Page 13 of How to Kill Your Rival

Bracing one hand in the wet leaves beside her head, I place the other against the side of her jaw, drinking in the way her pulse flutters against my fingertips. I am so catastrophically gone for this woman that it’s a wonder I’ve been functional around her at all over the years.

When she pulls her mouth from mine, I stay where I am, my forearms on either side of her head. She looks slightly dazed. Her lips are pink and kiss-ravaged.

Then the mask closes back down, and she pushes me off her.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘that was a mistake.’

The cold mud seeps into my knees as I rise. ‘No, it wasn’t.’

Eliza stands, pulling a leaf out of her hair, and looks at me kneeling in front of her.

‘Got you kneeling, didn’t I? All worked up and nowhere to go.’ She mocks me as I become painfully aware of the tent in my trousers. ‘Gone and got yourself in a state for nothing, haven’t you?’

‘For nothing?’

‘I’m not helping you with that.’

‘Eliza.’

‘Mm?’

I look up at her from the ground and sigh. She’s shut any emotion back down. Her usual calm, haughty demeanour is fixed on her face.

‘Help me feed the pigs.’

We go back for Martin. The whole time, my brain is trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. I finally kissed Eliza, and it blew my mind, yet she acts like it’s nothing.

And it only makes me want her more.

5

JAMES

I’ve spent half of the past few years living in the Hamilton Mansion when I’m not in London. My mother’s house had been grand before she married Eliza’s dad Evan, but nothing compared to the sprawling gothic estate. Mountains surround the valley like great stone golems, a loch nestled to the south in glittering navy blue. You’d never guess it was the heart of the Death Council, the collective of contract killers paid for by the rich and the just alike.

The Hamiltons had been the pinnacle to a teenage me. A family that adores each other, even in their competition. Fiercely loyal to one another. It’s them against the world. They head up the Death Council but, more importantly, they support themselves.

Which is why I compete with Eliza so hard. It’s the only way I feel like I matter in their eyes.

There’s an empty space at the long mahogany table, which acts as the boardroom centrepiece. Eliza’s spot. Knowing her, she’ll be keeping the Death Council waiting just to make them stew in their juices.

A power move, some might say, and why not? Despite her kill record and impeccable understanding of the contract-killing world, these men still see her as less than them.

It’s like they believe being born with a cock and balls somehow makes them better or more deserving of everything, but I know otherwise. Being born male may have gained me privilege, but it in no way makes me comparable to Eliza.

The day we met, when my father managed to wangle his way into a Death Council seat after years of trying, me, an awkward teen and her like a red-haired angel, I knew that I was inferior to her in every way. I’ve spent the years since trying to become her most heated rival just to catch her attention, and when it finally started working, our parents had to go and fall in fucking love.

So now I sit in my father’s seat on the Death Council, mooning over my step-sister, watching her try to fill her father’s rather large boots.

Not that Evan is dead. But he’s sick. Which almost makes it harder for Eliza because she looks temporary. Someone to put up with until the big dog comes back.

The Hamiltons are the centre of the Death Council; they hold our meetings in their ancestral home. I wouldn’t put it past Eliza to spill blood before the meeting is up if anyone gives her trouble.

When she arrives, all eyes turn to her. That glorious red hair I dream of is twisted into a pretty knot near the nape of her neck, and her dress is dark and tight, the sight making me grip the table.

Don’t get a fucking boner, you idiot.

I can’t help but skirt my eyes over her thighs, trying to figure out where she has her knives strapped. She always has them on her, but for the life of me, I can’t see where on earth she could put them in that outfit.