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“Then tell me what it’s like, Thalia!” Grant kept his distance, sure that she would bolt if he crowded her. Or worse. He was still naked afterall.
“I…shit…” He didn’t move when she pushed from the bed and began to pace like a caged animal. In a strange way she was. She may not be an operative, but they were very much alike. They had the same sense of survival and need for control. Suspicion was second nature to them both, and he could feel her struggle to give him the trust hedemanded.
Against his better judgment, something inside him pushed him to comfort her. Understanding her better than she could possibly imagine, he needed her to know she could trust him. When next she pivoted away from him, his hand reached out and encircled her wrist, pulling her back to him. She wouldn’t turn to face him, so he wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her back to his chest. “You can trust me, fossa. I need to know that I can trustyou.”
“Oh, that’s rich coming from someone who won’t even tell me his real name,Silas.” She tried to twist away from him, but he was determined not to let her push him away. “I knownothingabout you and I’m supposed to trust you? Let mego!”
Grant carefully and tenderly tightened his grip. Not taking the chance that she wouldn’t try to crack his skull open with the back of her head, he nuzzled his chin tight against her neck and whispered into her ear, “And yet you sucked my cock and let me fuck you without a condom.” She tensed when he let one of his hands trail down between her thighs. A flash of lust flooded his cock and he ground it hard against her ass as he slipped his fingers through her wet folds. They glistened with the combination of her arousal and his seed as he held them up in front of her. “You enjoyed it. You can’t deny this thing between us anymore than you can say that Thalia isyourrealname.”
“It is my realname.”
It was a nickname. Not a complete lie, or he would have pushed her further. Looking down over her shoulder, he felt her rapid heartbeat against his chest as he swirled the pearly fluids around her nipple. “It doesn’t matter. I am a lot of things to a lot of different people. I’ll be glad to play twenty questions with you later and give you as many answers as I can, but right now…” He lifted her breast, trailing his hand up and over the ripe swell to the long line of her neck. With his thumb he turned her head to meet his gaze and lightly pressed his lips to hers in a lingering kiss. “Right now, I am the only one who can help you. I need to know what I’m dealingwith.”
Her body relaxed against his, the feel of her in his arms felt better than anything he’d ever known.God, please don’t let her be on the wrong side.He wasn’t a religious man, but he would promise anything to any deity to know she wasn’t one of those he’d spent his life fighting todestroy.
“Jauhar murdered the only family I had, and I plan to kill him.” Her confession was made in such a quiet whisper Grant nearly missedit.
“So this is personal. Not business?” He held back the hope in his heart for a breath until she nodded, her head falling back against his shoulder as she blew out a breath ofrelief.
“He wants the thumb drive. He won’t stop until he hasit.”
“So you were just going to hand it over.” He could see where this was leading and he didn’t likeit.
“Yes.” She turned in his arms and pressed her forehead to his barechest.
“What then? You think he will just let you walkaway?
“No. I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way to kill him once I get close enough to doit.”
Grant let his head fall forward, pressing his lips into her hair as his hands idly caressed the skin on her back. “What’s on the thumbdrive?”
Thalia shrugged. “Shipping data, I think. None of it makes very much sense to me. It’s full of codes and numbers, but I recognize some of the dates and locations.” His arms instinctively tightened around her when another chill ran through her and she shivered against him. “Jauhar killed my uncle. If I have something he wants, I have to use it to get to him. He’s going to kill me anyway. I want the chance to take him to hell withme.”
“He’s not going to kill you.” He wouldn’t let that happen. There was more to it, he was sure, but she’d said enough for now. He got thepicture.
As his fingers played along her spine, tracing the raised lines of skin that crisscrossed in a telling pattern beneath his fingertips, he knew there was one more question he had to ask. His blood raced through his veins when he pictured her shackled and bleeding as heruncle, or any other man, marred her skin and tried to break her fierce spirit. He could just as easily picture himself putting a bullet between the sick bastard’s eyes, whoever he was. He wasn’t sure if he could handle the truth, but he forced the question out anyway. “Is your uncle the one who did this to you?” He purposefully traced his finger over the most prominent lashmark.
She drew back from his embrace, her brows furrowed in confusion. “What?”
Grant loosened his grip and let his fingers trail down her arms. “The scars on your back. You were beaten. Is he the one who took you from your family?” It was possible, would even be twistedly normal, for her to call her captoruncle.Some slaves were raised by their captors and beaten into respecting, or even seeing their captor’s torture as love. Although, knowing what he knew of her, she didn’t seem the type to remain loyal to such aperson.
“A slave?” He watched as the meaning behind his question dawned. “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t a…a sex slave. Or any other kind of slave. Issa would never do that.” She rested her hands on his stomach and gave him a small, sad smile. “I was in a car accident, or at least that’s what Issa and the doctors told me when I woke up. I don’t remember much beforethat.”
“A car accident?” His bullshit meter was pegged into the red, but when he looked into her eyes he could see she believed what she was tellinghim.
“Yes. A car accident.” She turned from his embrace and paced to the closet. Opening the doors, he watched as she shuffled through the miscellaneous items of clothing. “I was seventeen, I think. I woke up in a strange bed, in a strange house surrounded by strange men. Issa, my uncle, said a drunken truck driver ran my parents’ car off the road into a ravine, north of Mumbai, killing them instantly. I was thrown through the windshield. I guess the glass cut me up pretty badly. Like I said, I don’t remember. When I woke up I didn’t remember anything except my first name.” She pulled a blue and white dress from one of the hangers and held it up. “I stilldon’t.”
Seventeen.“You have no memory of your parents or your childhood?” He wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or even more skeptical as he bent and scooped up his jeans from the floor. Something felt off about the timing, about the whole damn story, but he couldn’t quite get a grip onit.
“No. I don’t.” She let the dress drop and reached up to cup her arm. “They put a tracking chip in my shoulder? Thosebastards.”
“Your parents, they wereAmerican?”
Thalia nodded, hissing when she pulled the bandage away from her skin. “My mother was half Indian. She was Issa’s sister. We were in India on vacation to visithim.”
He pushed aside the weird feeling in his gut to dissect later. Taking her hand, he pulled her toward the bathroom. “Come on. We’ll take a shower, I’ll change your bandage, and then we can figure out what our next step is while I feedyou.”
She followed him into the bathroom without argument which, when it happened, never ceased to amazehim.
