Page 61 of Inflict

“You’re wrong.”

He’d prove it.

Evelyn sighed. “I don’t think so.”

He chose not to argue with her, but only because he could see the exhaustion in her eyes staring back at him. She was knackered, and they could have this conversation—and all the others they needed to have—on another day.

“Sleep,” he demanded, letting the pad of his thumb graze over her cheekbone.

Evelyn turned into the touch, her lips skimming the skin of his digit, and then his palm, with surprising softness.

He wasn’t used to this.

He didn’t know how to do this.

“I adapt between men,” she said so low he damn near didn’t hear it. “If he beats the hell out of me, I learn to like the pain, so it no longer works. If he’s more inside his head, playing games there, I play by his rules to get what I need just the same. Better not to fight, but to be smart, to win.”

“What’s there to win in that sort of situation, Evelyn?”

“My life. I learned that every man can be manipulated by giving him exactly what he thinks he wants. It’s all I know.”

Connor wasn’t entirely sure why she was telling him this, but he had news for her. “You’ll fail for the first time, trying to find a game to play with me. Especially, if you think you need to win like the others.”

“You’re not like the others.”

“I’m not the others,” he corrected.

“What if I get passed on again?”

He sighed. “No one passed you on to me to begin with. I took you. Sleep, lass.”

For a long while, she was quiet and still.

“Sleep,” she agreed.

Connor guessed they would figure the rest out over time. “Yeah, sleep.”

• • •

“Why are you shaking like a leaf, lass?” Connor asked.

“I don’t know.”

He sprayed antiseptic on Evelyn’s bare upper thigh, and then wiped her smooth skin down with a paper towel. His black, latex gloves slipped on easily before he went about testing his kit, and readied his machine.

“I’m not going to feck it up too badly,” he half-teased.

Evelyn’s stare caught his, and she held it strong as she replied, “I’m not worried about that.”

“Not even because I’m doing it all freehand?”

“No.”

Connor smirked. “Most people don’t trust artists to work freehand. They want a transfer to make sure it’s perfect.”

“It’s not that.”

“Pain, then?”