He cracked his knuckles, then he tipped his head to crack his neck. “You’re too messy to adopt as a typical asset. I’ve already revealed too much of myself to you.”
Taking her fist from her head, she grabbed a vertical bar on the headboard and used it to push herself up in his direction. Kneeling behind him, seated on her own in-steps, Zara spread her hands on his back. “Whenever you make cryptic comments like that, you send my mind into overdrive. Why am I messy, Raven? What are you afraid of?”
He turned his head enough for her to see the silhouette of his profile, highlighted against the orange glow that emanated from the security light outside her window.
“Knowing the truth of who I am could get you into serious trouble. It could cost you your life.”
“That’s another cryptic comment, beau,” she said. Splaying her fingers, Zara pressed her hands into him. Not that it was her intention, but her weight wasn’t enough to make him move. That inherent strength was one of the qualities that fascinated her about this man. She kept on leaning into him until her lips touched his spine. “Why do you need my trust so bad?”
“You might be the only person alive who can help me avert disaster on a global scale.”
That was less cryptic. Easing back, she dismissed the fizzing chemistry still at work within her. Languishing with her lover didn’t seem right in the light of that kind of declaration. Since her phone conversation with Sutcliffe, she’d had her suspicions about what was going to happen, and this was the confirmation Zara needed about the gravity of the situation.
“How can I do that?” she murmured.
“I came here to earn your trust because I need information. But I also have to divert you from a certain course of action and if I don’t… If I fail, then you’ll fail, and that will cost lives.”
“How am I going to do that?” she asked.
At no point in her diary did Zara have a date marked for a mass killing spree. All of these things he said were going to happen—that she was going to be responsible for—she wasn’t sure she could live up to that kind of expectation.
Leaving one foot on the floor, he twisted to bring his other knee onto the bed so he could face her. “I can’t tell you that until I have your trust. Once I do. I’ll tell you everything.”
He was dealing with his own demons, but still prioritized saving lives. Searching his eyes, she read pain behind his detachment that made her wonder if he’d been hurt by women in the past. “Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little,” she said, trying to coax him into telling her the truth about what was going on. Except his expression didn’t flinch, he just kept examining hers, looking for a way in.
“How do I win your trust, Zar?”
“Well,” she said, gasping in a smile and changing the mood because it was obvious that he was not going to open his heart to her tonight. Slapping her hands onto his thigh, she moved onto all fours then backed up enough to loop her arms around his neck and hang her weight on him. “You could start by spending the night instead of sneaking out while my eyes are closed. I’ve never seen you in the daylight before.”
His features became hard and his patience was lost. “I want your trust. But I don’t want you to fall for me. Emotions make things messy.”
She wasn’t sure she could stop that train now that it was on the tracks. His hook was the danger that shimmered from his posture and expression. But he cared about things, about innocent lives and her safety. Having never seen him with anyone else, she wondered if he was a loner, damaged and maybe a martyr to his own cause, whatever that was. But it was his complex character, as well as his seduction, that fascinated her and she wanted to know more, she wanted to know all of him.
“Is that why I’m a messy asset?” she asked, pausing before she kissed him. “Because you have feelings for me?”
“It’s my experience that women run away with that feelings shit faster than men.”
“If you want me to take a chance on you,” she said, tipping her head to the left to kiss him. “Then you’re going to have to take a chance on me.” Tipping her head the opposite way, Zara kissed him again. “Spend the night, Rave. Stay for breakfast and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
Grabbing her face, he pulled her mouth onto his. After a short, fiery kiss, he used his grip on her to shove her onto her back.
“I’m a man of my word,” he said. Twisting, he drew one knee up onto the bed and supported her torso with his hands. “It’s the most precious thing a man can give.”
Optimism thrived. She wouldn’t be afraid if he was here and she could offer him comfort. Having him here all night would give her the chance to prove that she could be a sanctuary for him and that their association didn’t have to be all give and no take for him.
“Does that mean you plan to stay?” she asked. Nudging her fingernails into the nape of his neck, she scraped them back and forth.
Straightening his arms, Raven threw her back on the bed, then stood up and turned to come down on the mattress as well. Crawling over her, Rave stayed high on his hands and knees, caging her between his limbs, to stare down into her face.
“I’ll have to stay to find out if you’re a girl of your word. But after tonight, all bets are off.”
“What does that mean?” she asked. Curling her hands around his shoulders, she stroked a path from his chest to his back, as far as her reach would allow.
“It means, tomorrow you give me your trust and I’ll give you mine. But if you betray me, the consequences will be severe for you and everyone you care about.”
She cared about him, but it was unlikely that he was referring to himself. Especially if she factored his scowl into the equation. “You would kill me for revealing you to anyone?”
“Me or anything I tell you, yes, I would.”
Exhaling, she averted her focus while considering that she might have misjudged him. “A threat, well… today is the day for it,” she muttered.
“What?” he asked, pressing her cheekbone to force her gaze back. “Who threatened you?”
“Nothing, never mind,” she said. Grant probably hadn’t meant his threat any more than Raven did. At the time, it shook the foundation of her belief in him, but she was coming to learn that she was ignorant about many things in her life.
“I shouldn’t say this, but…” he blinked his eyes away and when they came back the darkness swirled in them. “I have… skills… that can facilitate the elimination of threats.”
Just because he didn’t use explicit terms didn’t mean she was oblivious to his meaning. “Have you killed before?”
He didn’t blink, but the line of his mouth curled at one end. “It’s one of my two specialties,” he said.
“I think I know what the other one is,” she said, linking her fingers behind his neck. “Why do you keep your jeans on in bed?” Elevating her legs, she ran the inside of her feet up and down his thighs, which were encased in denim again.
“This isn’t home turf,” he said. “I’ve got to be ready for a threat to walk through that door any second.”
Living on constant alert must be exhausting, but at least she didn’t have to develop a complex or worry about flesh-eating diseases. Accepting this, she began to stroke again and he dropped onto his side. Pulling her to his chest, he kissed her hairline. Their limbs tangled and with her face against his collarbone, she exhaled and closed her eyes, ready to sleep with this man wrapped around her.
“Will you betray me?” he asked with his mouth in her hair.
Shaking her head, she sought his closest hand and squeezed his fingers. “No.”
“My inner circle is small, very small, and if you’re in my circle, you can’t be in anyone else’s. There is no way to play two sides in this war. You give me your loyalty and no one else. You have to be willing to die rather than give up the secrets of the Kindred.”
“The Kindred?” she asked, tipping her chin. She couldn’t see him, but her forehead rasped on his stubble
.
“If we make it through the night I’ll give you one more chance to back out. After you’re in, Zar, you’re in.”
She didn’t know if she’d have to swear a blood oath, or if their association would be fleeting. Giving them both a chance to sleep on the prospect of this alliance was a wise decision. But if he were still here in the morning then she would be more assured that he wasn’t an apparition of the night and he’d have another piece of her heart.
NINE
That morning Raven’s ringing cellphone had woken them up. Before the first ring had completed its drone, he was up, seated on the edge of the bed answering the call. With a brisk, “Hang on a minute” into the handset, he’d put the device to his shoulder and turned his face in her direction, though he didn’t twist his body far enough to actually look at her.
When he’d told her that he had to take the call in private, Zara forced herself out of bed with a yawn and wrapped herself in her kimono. She got as far as the kitchen before she realized she had been dismissed from her own bed. Since there was no point in arguing with him while he was on the phone, she went to work making breakfast, which it turned out she had plenty of time to do because it was half an hour later that she saw him again.
She was filling a glass of orange juice when he came out of the bedroom. “Good morning,” Zara said, setting the full glass on the breakfast table next to the place she had set for him. Busying herself with presenting breakfast and setting the table took her mind away from the questions this development in their relationship raised.
Asking him to spend the night had felt like a good idea at the time. But daylight was harsh and brought out every neuroses. They’d met under unusual circumstances and Zara wasn’t even sure what a creature of the night ate for breakfast or how comfortable he was with being here. Had he stayed because he was interested in building a relationship with her or was it just for the mission?
She wasn’t even sure what she wanted from him. It was obvious she would have to rely on him to guide her through whatever Grant was doing, yet he’d made no declaration that he would do so. Hanging on to the fact that he’d come to her even after saying he wouldn’t, Zara figured this situation wasn’t clear-cut for him either.
“Morning,” he returned, but stayed close to her bedroom door, twenty feet from her current position next to the table in front of her open plan kitchen. He didn’t move much, she’d noticed that about him before. But his eyes scanned the space, left to right, up and down, but she had no idea what he was looking for.
Choosing to ignore his quirk, she tried to put him at ease with conversation. “Who was on the phone?” she asked.
“An associate,” he said. Observing how he was fully clothed, and keeping his distance, she thought he might try to rush off. But before he did, she had to confirm one fact that had occurred to her while making breakfast.
Exhaling through her nose, Zara propped a hand on the back of the chair beside her and flicked her hair from her face. “Look, I know this is a dumb question to ask now, given, you know...”
“But?”
Loosening in deference to the inevitability of her question, she asked, “Are you married?”
Divulging no hint as to the answer, he stayed still. “Didn’t you ask me that already?”
“No,” she said, raising a finger and cocking a hip to swoop around the table toward him. “No, I asked if you had a girlfriend and technically a wife wouldn’t be a girlfriend, would she?”
“Technically...” he said, tilting his head in a way that could concede her point.
She shrugged. “You seem like the kind of guy to whom technicalities would matter.”
“I am,” he said. “But I’m not married.”
Getting her chance to look at him in the light, she paused to squint and brought her hands to her hips. Tall and broad she’d already known, but she hadn’t realized how his dark brown hair had lighter tones through it that caught in the early morning sunshine flowing into her living room. The darkness remained in his eyes, but his complexion was warm, and the hard angles of his face fit with the image she had of him in her mind.
Rough around the edges, he had straight white teeth and keenness in his manner. Seeing him like this in the natural light, he became a completely different animal. Not a less dangerous one, but somehow more real, more human, like a man she could hold on to.
“That was a long call to be all business,” she said. “Are you going to give me an excuse now and run out of here?”
“I kept my end of the bargain,” he said. “I stayed until breakfast.”
She didn’t want him to run away, not when she felt like she was making progress. “You haven’t eaten anything,” she said, glancing back at the table. “I made blueberry pancakes. There’s fruit and toast and juice.” Zara silenced herself before she went into full-on rant mode.
“And coffee?” he asked, but he had to be able to smell it.
Smiling, she took that question as interest. Even if all he stayed for was the coffee, it was a start. “And coffee,” she said with a nod. Tiptoeing over to him, she curled her fingers around his wrist and began to walk backwards, guiding him the direction of the table. Being with him here, like this, without the intensity of night, was strange. Still, he seemed as assured as ever, leaving her nervous about voicing her uncertainty. “You told me your word was the most precious thing you could give.”
Implying he might be reneging on the deal was enough to provoke a frown. “Do I have your trust?” he asked, seizing the chance to talk business. Taking control of their movement, he grasped the back of her neck and turned her around to push her forward, though with his elbow bent, she was bumped along by the breadth of his rigid chest too. “You said if I stayed until breakfast that I would.”
Business was his comfort zone and that was something she could identify with. “Sit and eat,” she said, pleased, at least, for the chance that she might get some answers. “And tell me what the hell we’re mixed up in.”
Zara tried to move away, but his grip on her neck tightened to hold her against him. Burying his face in her hair, Raven dragged in a long loud breath that made her shudder and her thoughts of business diminished. “You smell like sex,” he mumbled.
He spoke so matter-of-fact, but her waist quivered and lightened in response to his statement because it reminded her that they’d been naked together all night.
“I haven’t been in the shower,” she said, twisting around to face him so she could extricate herself from his grasp. Sweeping her hair from her face, Zara prodded a finger into his chest to delay making eye contact. “And neither have you.” In the light, she hadn’t been this up close to him, and it was unsettling that his stature was no less formidable during the day. She was imprisoned between him and the table. He let her go and leaned over to rest his hands on the back of the dining chair pressed to her spine, eating up the last slither of space between their bodies. “Which of course you wouldn’t have because you don’t get naked anywhere that isn’t your home.” Her mumbled words were a return to her previous awkwardness.
“Disappointed by that, aren’t you?” he asked. Curling his fingers around her neck again, he tried to angle her face upward, but he had to use his other hand to tip up her chin and make it happen. “Come here.”
On her tiptoes, she still had to crane her neck to meet his mouth when he kissed her, but her stiff muscles ceased to object when she got a taste of him. Although not a plundering kind of kiss like those he bestowed on her in bed, his tongue still felt the same. His strength reassured her enough that her feeling of being intimidated waned.
She felt herself falling, like she’d just slipped from a cliff and was hurtling toward the rocks and waves below. One landing would kill her, the other would set her free, and she had no idea, which would be her destiny. His kiss erased her anxiety and reminded her of all he’d done to protect her. He might be a thug most of the time, but he kissed her like she was his sun, the source of energy he n
eeded to be as strong as he was. It could be that her feelings were a symptom of his impressive physique, because every time he touched her, he reminded her of his vigor. When he kissed her, he singled her out to be the center of his world. With him shielding her from harm, she felt like the most precious jewel in the world.
“God, you’re tall,” she said when he slid his finger away from her chin. The corner of his mouth tipped up, and the affect that small change had on the intention of his gaze made her almost choke on her own breath.
Leaving her place in front of him, she moved around the circular table. He kept hold of her neck for as long as he could, but his fingers eventually drifted away. Retrieving the coffee pot from the kitchen, she filled two mugs that were on the table. Zara pushed one across the table to the position opposite hers, then seated herself and gulped her hot caffeine.
“Are you going to sit down?” she asked, lifting her eyes over her mug.
He was examining the table in such a way that provoked her to examine it too, except she saw nothing that would warrant such scrutiny. “I don’t… I don’t traditionally do breakfast around a…”
Glad that she wasn’t the only one unnerved, and that she had the chance to put him at ease, Zara laughed and reached over to put a piece of toast on a plate. “Then I hope you enjoy this.”
Straining his eyes toward the window, Raven blocked the daylight with an open hand and pulled out a chair. Sitting sideways in the chair, he put an elbow on the table and snagged the coffee mug to glug down the liquid, keeping his hand up and his attention on the window the whole time.
“I thought that spies liked to be able to see the door,” she said, putting jelly on her toast, then pointing her knife at the front door which was in the corner behind him.
He didn’t turn. “Someone comes through the door I’ve got plenty of time to turn around and shoot him in the heart. This here,” he said, waving an arm at the wall of windows. “This is a fucking death trap. Have you considered window treatments?”
Raven (Kindred #1) Page 12
