Our business attended to, Winters got up and left. I sat by myself for five minutes until Sasha came over to join me.
“He gave in too easily,” I said to him.
“Yeah, that took a lot less time than I expected.”
I pushed my beer toward him. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s not going to uphold his end of the bargain.”
“You think he’ll get Marino and still come after Flynn?” Sasha nodded and I said, “I think you’re right.”
He took my beer and drank from it.
I sighed. “I really don’t want to have to kill him.” Sasha choked on the beer and I started to laugh. “I was kidding.”
“Were you?” Sasha asked, peering at me with consideration.
“I don’t know anymore,” I said softly. There was something about Sasha; he had seen what Dolinsky did to me. Something had passed between us that night, a bond had formed. And he’d saved me more than once.
“Have you talked to your husband?”
“About?”
He gave me a knowing look.
“Some. Not all,” I admitted. “Not about Vlad. Not about you. There are ugly parts in me.”
“There are ugly parts in all of us,” he pointed out. “I’m sure there are things in Campbell’s past that you’ve had to get over.”
“But this stuff with Dolinsky, what I did to Vlad, happened in our present. It’s who I’m becoming.”
Sasha gripped the bottle while he stared at me. “Do you know it was my job to watch you?” he asked suddenly.
“It was?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes. When Chelsea came to him about you, he set me on your trail. I watched you. And—” his thumb fiddled with the beer label, “and I used to see nothing but a beautiful woman. Smart, yes. But I didn’t understand what Igor and Campbell saw in you. They knew you were special. It took me longer to see it, but once I did… I’m grateful you’re my friend. And you shouldn’t be afraid of who you are, who you’re becoming.”
I reached out and squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”
He squeezed back. “Do you not trust that he’ll accept you for who you are?”
“Not that,” I said quietly, finally admitting to the deepest horror in my soul. “I’m worried that I won’t be able to accept myself.”
Chapter 52
My lips trailed down Flynn’s body, tracing the sculpted contours of his chest and belly.
“Barrett,” he whispered in rapture. His hands sank into my hair as my tongue found the source of his desire. He groaned and I became voracious, refusing to stop until he was coming.
“I love you,” he panted, trying to recover his breath.
A powerful man like Flynn Campbell whispering words from his heart had me shaking. “I love you, too.”
He brought me up to his side and cuddled me against him. My hair spilled across his chest, dark in the moonlight. Flynn sighed, his breath teasing my skin, my heart thudding in cadence with his.
“Has Brad stopped hating me?”
“You want to talk about Brad while we’re in bed together?”
