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What are you sorry about? Then it hit me. The stab of jealousy. More pieces locking into place. You were with Zoey. With her, with her. “Zoey. Alyona. Gwen, too?”
He frowned in obvious understanding of what I was asking. “Not Gwen, no.”
My stomach remained a pretzel as my thoughts swirled in my head. “Gwen reminds me of a younger version of myself.” I hadn’t been able to miss the uncanny resemblance on that screen earlier. Same hair and eyes. And not to be cocky, but I was smart, and she clearly was as well. “We’re alike in more than a few ways,” I added under my breath, not letting go of his hand. Something told me he needed to know I wouldn’t bail on him at the first sign of stress.
He cupped my cheek with his other palm. “You’re your own person, Diana. You’re the only one I see. That’s all you need to know.”
That was all I wanted to hear. I didn’t need to know about the women before me. None of that mattered. No more dips into the deep end of the past. “I know you’re worried about me, but you should also get a little more rest at some point today. You don’t seem well-rested. If you’re too tired, we just might slip up later.”
He grinned. A full-blown one, too, not the side smile I’d grown accustomed to seeing. “You have a point. I’ll try and rest later. If I’m too tired, I’ll wind up doing all the things I’ve been dying to do with you.”
My pulse fluttered. “Like what?” Wrong question to ask when we needed to behave, but I couldn’t help myself.
Mouth to my ear, his voice sinfully dark, he whispered, “Here I am, trying to be a changed man, and it’s an angel attempting to provoke the devil to come out and play.”
49
DIANA
“You believe in me, Dallas, don’t ya? Think I can pull off a miracle and save the world?”
Dallas tipped his head to the left, then to the right, staring at me as if I’d asked him to solve quantum gravity. We’d need a particle accelerator larger than our whole galaxy to test that out. Yet, what I was being expected to do felt somewhere along those lines.
Trying to block an EMP weapon, or reverse its effects, would more than likely require way more than my brain. Not to mention I’d had a half a billion in equipment ready to be assembled to test my theories back in Amsterdam.
Would my laundry list of items I’d asked Griffin to procure really amount to anything more than me pulling out my hair as I failed?
Fail: first attempt in learning. I didn’t have time to learn, though, that was the problem.
“No pressure, right, Dallas?” I resumed scratching behind his ears, and he made a little yodel-like singsong sound. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’m glad you believe in me, that makes one of us.”
I sighed, unsure how long it’d be until Carter returned from the calls he had to make. I contemplated killing time with music while waiting for either him to come back or Griffin to return with the supplies to set up a lab. Considering some of my best work came from listening to the same beats downloaded on that MP3 player Carter had given me, maybe tunes weren’t such a bad idea.
“Be right back,” I told Dallas, and he bopped me with his nose as I went to stand. “Not leaving the room, just getting something from my bag.” Overprotective like your dad.
Carter, of course, had the bag my mother had packed thoroughly checked for other transmitters before we’d boarded the jet in Poland, and thankfully it’d been clean. I still couldn’t believe my father had thought to sneak a tracker into my glasses but couldn’t remember I hated jewelry every year on my birthday.
Ironically, the glasses were the first accessory he’d given me in years that had actual meaning.
Sighing, I faced the connecting en suite, headphones now procured from my bag. Maybe I should clean up first, then the music. I’d only taken a quick shower on the jet, and I had a feeling the en suite in a castle-mansion would provide a much more pleasurable experience.
I shook my head, realizing I really did have issues with needing to be cleaner-than-clean. Since that “issue” didn’t hurt anyone, only gave me dry skin in the winter, I set aside the headphones, deciding to take another one. I earned it with all I’d been through.
After removing my sweatshirt, I reached for the hem of my tank top, but Dallas went to all fours, stopping me. His ears were pointed and tail whacking around.
When the door opened, I should’ve known it was Carter coming. Dallas would’ve given me a much louder and more aggressive heads-up if there was a threat.
“Stand guard outside the room,” Carter directed to Dallas, and Dallas’s command of the English language kept impressing me hour by hour. Not to mention how he often used his teeth like a human hand.
I checked the time on the nightstand while Carter closed the door. He’d been gone for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Quick calls.
“You’re testing my patience, I see.” That deep tone throttled my semi-dazed state to wide awake.
I dropped my eyes to follow his gaze, finding my nipples piercing the ribbed tank top. “Bras are annoying, and I was about to shower.”
He angled his head, remaining by the door. “You really don’t like to be dirty, do you?” There was a hint of a tease there that inspired me to respond in kind.
“Not unless it’s you making me that way.” I’d never played with fire before this man, and now it happened on autopilot.
