There were huge differences between Jake’s prison cell and the wine cellar. But knowing that didn’t stop my pulse from racing or my next breaths from sliding in and out of my mouth too fast to satisfy my need for air. Logic couldn’t stop my feet from carrying me backward across the concrete, as quietly as I could move, my heart pounding, until my back hit something warm and solid, and I gasped.
A hand closed over my mouth before I could scream and another took the bottle of wine from me before I could drop it.
I clawed at the fingers over my lips and stomped on the foot between my own, and Ian sucked in a breath, so close his chin stubble caught in my hair. “Kori, relax,” he whispered, so soft I understood more than heard the words. “Don’t move, or they’ll see us.”
When I nodded, he let go of my mouth and stepped back to give me space, still holding the bottle he’d taken, and I concentrated on breathing slowly. Counting the breaths. This wasn’t Jake’s basement. Ian wasn’t Jonah. I wasn’t being punished.
But we both would be, if we got caught. Stealing a bottle of Jake’s favorite wine as a gift to him was one thing, but getting caught looting his favorite winery was something else entirely.
I stood as still as I could, waiting for Ian to pull darkness around us again, so I could walk us out of trouble. The cellar was much darker than the park had been, so it shouldn’t have been any problem. But no shadows gathered at our feet, cooling me from the toes up. No darkness built. And the voices only came closer.
I turned to glance at Ian and found him much closer than I’d expected. He was trapped between me and the wall, obviously trying to give me as much space as possible. I opened my mouth, but he pressed one finger against his own lips, still holding the bottle in his other hand.
I rolled my eyes and stepped closer until I was pressed against him, going up on my toes to whisper in his ear, acutely aware of how solid his chest felt against mine. “Make it dark, and I’ll get us out of here.”
“Can’t,” he whispered in return, so softly that it took me a minute to figure out what he’d said. Then he pointed at something behind me and I turned to find my cell phone lying on the floor across the main aisle from where we stood. It must have fallen out of my pocket, and thanks to the rubberized case, neither of us had heard it land.
We couldn’t leave without it. I wasn’t allowed to keep syndicate names or numbers programmed into my phone, but I hadn’t cleared the call list since last night, and it would only take a cursory glance through the contents to figure out who the phone belonged to, and only a phone call after that to link my name with Jake’s.
He was going to kill me.
My pulse raced again, so fast the room started to go dark around me, though the lights hadn’t faded. John Yard and his customer came closer, still discussing whatever event they were planning, and I could see them now, through the single floor-to-ceiling rack of wine separating me and Ian from the main open area. Which meant they could see us, too, if they glanced our way. Or if any movement from us drew their attention.
“Shh…” Ian whispered into my ear, and I inhaled slowly, then exhaled slower still. His free hand slid down my right arm and I stiffened and would have pulled away if I weren’t afraid to move. But then his hand brushed my palm and his fingers twined around mine, and I clung to his hand, not out of fear, but out of relief. I wasn’t alone. I may have been feet from getting caught and minutes from facing Jake’s wrath, but for the first time in years, I wasn’t alone in either predicament.
Ian wouldn’t let me take all the blame or bear the brunt of the punishment, even if Jake and I both tried to give it to me. He wouldn’t desert me like Cam had. He’d said he’d sign—he’d promised to commit the next five years of his life to a monster—to keep Jake from killing me.
Ian wouldn’t leave me.
I let myself lean against his chest, my heart pounding in some intoxicating combination of fear and indefinable need, and his hand tightened around mine. And for a minute, I couldn’t breathe.
I’d never done this. I’d never felt anything as intimate as the feel of his hand in mine. His breath against my ear. His chest warm against my back.
I’d had sex. I’d even had sex multiple times with the same man, and until that moment, I would have considered that intimacy—the fact that I could tolerate one man enough to sleep with him more than once. But I was wrong. With Ian pressed against me, his heart beating in sync with my own, I understood that no connection I’d ever made had been more than physical gratification. Mutual back-scratching. I’d never lingered with anyone else. Never touched just to touch. Just to feel.
I’d never truly experienced or been experienced by anyone.
When Yard took his customer into another section of the cellar without noticing my cell phone, I breathed a little easier. They were still close enough that we could hear their voices, but far enough away that they wouldn’t notice our movement if we were quiet. So I turned and looked up at Ian in the shadows, and his dark-eyed gaze searched mine. Waiting. Silently asking a question words couldn’t have clarified.
I let go of his hand, and he looked disappointed—until I laid it on his chest. His breathing deepened, and his heart raced. I could feel it through his shirt. I slid my hand up slowly, over his sternum, then his collarbone. My fingers rounded the curve of his neck, scratchy with stubble, and I pulled his head down as I went up on my toes. Then I kissed him.
Twenty
Ian
Kori kissed me. I’d half expected her to rip my arm off for touching her hand, but instead she kissed me, and every bit of spark in her—every blaze of temper and passion she smothered just to survive in her world—it all burned bright in that kiss. She’d found an outlet for everything she felt but couldn’t show, and I took it all. I swallowed her pain and her anger. I devoured her isolation and frustration. And I reveled in the hunger she was showing me, and in my own need, awakened by hers.
When she finally dropped onto her heels again, her hand trailing down my neck and lingering on my chest, I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t see anything but Kori, and the confusion and desire warring in her eyes. Flickering across her expression, one side of her face shadowed, the other illuminated by light shining through the racks from the lit section of the cellar.
Then the men’s voices grew louder, accompanying their footsteps toward the cellar entrance. They’d have to pass by us again to get there, and if they got a sudden craving for an eight-year-old Cabernet—or even just glanced to their left—we were screwed.
Kori’s breathing grew shallow and quick. She turned toward the sound of their steps and her gaze flitted back and forth as she tried to spot them through the racks all around us. I knew what she was thinking. What were the chances that they’d miss us twice? How could they not spot her phone?
I pulled her close, careful not to grab her arm and trigger automatic resistance, and with her pressed against my chest, her cheek on my shoulder, I wrapped the shadows around us. Not true darkness—an anomaly like that would be noticed in a semilit room—but just a thickening of the existing shadows, decreasing the chances that a casual glance our way would reveal us.
We both wore dark clothes, which blended easily into the shadows, leaving her face and hair the only pale spots in my darkness. So as the voices came closer, the footsteps echoing from mere feet away now, I wrapped my arms around her and turned us both carefully, putting my body—my own dark head and clothing—between her and the rest of the cellar.
She tensed, but didn’t object, and I knew she wasn’t used to being sheltered. Kori was the type to throw herself in front of a bullet to protect someone else, but I wanted her to know it didn’t always have to be like that. That she didn’t have to fight the world alone. That I wanted to fight with her. If she would let me.
The host and his customer passed our aisle, and I turned my head to watch their progress across the open area. And as I rotated us again, I couldn’t resist touching her hair, where it trailed down her
back. It was so impossibly soft, as if her hard edges couldn’t quite tame that one feature, or disguise its beauty with function.
When the lights went out and the cellar door finally closed, we both exhaled in relief. But I held her a second longer, with no good excuse. And when I let her go, she stayed pressed against me for one more second, and my heart beat harder. I wanted to freeze that moment in time and live there for eternity. Alone in the dark with Kori. No immediate threats. No fear strong enough to push her away from me. No lies standing between us.
However, like all good things, that moment expired and real life descended again, bringing with it bitter obligations we couldn’t ignore. But things were different now. Real life had been changed forever by that moment, at least for me, because Kori had let me in. She’d trusted me, and I didn’t have to be told how rarely anyone saw past her shields to the woman beneath.
But with her trust came an obligation to prove myself worthy. If I let her down—if I betrayed her trust just once—I would lose her forever.
When I couldn’t figure out how best to acknowledge what had passed between us without scaring her off, she finally gave me a tiny smile, then brushed past me to grab her phone from across the aisle. “You know, it’s a minor miracle that we’re not being drawn and quartered by Jake at this very moment,” she whispered, shoving her phone into her pocket.
“That’s a rather antiquated form of punishment,” I said, handing her the bottle I’d picked out for Tower. “Please tell me you don’t mean it literally.”
“I’ve never actually seen anyone ripped limb from limb, no, but Jake’s certainly pulled people apart figuratively, and that’s bad enough.”
“No argument from me…” I pulled another bottle of Cabernet from the rack to my right, then headed deeper into the cellar in search of something lighter and fruitier.
“Ian, we’re not shopping, we’re escaping. Let’s go.”
“One minute…”
“Thirty seconds,” she conceded, following me past the blushes and into the whites. “Then I’m leaving you here.” But she wouldn’t, and we both knew it.
I pulled a bottle of pinot grigio from the nearest rack, crossing my fingers, since I was unfamiliar with the label, then I let her pull me into the shadows. A moment later, we emerged in the unlit bathroom of the hotel suite.
Kori followed me into the living room, where I set all three bottles on the occasional table against one wall. “I believe you still owe me lunch,” I said, pulling open the minifridge. At which point I realized I was too hungry for snack food. “But I’m guessing going back to the park would be a bad idea.”
“I think leaving the west side at all would be bad, with Cam and Liv after you. But if your stomach’s set on nitrates, there’s a decent street vendor a couple of blocks over.”
“Or, we could order in.” I held up the room service menu. “There’s a vegetarian section, if you think your sister might like to join us.”
Kori frowned. “Okay, I get that you want to get to know the person who’s about to bind you to Jake Tower. But if I invite Kenley over, her bodyguard of the day will come, too, and I really don’t want to spend the next hour with someone who’ll report everything we do or say directly to Jake.”
“Okay. No problem. What do you want from room service?”
“A burger. A big one.”
Kori ducked into the bathroom and I placed an order, then texted Aaron for an update on Steven and Meghan. I’d just hit Send when I heard the bathroom door open, and when the message went through, I deleted it from my phone, just in case. I wanted to tell Kori the truth. I would tell her. But I couldn’t, while the chain links on her arm were still live marks. And to fix that, I needed to talk to Kenley. Alone.
When Kori walked into the living room, she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at her phone. Staring at it. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
Instead of answering, she dropped onto the couch across from me and handed me her phone.
On the screen was a picture of a framed photograph on an end table. It was a photograph of Meghan. And me.
“Okay, that’s not what it looks like,” I said, but she waved off my explanation.
“Don’t bother. You don’t owe me an explanation, and you never swore not to lie. But now I need the truth.”
“About Meghan?”
She shook her head and gestured back and forth between us. “About this. About us. I’m not a Reader—though Jake does have Readers. I can’t tell you who they are, so just…don’t lie to him—but I know you were telling the truth last night. You didn’t know I was under orders to do whatever you want. But today, you’ve been lying.”
“It’s not what you think,” I insisted, setting her phone on the coffee table.
“Look, I don’t care who you were screwing before two days ago. I don’t care how long the two of you have been together, or how cute and sweet she looks, or what kind of jam she spreads on your fucking toast before she sends you off to analyze systems every morning,” Kori said, and I had to glance at my watch to verify that it had indeed been more than twenty-four hours since she’d agreed not to cuss for a day. “What I want to know is whether or not what happened in the wine cellar means anything to you. If not, fine. No hard feelings.” But now she was lying. I could see it in the line of her brow and hear it in the tone of her voice. “But if that meant something…I need to know.”
“Yes, it meant something,” I said, and she studied my expression so intently I felt exposed, like she was seeing more than I meant to be saying. “It meant a lot. And that’s not me.” I pointed to the image on her phone, and Kori rolled her eyes. “Seriously. That’s my brother.” I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, preparing to say the part we never voluntarily told strangers. “My twin.”
“You had a twin?” she asked, and I nodded, but I couldn’t tell whether or not she believed me. “Seriously? Because now you sound like the subject of a made-for-television movie.”
“I can’t help what it sounds like. Twins are actually a pretty common natural phenomenon.”
Kori laughed. “No wonder your ego’s the size of Texas. You think you’re a born phenomenon.” She glanced at the picture again. “Identical?”
“Fraternal. But we always looked a lot alike.”
“Okay…” She wanted to believe me. I could see it. “But your brother’s been dead almost seven years, and Liv says this picture was taken an hour ago.”
“Olivia sent you that?” It was from Meghan’s apartment. It had to be. Thank goodness she and Steven were staying at her parents’ house.
Kori nodded. “That, and an offer from Cavazos. He’ll ‘make every reasonable effort’ to buy my contract from Jake if I take you to him.”
For a second, I couldn’t breathe. “Is that what you want?”
“Hell no. I’m not leaving Kenley. And Jake wouldn’t sell my contract anyway—not if I take you across the river. Cavazos is getting desperate.” She picked her phone up again and stared at the picture. Then she looked up at me, and this time she was studying me for a different reason. “He looks just like you. Like you look now. But this has to be at least seven years old. Right?”
I shrugged. “I’ve aged well,” I said, and when she smiled, I exhaled in relief. “Kori, the wine cellar meant a lot to me. I understand if you don’t believe me, but…I wish you could. I want more of you.”
She stiffened, and I wanted to take the words back.
“I didn’t mean that as any kind of order. I’m not asking for anything,” I said. “But I am offering…whatever you want.”
“Ian, I don’t know where this is going.” She looked like there was more she wanted to say, and there was definitely more I wanted to hear. “I don’t know if it can go anywhere. So if that’s really you in the picture, you should just—”
Shadow Bound (Unbound) Page 27
