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“There’s nothing to tell.”
“There is. You’re choking on it. Are you lying to me, them, or yourself?”
“Fucking hell.” His head bowed, his eyelashes like dark cobwebs on his cheeks. “Shit, this is a bad, bad idea. I’ve lost my ever-loving mind.” Grabbing my hip, he hissed, “You can’t tell anyone, do you hear me? Not a damn soul.”
I nodded.
“I….Christ, I’m trusting you with my life, Ily.”
I nodded again or the best I could with him forcing my head to the side.
“Merde.” He stiffened, sighed, then sagged over me as if he’d lost his battle. “This will probably blow up in my face, but he didn’t tell me I couldn’t tell anyone, and I really need you to work with me instead of against me. It’s only been a few hours, and I’m already at my wit’s end.” He groaned low and dark. “If this is the easiest way, the safest way, then…so be it.”
With another gulp, he poured black secrets directly into my soul. “Everything I’ve told you is real. I’m like them. Don’t think for a moment that I’m not. I fight this sickness on a minutely basis. I don’t know how to stop it, and I don’t know if I have the strength to control it but I’m trying. God, I’m trying. I don’t want to be this way. I didn’t ask to be born with this curse. He sent me here to prove I’m better than this, and I have a horrible premonition that I’ll fail, so…” He shrugged. “I need help. There, I said it. You weren’t meant to be here, and I wasn’t prepared for you, but it’s happened, and now we’re both screwed unless you listen to me. I need…I really need you to fucking listen when I say you can’t stand up to me. You can’t fight me. I’ll do whatever I can to stop them from touching you, Ily. I’ll do my absolute best to protect you, but in order to do that…I’m going to have to be the one who touches you.” He pulled back a little, wrenching my face to his. “Do you see what I’m saying?”
All his cryptic urging from the plane. All his vague hints as he chased and pinned me to the ground.
If he was a cop hunting traffickers, it would make sense that he would have darkness within him. If he worked undercover, he wouldn’t have gotten this far without becoming infected with whatever disease these bastards harboured.
He’d had to become one of them.
But at least he fought it.
At least he knew right from wrong.
Crushed against dusty books and utterly nude, I felt the first flush of safety.
Henri was many things.
Still a total stranger and without a doubt one of the most complicated men I’d ever met, but…I believed him. I believed my intuition on him. I believed there was far more to him than this and us and a transaction of flesh and fear.
Please, please let me be right.
Sucking in a breath, I nodded. “You’re saying everything you do to me is out of obligation…not desire.”
“Exactly.”
“And you need me to trust you.”
“With every damn part of you. Not a single shred of doubt. If you doubt me and fight back, then…this is all over. My life. Your life. Their lives.”
Their lives.
Did he mean the other slaves? Prisoners who were all alone and broken?
“You’re here for them?” I whispered. “The jewels?”
His eyes met mine and held.
He nodded just once.
I melted into a puddle of relief. “Really? Truly?”
A growl echoed in his chest. “Don’t question me. Not when I’m second-guessing every-fucking-thing.” Making sure no camera could hear him, he whispered, “I’ve been sent here, alright? Sent to stop what’s happening and save those trapped against their will.”
The world stopped spinning.
I’d been frightened out of my mind and wrapped up in my own demise, but Henri had put his life on the line to save others.
