He picked up her hand, kissing the underside of her wrist. “Of the forty-eight books you have in your home, that one holds the most wear on its spine. Besides, we both know you like mysteries and puzzles.”
Glancing down at her top, she didn’t bother to count how many buttons were left before she just took the damned thing off, displaying the black lace she wore beneath. With the way this was going, he’d have her naked by the time the jet was landing.
“Next time, I’m going to make this harder for you,” she mumbled. Looking back down at the board, she considered what she would do next.
“I greatly look forward to it, poppet.” He nodded at the board. “I believe it’s your move.”
Despite the short while they had been playing, few options were left if she had any hope of actually winning. A part of her didn’t want to, if only because she was curious about the thing he wanted from her should he win, but the other, more competitive side wanted desperately to see the shock on his face once she knocked over that black king of his.
“Can I ask you another question?” She peeked up at him, smiling when she saw the look on his face. “It’s an easy one, I promise.”
“Ask me anything.”
“Why chess?” she asked with a tilt of her head at the board.
And as his expression shifted, she realized there might not very well be any easy questions when it came to him, not that she suspected otherwise. Everything about Uilleam seemed rather complicated—layers to him that she hadn’t begun to unravel. But the more she learned, the more she felt for him.
“It’s such a simple game, isn’t it?” he asked. “It centers around eliminating your opponent until you have them backed into a corner with no way out, but that’s only what you see on the surface. Chess is about precision and foresight—the ability to know the game, and the person you’re playing so well that you can predict what they’ll do before the thought even crosses their mind.”
He made it entirely too easy to get lost in his words and the calm and careful way he spoke. She was utterly enraptured by the way he explained it with the almost wistful look in his eyes. She didn’t think she would ever get tired of seeing that expression on his face.
Looking back at the board, she spotted an opening she hadn’t seen before—one that would turn the game in her favor. Smiling victoriously, she happily moved the piece across the board before looking up at him. “Check.”
The last time they had played, he had beaten her with relative ease, and she had started to think that it would always be that way—that this was the one thing he could always win.
Chess.
But the fleeting joy she felt depleted when she noticed the way he tried to contain his smile. Sure, he did a rather good job of it, reaching for his drink that had sat untouched for the majority of the game, but it was that maneuver that tipped her off, and just before he had the rim of the glass to his mouth, she could just see the slight curl of his lips.
With a good-natured roll of her eyes, she gestured flippantly to the board, knowing what was coming. “Go on then.”
Like before, she had gotten too excited at the end that she had stopped paying attention. The promise of a game won had been too good to ignore, though now, as she had before, she realized it was a trap, but it was too late to take the move back now.
“Next time,” he said as gently as possible as he knocked over the last bishop she had defending her king.
Just like that, the game was over.
He’d won.
“So what is it that you want?”
“Move in with me.”
She blinked, not sure she’d heard him correctly, but as she looked from the black king up to him, there was no question about it.
“You want me to move in with you …” she trailed off disbelievingly, fully expecting him to refute that.
Laugh even. Explain he had only been joking.
But this was Uilleam, and she knew better than most that he didn’t say anything he didn’t mean.
“Why not?” he asked with a simple shrug—as if she were the one who wasn’t seeing reason.
“People don’t just move in together after a couple of months of knowing someone.”
“I don’t see why they wouldn’t. At least then they’d know rather quickly whether they want to remain with the person after learning their quirks.”
Of course he would see it that way, but she didn’t. Not only because she had spent the last year or so living alone, but before that, she had only ever lived with family.
And the poor girls who Katherine took in under her care …
But even that had only lasted for so long.
Things were getting real, more so than she had ever thought possible in a short amount of time.
“We’ll talk about it,” she said, a little surprised at herself that she hadn’t given him an outright no. But then again, she had never been very good at denying him what he wanted.
But Uilleam took her non-answer in stride. “Whenever you’re ready.”
As if he already knew where this would end and she was merely delaying.
Such confidence.
“Sir?” They both turned to see the flight attendant walking in. She didn’t bat an eyelash at Karina’s state of undress even as her gaze darted from one to the other. “We’ll be landing soon.”
Meaning, it was back to reality for them.
A rather somber thought for her, all things considered.
Uilleam looked back at her, his gaze falling to her breasts. “Pity.” He was the first to stand before he plucked her top from the chair where she’d left it and handed it over. “Had this gone on a little longer, I would have had you naked by the end of this flight.”
Even as she could feel the blood in her cheeks, she still shook her head. “I wouldn’t count on that.”
But she also knew what he was capable of when he was properly motivated.
As the plane landed sometime later, the hard jerk making her grip Uilleam’s hand a little bit tighter, Karina blew out a breath. While a part of her was glad to be back home—she had missed it even as she had thoroughly enjoyed her time away—the other side of her wasn’t all that keen.
After all, now that they were home, it also meant Uilleam was about to go away again.
Logically, she knew she shouldn’t be upset, considering she had just spent a week alone with him, but it didn’t change the way she felt.
As they taxied down the runway, she wondered if it would always be like this between them. It didn’t feel right to complain about it now because it wasn’t as if she didn’t know who and what she was dealing with.
She had witnessed the way he conducted business firsthand when she had crossed paths with him, but she did wonder whether he could ever turn it off. If he even wanted to.
This was the longest, since she had known him, that he had gone without his phone—and had he not been forced to turn it to airplane mode for the duration of the flight, she was pretty sure it would still be on and glued to his ear.
Sure, a part of her would miss being in the cabin sitting by the open fire, but she couldn’t deny how much she had missed working too.
Back when she had been living at Ashworth Hall and had only been talking about her dream of going to another country to experience the world, she never forgot the look Katherine had given her that night over dinner when she’d briefly mentioned what she would be interested in doing once she arrived.
“Journalism?” she’d asked, managing to make it sound scandalous as if Karina had said she wanted to strip for a living. “Seems a bit of a waste if you ask me. There are far better uses for your skills than to throw them away on such a mundane existence.”
Despite knowing it was what she wanted, and she wouldn’t be swayed on the matter, Karina had stayed silent and merely accepted that her mother would never understand.
She stopped by the office on her way home for no other reason than to check in, and as she did, she recognized tha
t things hadn’t just changed between her and Uilleam. As she stepped inside her new office and inhaled the scent of fresh paint, she couldn’t help but think about how far she had come.
And off her own merit.
Of course she had Camilla to thank for believing that Karina was worth a shot, but she hadn’t used her family’s connections to secure her position here, and she certainly hadn’t relied on anyone else to do her job for her.
With a mental pat on the back, she walked over to her newly appointed desk and opened the drawer to drop her purse inside. She booted up her computer and entered her password, watching as the screen buffered before taking her where she wanted to go.
It was time to get back to work.
4
Bishop Amell
“Glad to be back?”
Uilleam glanced at his reflection in the window of the truck before he opened the door. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
Skorpion smirked in that amused way of his before he made his way around to the front of the truck and opened the door.
Very little had changed about the man since the last time Uilleam had seen him. His unruly hair was as long as it had ever been, and he still didn’t aspire to dress for the position he had. Instead of a suit as Uilleam wore, he was wearing a pair of faded jeans, a shirt equally as old, and a pair of boots that had clearly been through some things.
“How was Paris?” Uilleam asked once they were inside the truck and heading back for the airport hangar he’d only just arrived at this morning.
He could have very well dropped Karina off and paid for her to get home safely, but the thought of leaving her without a proper goodbye, considering he would be gone for the next forty-eight hours at least, didn’t sit well with him.
“Hmm?” Skorpion called, making a point to turn down the music that wasn’t particularly loud in the first place. “What’s that?”
Uilleam fought a smile. As much as the mercenary liked to pry and give his unwanted opinion when it came to his affairs, he always found it amusing that he could be so cagey when it came to his own life.
“Are you still seeing that woman? What was her name?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes narrowing the slightest bit, “and her name isn’t important for what we’re doing today.”
No, it wasn’t, but that didn’t mean he didn’t find this conversation amusing regardless.
After everything that had happened during his own time in Paris, he hadn’t had the opportunity to delve into Skorpion and what he’d been up to while he was there.
He might not recall the woman’s name, but he certainly remembered her. She had been the exact opposite of what he would expect Skorpion to go for beyond the surface level.
Sure, she had been pretty from what he could tell during the short time they had been in the same room during Gaspard’s yacht party where she’d been serving drinks, but there hadn’t seemed to be much else there.
Not that Skorpion seemed to have minded at the time.
“Where’s the file?” he asked, figuring he had all the time in the world to ask about the woman Skorpion had been with but not nearly enough to prepare for the meeting he was flying to.
“Check the back compartment.”
Pressing the button that opened the small storage space opposite him, he pulled the manila folder from inside and flipped it open to the first page.
Pinned with a paperclip in the right-hand corner was a picture of a blond man in a military uniform with the standard haircut they all wore. He didn’t smile in the image, nor did there seem to be any joy or happiness or emotion at all really in the darkness of his eyes through the black and white photograph.
Uilleam’s gaze flickered from the picture to the name listed at the very top of the file.
Bishop Amell.
“Tell me again where you found this one?” he asked without looking up, scanning over his other credentials listed.
The time he’d spent in the United States Marines, and the eventual years he had spent in the special forces that Uilleam was pretty sure wasn’t a part of any public record.
It was all impressive, that much he was willing to admit even before he had officially met the man, but it didn’t explain why someone with his particular skill set—a skill set learned through a very legal channel—would want to come over to the dark side.
“Far as anyone is concerned, he was discharged two years ago and became a bit of a drifter after that.”
His parents were dead—a drunk driving accident according to the local news article stapled into the file as well. There was also mention of a younger sister who had been involved in some sort of accident, but he didn’t read to the end of that report.
“And unofficially?” Uilleam asked, closing the file because he had what he needed.
“Unofficially, they released him because he threatened his superior with grievous bodily harm if they didn’t.”
Potentially useful information … if he could get to the reason.
It was only a few minutes more before they were at the hangar and waiting to board the jet while the pilot gave it one final look over. By the time they were in the air, Uilleam’s thoughts were back on the place they shouldn’t be for the time being.
Karina.
Considering he had three hours before he landed, there was no better thought to have to pass the time.
The man sitting at the table was not at all what Uilleam had anticipated.
This was supposed to be a military personality—one who knew how to follow orders and asked very little questions. In many ways, he was expecting another Skorpion with, hopefully, less lip.
Bishop Amell, on the other hand, sat back in the steel chair with one leg extended and the other bent at the knee, looking as if he didn’t care at all that this was a job interview.
The neat Marine haircut he’d worn in the photograph wasn’t as precise now with the way some strands fell over his gaze, but Uilleam could still see traces from the way it was cut.
They had been in this room for all of five minutes before Bishop was digging into the pocket of the jean jacket he wore with fur lining the interior for the pack of cigarettes he had tucked away.
He shook one loose and fit it between his lips, holding it there a long while before he reached for a book of matches next.
Uilleam arched a brow as the man struck one, the flame glowing bright before he brought it close. “There’s no smoking in this facility.”
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice a slow drawl. “I’ll keep that in mind next time.”
Uilleam turned narrowed eyes on Skorpion, already knowing with some certainty exactly why he had suggested this one.
Already regretting this decision, Uilleam asked, “Why did you threaten your commanding officer?”
Bishop shrugged, his gaze bored as he pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tipped the ashes into the paper cup of coffee in front of him. “Had a problem with authority.”
“Yet you’ve come here expecting to work for me?”
“Shoulda said I have a problem with stupid decisions. The way I hear it,” he said with a tilt of his head in Skorpion’s direction, “you don’t make those very often.”
“Surely you could have worked for someone else, considering you had been in the Marines for …” He glanced down at his notes to give the appearance that he hadn’t memorized it all—no need in revealing so much this soon. “Close to five years.”
“Me and his,”—With a nod to Skorpion.—“superior officer had a difference in opinions about that.”
Interesting …
Something was there in the threads of what he hadn’t said, but Uilleam just hadn’t connected the dots to it all yet.
“And after?” he asked a moment later.
“Typical guerilla work.”
He didn’t elaborate any further than that, not that Uilleam needed him to.
Mercenaries and everything about them had been his latest project. He read accounts about all the b
est ones—researched the jobs they took and the people they did them for
He learned what made them tick.
What all they were willing to do as long as their money was in their account when the job was done.
Of course, he still had Skorpion, and he was an integral part of his case study—but he also knew that most mercenaries were only out for themselves first, then whoever could afford their services.
For his purposes, he needed people who were solely loyal to him. If it was about money, his bank account had no limit, and he was more than a little willing to keep bloodless killers on his payroll if that meant he was protected, and his interests were secured.
The only question now was how to implement that plan.
“You didn’t go home?” he asked, careful that he didn’t sound too curious about that answer.
Slowly, his mind was forming an answer to the question he hadn’t asked yet.
Why was he here?
“There was nothing to go home to.”
And now, he was almost certain he had an answer.
“Would it have had anything to do with what happened to your sister?”
The silence in the room was deafening, but Uilleam didn’t take his gaze off Bishop. He didn’t actually expect an answer—even he wouldn’t have answered if their positions were reversed—but what he didn’t say would be just as telling. He might have had the same lazy arrogance as Skorpion possessed, more so than Uilleam wanted for someone who would ultimately be working for him, but there was a dark edge to his gaze now.
To the way he made a blatant attempt at unknotting the sudden tension in his shoulders as he reached forward to flick the ash off the end of the cigarette, but managed to snap the thing in half.
How his stare wasn’t so flat anymore as he met Uilleam’s gaze, practically daring him to continue this line of questioning.
But he wasn’t one to back down—it just wasn’t in his nature. His father had seen to that. “I imagine you were overseas when she fell ill.”
For a man who’d seemed to have an answer for everything, Bishop merely shrugged at Uilleam’s observation. It would be difficult, he imagined, for the man to keep up his blasé attitude when he was talking about someone he loved.
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