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She nodded and grinned at him cheekily. “Nobody would ever believe you’re this closet-Dom with a kinky side. That you like to tie me up, spank my ass pink, and wrap those long skilled fingers around my throat.” She cupped his face. “And I kind of like that it’s our little secret. I feel like I’m the only one who gets to know therealLassie.”
Something weird flashed behind his green eyes and a trickle of unease made her body turn cold.
“Do I know the real Lassie?” Where’d that question come from?
He swallowed.
“Jordan …”
“Rayma, I …”
“What don’t I know? What aren’t you sharing with me? I can tell it’s something big. You can trust me, you know. Let me in.”
He shook his head, peeled his body off hers, and flopped over into the bed on his back. “It’s nothing. You know me. All of me.”
But she wasn’t going to let this go. She was pretty good at reading people and Jordan was clearly keeping something from her.
The question was, what?
Rolling over onto her side, she propped her head on her hand. “We just confessed that we love each other. You saw me at myabsoluteworst. The moment I woke up from a terrifying nightmare of something that actually happened to me. You experienced firsthand my PTSD. I amliterallykeeping nothing from you. You know I experimented with drugs when I was hanging out with the Destroyers. That Arrow was my first, and it was wildly disappointing. That I’ve slept with six guyssinceArrow—seven including you—and none of them have really been much better in the sex department—until you, that is. You know about my terrible relationship with my parents. How I have felt like their colossal mistake and not just a happy accident my whole life. You know it all, Jordan. Every ugly little bit. Can you not do the same for me? For the woman you love?”
Again, his throat moved and she could tell he was in mental agony by the way he looked at her. His eyes were glassy, and he was clenching his jaw so tight a muscle ticked on the side.
She held her breath.
“I can’t,” he finally whispered. “I’m sorry.”
***
Present day …
“How is everyone feeling?” Rayma asked, standing over ten strung-out adults with dilated pupils, bloodshot eyes and glazed-over looks on their faces.
Grant smiled up at her. “Hey, Rayma!”
Rayma rolled her eyes. “Hi, Grant. How are you feeling?”
“Thirsty. But Heath keeps hogging the hose.”
“I’m not there now,” Heath replied, playing with his wife’s hair as she rested her head on his stomach. He was also still wearing his paper mask to avoid detection by the Russian and North Korean drones.
“How many people do you think we’ve all killed?” Krista asked. “Like collectively as a group?”
“Oh God, not this,” Rayma groaned.
“Well, I’m sitting at over a hundred,” Heath said.
“I’m at about ten, I think,” Pasha said. “I mean, Dakota Creed, Christina, the pilot of her plane, and then a bunch of henchmen. I think it’s like ten.”
“I’m at one,” Krista said. “Just Myles Slade. May his nuts be like two red hot balls of magma as Satan roasts them over an open fire in the fiery pits of hell.”
“That was graphic,” Lydia murmured. “I haven’t killed anyone. But someone did come close to killing me.”
“I’m at about sixty, I think,” Rex said, wrapping his arm around Lydia.
“Me, too,” Chase replied.
“I haven’t killed anyone,” Stacey said blandly. “Though, I really wished I’d been the one to kill my husband after what he did to me and the kids. But a car took care of that.”
