “You should remember this knife very well.” The thin spine of the knife glided over her neck and down over her collarbone.
Trembling, she stared at Ben, her blood colder than the knife trailing along her shoulder.
Was he going to kill her? Would she die a horrific, bloody death? Would he stab her over and over until the sheets were soaked with her blood?
“This is the knife you stabbed me with, sweet girl.”
A moment later, Spencer felt cold steel against her breasts. The scream she should have put into the atmosphere was strangled, silenced by terror and lust. Ben lifted the blade from her skin. Swinging his arm overhead in a swift arc, he stabbed the knife into the tufted leather headboard and moved on top of her.
Knowing what he wanted, Spencer didn’t deny him. She wanted the same thing, even though she knew, when it was over, she would hate herself for giving into him, for being so desperate and shameless.
She stared at the mural on the tray ceiling. It was different from the one on the ceiling in the townhouse bedroom, but still just as violent and bloody.
A dragon and a tiger fighting to the death.
Unlike the mural in the townhouse, this painting had words on the first panel.
The tiger will strike with claws.
The dragon will consume with fire.
In one section of the vivid, lurid drawing, the dragon used his tail as a weapon, thrusting the razor-sharp spines into the tiger’s powerful flank.
Gazing at another section of the mural, she gasped and clutched his shoulders as the sensations began to overwhelm her. Though wounded, the tiger sank a claw into the dragon’s back, between the scales, piercing the delicate flesh beneath the armor.
The sensations began to rocket through her, becoming almost overpowering as something violent and primitive took hold of her. Wrapping her arms around Ben’s neck, Spencer struggled to catch her breath as the feelings became overbearing.
Ben was rough with her, but she didn’t want tender caresses. She didn’t want gentle lovemaking to fool her or trick her into thinking he gave a damn about her.
Her eyes roamed across the mural to a section where the dragon swung his tail and penetrated the tiger’s side with the tip, pushing his tail deep into the tiger until the tiger was impaled upon him.
Something barbaric broke within her, and Spencer succumbed to an explosion of desperate thrashing. As the tumult subsided and her heart began to slow, she went limp.
Tracing his fingers along her cheek, Ben kissed her and lifted his head, smiling at her.
“Sonofabitch!” Spencer screamed and slapped him.
He cursed, shock in his dark gaze.
Flipping on her stomach, Spencer belly-crawled across the damp, crumpled sheets and flopped over the side of the bed to the floor.
No sooner had she hit the stamped carpet than she was on her feet, sprinting across the room to the chair were she’d flung her clothes after hastily discarding them last night. Stumbling, she grabbed her shirt, pulled it over her head, then slipped into her jeans, and ran to the bedroom door.
Grabbing the knob, she opened it and—
A whispery swish, near her ear, too close, and then a thud against the doorframe.
Spencer turned her head to the left.
Her heart jumped and then dropped, as she saw the reflection of her own wild, wide-eyed stare in the blade jutting from the wood where the tip of the knife had penetrated the frame. Her fear exploding into rage, Spencer grabbed the hilt of the knife and yanked. The tip of the blade remained in the doorframe. Screaming, she struggled to pull it free, determined to pull the knife out.
Determined to kill Ben before he could kill her.
Spurred by visions of sinking the blade into him again, Spencer gritted her teeth, clutched the hilt with both hands, and yanked. The knife dislodged. Stumbling back, Spencer turned. Ben was almost right on her, moments away.
Undaunted, Spencer raised the knife, but he overshadowed her, smothering her with a powerful arm that snaked around her and dragged her toward him. Trapped in his hostile embrace, she wrestled against him, desperate and disoriented, not sure where she began and he ended or where she ended and he began.
She wasn’t even sure where the knife was until he grabbed her wrist, tightening his fingers like a vise.
“Not again, sweet girl,” Ben said, glaring down at her. “You will never get another chance to put this knife in my gut again. You will never get another chance to leave me bleeding on the floor, begging for your help, watching as you turn and walk away from me, leaving me to die.” He jerked her toward him, twisting her wrist.
Crying out, Spencer’s death grip on the hilt slipped, and the knife fell from her hand as Ben held her closer, tighter, crushing her against him.
The Woodlands, Texas
Players’ Woods Community
“You know, sweet girl, there is something I have been wondering,” Ben said.
Arms crossed, disgruntled and hostile, Spencer sat on a wicker stool at the island in Ben’s bright, yellow and French country blue kitchen. As the sun streamed in, warm and ethereal, she struggled to reconcile the feelings of domesticity with the rage racing through her blood. The cozy surroundings were disconcerting, and she fought to remember who Ben Chang really was—a devious asshole and not the kind, caring man he’d tricked her into thinking he was, the man she wanted him to be.
Standing at the gas range, Ben was making her an omelet. As she stared at the muscles beneath his smooth, deep chocolate skin, she felt her body responding. He didn’t have a shirt on, and the boxer briefs he wore left little to the imagination, reminding her of their tumultuous lovemaking. Spencer looked away, disgusted with herself, wishing she’d never me him on that beautiful afternoon.
Sitting on a park bench in front of the Houston City Hall reflecting pool, Spencer couldn’t help but think that the weather was too lovely for her to be so depressed. But how could she not be desolate after the disastrous interview she’d suffered through earlier that morning? She’d missed her chance for honest, gainful employment. So unless she wanted to starve, have her car repossessed, and get evicted from her apartment, she’d have to continue “dating” old men—drugging them and stealing from them.
Spencer had been close to tears when, peripherally, she became aware of someone sitting next to her. Annoyed, she’d rolled her eyes. Why the hell had someone decided to sit next to her? Most of the benches lined around the perimeter of the park were empty. Why couldn’t she be left alone to enjoy the grand, lavish pity party she’d thrown for herself? Wasn’t it a party she deserved, having just blown her interview at a leading oil and gas conglomerate?
Irritated by the interruption of her lamentations, Spencer was about to move to another bench when a deep, enchanting, lyrical baritone said, “You okay?”
The stranger’s concern seemed genuine, and as their conversation continued, she found herself intrigued by his island accent. Her interest increased as his compassion intensified, and when he asked her out to dinner, she didn’t turn him down.
She should have told him to go to hell. Instead, she’d spent two months getting to know Benjamin Chang.
But the tilt-a-whirl romance started to scare Spencer. She worried she might be falling in love, something she’d promised herself she would never do. Allowing carefree romance to turn into love wasn’t going to happen, not ever, not for her. But her aversion to love wasn’t the result of some tortuous heartbreak, or any rampant issues of low self-worth.
Spencer had her mother to blame. She supposed her mother could be blamed for most of the problems she’d suffered throughout her life. And most of those problems had started the day her mother had walked out of their small, hot apartment, leaving Spencer to fend for herself.
Child abandonment. Spencer hated the word
abandonment
and what it had meant in her life. Abandonment was frightening and embarrassing, but it had happened to her. She’d been abandoned—a neglected, discarded seven-year-old with purple bruises covering her arms and legs like tattoos. If not for the love and support of her grandmother, she would have ended up in foster care, a potentially worse predicament. But, the abandonment hadn’t been forever.