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Stay.
As if I was capable of moving at all, let alone leaving.
And that was the weird thing, wasn’t it?
Because this would be the time when I would normally be jumping off the bed, shrugging into my clothes, likely shoving my bra and panties into my pockets or purse in my desperate attempt to get out of there before someone asked me to stay the night.
But there wasn’t a single part of me that wanted to get out of this bed, to get out of this room, to get away from this man.
In fact, I wanted him to come back, to curl into me, to fold me into him, to feel him hold me like he’d done in his room back in Santorini. But for longer. For the entire night.
I wanted to wake up in the middle of the night to see his face softer in sleep.
I wanted him to wake me up before his morning run by sliding inside me, bringing me to a lazy morning orgasm, leaving me to sleep it off as he went about his day.
Not a single one of these was what I ever imagined myself wanting with someone, let alone all of them at once, with this one man.
I had no idea what it meant. On a deeper level. All I knew was this felt good in the moment. It felt right.
It felt righter still as he moved out of the bathroom, still perfectly naked, making his way back to the bed, leaning down to turn off the light, sinking his teeth into the side of my ass playfully before sliding in with me, and pulling me close.
“You’re staying here tonight,” he told me.
Normally, I’d bristle at that demand.
But, instead, my lips curled upward, big enough to make my cheeks hurt.
“Okay,” I agreed, leaning up to press a kiss to his jaw before nestling in.
And then I did it.
I stayed.
And I had a feeling as I drifted off to sleep that everything had just changed.
Of course, life tends to like to laugh at your plans.
Christopher, me, our budding relationship, that was no exception to the rule, it seemed.
But right then, in that moment, for a short period of time, all I knew was happiness.
And hope.
However short-lived it would all be.
THIRTEEN
Christopher
No one was surprised.
Save for the two of us.
The people around me, the ones who had known me for so long, had seen it coming from the beginning.
In the little things.
Like making her coffee, allowing her to make absurd demands, and following through with them.
They also saw it in the big things.
Like me losing control, beating a man to death in front of her.
I’d killed men before. You didn’t get to be in my position in life without getting your hands dirty, rolling around in the blood and filth on occasion.
But death by my hands had always been a cold, calculated thing. Something that needed to happen with as little fuss as possible. It was simply a task that needed to be carried out. Even if that task was dispatching someone I thought loyal, but who proved otherwise.
I never lose my cool.
I never used my fists to beat someone to death.
That was not how I conducted business.
It was never necessary.
It wasn’t how I was wired.
Or so I thought.
But then I was shocked awake by Melody screaming my name, pure, undiluted fear clear in her voice.
I shot out of bed, flew into her room, flicked on the light, and saw Niko on top of her on the bed.
And I just fucking snapped.
There was no other way to put it.
Something inside me snapped.
The control I usually had such a strong grasp on disappeared.
I didn’t need to kill him, I wanted to. I got a sick satisfaction at the blood flowing, the cracks of his bones crushing, the last gasp of breath.
Because he put his hands on her.
Because he made a strong woman feel weak and scared and helpless.
Because he had no right to do that.
It had nothing to do with his disloyalty. That was a side-effect of working with shady individuals who wanted to go into an illegal enterprise.
It had to do with her.
At first, in those hours afterward, while I made plans to move us to a new location for added security until the threat could be neutralized, I convinced myself it was simply because she was in my care, and that I owed it to her to keep her safe while I was keeping her in my home.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I started to understand it was more than that, that she was more than just a guest, more than someone I needed to protect.
I suspected it was genuine affection as we toured my other home, as we played cards, as she opened up to me, as she made food for us.
But I only knew for sure when I got my hands on her again, as we took things completely out of the professional realm.
