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I shudder and try to think about literally anything else but him.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
I blink and realize Adrik is finished wrapping my hands. Probably has been for a bit. But I’ve been daydreaming.
“Oh, nothing.” I turn around and pull on the gloves.
“Sure you weren’t fantasizing about anyone?”
I walk over to the punching bag and give it a shake to re-familiarize myself with the weight. “Actually, I was.”
“Do share.”
“It was about you.”
“Obviously.”
“I had my hands on you,” I purr. “Your eyes were rolling back in your head… as I choked the life out of you.”
I jab at the bag and almost moan at how good it feels to release some of the pent-up aggression in my body. My knuckles make that solid contact, that whap sound of real damage, and for at least a second, I can delude myself into thinking that I have control over my life. That I’m not some helpless damsel.
That I don’t need him.
“And think what you want, but I’m not working with the Filanzees or—”
“Volandris.”
“Yeah, them,” I say. “I’m not working with them. I can’t even exercise without you finding out about it, so how do you expect me to be a spy?”
Adrik doesn’t say anything to that. And for the next few minutes, I get so lost in my workout that I almost forget he’s there.
“Are you scared of the world, Emery?” he asks after a while.
I hear the question he asked in the dining room. Are you afraid that I’ll hurt you? For a second, he’s on top of me again, and I’m looking in his blue-gray eyes, baring my soul.
“Terrified,” I admit, blinking back to the current moment. “All the time. It’s why I’m trying to work out, if you’d let me do that in peace. I need to be stronger.”
“Training won’t protect you against me.”
I shake my head. “You’re my current threat, but don’t flatter yourself. I’ve been scared of arrogant men long before you waltzed into my world.”
“I take it your father wasn’t a nice man.”
“You know him, I presume?” I look over my shoulder, but Adrik’s face doesn’t give anything away. “Oh, don’t play coy. I assume you’ve researched me and my family by this point. You’ve probably learned all there is to know about Curtis Montague.”
“Tech magnate, fifty-five years old, with two ex-wives and one daughter,” Adrik rattles off. “But the details on paper don’t always paint the clearest picture of the man they concern.”
“Well, there isn’t that much more to it. Tale as old as time, I’m afraid. Workaholic father who couldn’t care less about his daughter until she got herself in trouble and made him look bad in front of all his rich friends.”
“And your mother?” he asks.
"Is a bitch. Not much more to that one, either.”
I slip back into the flow of jabbing and weaving, my muscles growing loose and pliant as they warm up.
But Adrik’s presence is like a buzzing in my ear. No matter what I do, I can’t quite ignore him.
I glance back subtly to see he’s watching me. But his brow is furrowed.
“I know, I know,” I sigh. “You think I’m pitiful and naive. ‘Poor me—my rich mommy and daddy never tucked me in at night, and I have to work to take care of myself.’” I roll my eyes. “I’ve heard it all before, okay? I was privileged, and I should just shut up and—”
“It must have been hard,” he says suddenly, in a voice far softer than anything I’ve ever heard from him. His eyes are piercing, but not in a violent way.
More like they’re seeing shapes inside of me that I’ve been trying hard to destroy.
“Excuse me?”
“It must have been hard,” he repeats. “Taking care of Isabella all alone. Especially when you were still a child yourself.”
“I was eighteen.”
He raises a brow. “And you think you had life all figured out by then?”
“I didn’t… but a lot of people do.”
He snorts. “No one does.”
“Not even you?” I ask. “It’s hard to imagine you ever being not put-together. You’re so… Actually, never mind. Finishing that sentence won’t do either of us any good.”
Adrik chuckles. “I am what I am because of who made me.”
“Asshole dad of your own?”
He nods. “Certainly not the warm and fuzzy type. But that was okay for me. It was Yasha I had to think about. When I was eighteen, he was only five. Someone had to be there for him, because my father sure as fuck wasn’t. Especially after…” Adrik’s voice fades away and he shrugs. “His life was tough.”
“Did something happen to him?” I inquire.
Adrik has never been this open with me before. Seeing him even slightly vulnerable is like a drug—the more I get, the more I want.
“He went through a… rough patch,” he says vaguely. “I didn’t look out for him the way I should have, and I had to clean up a mess that never should have happened. He came through it alright, though. Everything is fine now.”
Vague, so damn vague. Frustratingly so. I want to know everything there is to know about Adrik.
I wonder if there are baby books somewhere in this mansion. What I wouldn’t give to see a picture of Adrik as a chubby toddler or an awkward pre-teen. Part of me thinks he was born like this, fully-formed straight from the womb, with the tattoos and the Armani suit and everything.
“You’re his brother, not his parent. It wasn’t your job.”
“Of course it was,” he snarls. “I take care of my family. Of the people I love. No matter what.”
A shiver works down my spine. What would it be like to be a person Adrik loved? To be someone he cared about?
Without really meaning to, I step towards him. He’s closer than I realized, only a few feet away. I could reach out a hand and touch him.
He watches me with purpose. His cool gray eyes don’t miss a thing, and I know he sees me start to lift my hand. He knows I’m thinking about touching him. And he doesn’t move away.
But I still have my boxing glove on. A barrier between us. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but I’m too tired to figure it out.
I drop my arms to the side and tip my head. “Who takes care of you, Adrik?”
For a second, I could swear I see his walls beginning to crumble.
For a moment, I think he’s going to open up to me and say something he’s never said before.
Then his phone rings.
Adrik spins away and answers it before I can even register where the shrill noise came from. “This is Adrik.”
The voice on the other end is muffled, but in the echoey room, I can hear it well enough. “It’s Stefan. We’ve got trouble.”
Adrik stiffens and walks away from me. “What is it?”
Stefan’s voice gets harder to hear, but he says something about a raid.
“Which building?” Adrik asks.
More mumbling.
I don’t catch it, but Adrik curses under his breath. “They’re being interrogated?”
Another few seconds of incomprehensible babble.
He curses again. “I’ll deal with it.”
After he hangs up, he turns back to me. He looks me up and down and I get the sense he’s trying to recover this moment the same way I am.
Or maybe I’m just imagining it. Because in the next second, he clenches his jaw and any vulnerability I saw before is gone.
“I have work to do.”
“It’s late,” I say. “Can’t it wait?”
