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Until Layla.
TWENTY-THREE
gabriel
Wakingup with a woman in my arms is new for me.
Not altogether horrendous but a bit uncomfortable. This is my sacred space. The massive bed with dark sheets becomes my safe place when the rest of the world is out of their goddamn minds.
She’s delicate in her sleep. Small and insignificant to anyone but me. Instincts I’ve done my best to demolish rise inside and push to the forefront. Everything about Layla undermines my carefully built life.
I allow myself a few seconds to watch her even breathing. She looks fine, but what will happen when she wakes?
She’ll create chaos.
She’ll turn the world on its head.
Arms stretching overhead, I suck in a deep breath, filling my lungs and willing my body to wake up. All in a single wave. There is nothing gradual about this. The slight movement wakes Layla and she bolts upright, her hair looking like a rat’s nest around her head.
“What time is it?”
“Early. The sun isn’t even up.” And we’re both trained to operate on a deficit when it comes to sleep.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go. I have a press conference today,” she says.
“You don’t even know what time it is,” I argue, fighting the urge to drag her back to bed and fuck her again. And again.
“Devan will have texted me. Where’s my damn phone?” Layla bolts from the bed, standing naked in the room and turning in a circle looking for her shit. “Gabriel—”
“It’s probably still in your pocket. Your clothes are in the bathroom. I haven’t touched them.”
We haven’t needed clothes.
She rushes into the bathroom and groans. “Oh my god. Look what you did to my hair. You ruined it.”
It’s a good thing she’s not here to see my grin. I’d get a slap across the face for sure.
“Bed head is a very good look for you, sweetheart.”
“Now I’m going to have to fix it. It will take me forever.” There’s silence for a quick second, probably while she’s rooting around for her phone, then an indignant squawk. “Fuck. The press conference is scheduled for ten. Not to mention there’s a billion messages from Devan saying I left him at the hospital.”
“You’ve got time.”
I lean back into the pillows, staring at the ceiling, my breathing even. Blissfully fucking even.
She comes back into the bedroom holding her clothes between two fingers with a healthy distance between them and her body. Shit. I should have destroyed them. Should have done something other than let myself be distracted because now she’s getting a look at her friend’s blood in the cold light of day. Dried, brown, stiff.
She avoids looking at them and drops them at the foot of the bed. I assume she’s about to roll out another aggressive tongue-lashing, a way to take her mind off the loss, when instead she says, “There’s been another murder, you know. Right after we left Docks on Markee the other night. I went back with my partner. This one is a big shot.”
I thought it might be hard to take her seriously as she stands there with her breasts jutting out, but even without clothes, she’s all business.
“What do you mean, a big shot?” I push into a seated position, the sheets draped over my lower half.
“Senator Wilson’s son,” Layla replies.
I freeze. The bald man in charge of the drug exchange graduating to murder isn’t really a big surprise. But what in the fucking hell was the senator’s playboy son doing there?
That raises the stakes too high for comfort.
