by Alisa Woods
The tension in her body softens. Her eyes are luminous in the morning sun. It takes everything I have not to slip a hand into her hair, draw her in, and feast … and not stop until both of us are shaking. Her definitely first.
“This is all… exhausting.” But I can tell she believes me—at least the part she needs to. That she’s safe with me.
“I know. You need to rest.” I gesture back to the apartment, the small section of the estate that’s thoroughly modern. My palms are itching to touch her again, and I’m once again wrestling with the part that wants to lead her to the guest room, close the door, and spend the next twelve hours indulging.
She’s not moving. “I really need to know what day it is.”
“Look at your phone.”
She scowls at it. “Is it really Sunday? Is this part of the trick?” She mumbles it, then raises her gaze. “Look, it’s really important. I can’t miss this meeting I have on Monday.” Alarm passes over her face. “I don’t even have my computer! Shit.” She curls her hand around her phone and presses it to her forehead, closing her eyes briefly. “Oh, my God, this is a disaster.”
“It’ll be fine—”
She drops her hand and glares at me. “It will not be fine! You and your fucking cosplay gang war—you stole two weeks from me, weeks where I was fucking locked up and getting tortured—and that nearly cost me my job. And I can’t lose this one, not again. You do not understand—”
“Okay. All right.” My hands are up, placating. Because she’s right. I barreled into this with no plan whatsoever. The moment I discovered she was in danger, I was laser-focused on whisking her away to safety. And then she was so mouth-watering in person, everything in me has short-circuited. Get your shit, together, Alarie. “Make me a list. Everything you need. I can get your computer and anything else. I’ll have it here within hours. Meanwhile, you need to get some sleep. Rest up in case the worst happens, and we have to move again. I want you ready to decamp, portable, in case they find you. If they do, I’ll fucking murder them where they stand. They will not touch you, I can promise you that. But it’ll mean we have to move again, and you’ll need to be well-rested, just in case. Deal?”
I can see her relax as I talk. Or maybe she’s mirroring my calm. It helps to treat her like this—a client—rather than what she really is.
The other half of my soul.
I shove that thought aside as quickly as it forms.
“Deal.” Her voice is quiet. Hushed. The ashen color in her cheeks is back. She steps toward the apartment and stops, giving me a weary look. “Just promise me it’s not really Monday.”
“It’s really not Monday.” I say it with the conviction of truth. She could look it up easily enough, but I have the feeling she’s questioning her own perception of everything right now. And that’s not okay. I need her steadier than that if she’s going to comply with my directions—that’s essential to keeping her safe. Especially given I don’t know how the Vardigah are tracking her yet.
She nods and shuffles toward the apartment. Even exhausted and emotionally broken down, she has a certain sensuality in how she moves. I picture the muscles that must be under all that office wear. My fantasy skips ahead to her flexing that strength as she’s riding me. Everything in me tightens as I follow behind, wrestling with the part that’s already seeing her naked, spread before me.
I guide her to the guest bedroom. “There are nightclothes in the dresser.” I keep the place well-stocked for all kinds of visitors. Or rather, the housekeepers do. “There’s a pad of paper on the desk. Write down what you need and slip it under the door. I’ll be nearby at all times. I’ll stop back in a little while for that list and get to work on that while you rest.” I’ve got a grip on the door frame, not allowing myself to step inside. The guest bedroom is really a suite—bed, sitting area, desk, computer, en suite bathroom—everything she needs. And there’s plenty of room to not feel cramped.
I don’t mention the cameras.
She’s looking forlornly at the bed, a four-postered mahogany that’s been well-used over the years, by me and an endless parade of bedmates. My mind conjures velvet ties around her ankles, each tethered to a different post.
I grip the door jamb harder. “All right?” The strain in my voice makes her look back.
“All right.” It’s resigned.
I close the door and get myself the hell away from that room. I tell myself I’ll need to watch her closely to make sure the Vardigah don’t track her and show up in her bedroom. It has the merit of being true. But I’ve got three separate fantasies of Jayda I need to work out of my system before I’ll be fit for doing anything else… and with just my hand to do the job.
If I hurry, I can watch while she changes.
Three
Jayda
I’m pinned down.
The bastards have hauled me to the chair again, and I’m pinned by those nightmare appendages, the ones that come up from below. Grace is here—somehow, the wall is transparent now, and she’s banging on it and shouting, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. And it doesn’t matter anyway because they’ve got the probe out, the one they put to my head, the one that tears apart my mind. I struggle and thrash, and my body splits open, gashes bleeding everywhere, but it doesn’t matter, they don’t stop. They press the crystal probe to my temple, and I open my mouth and scream and scream and scream—
“Jayda! Wake up!”
I gasp in air and bolt straight up. Someone has me, rock-hard grip on my shoulders, but I fight them and fight them. My scream is still echoing in my ears, my throat hoarse from it, even though I know it was just a dream.
A nightmare.
I stop fighting. My heart is beating so hard, it spasms like I’m having a heart attack. I gulp in air, one gasp after another and another. My eyes finally focus on the man holding me.
Ree. “You’re okay. You’re safe.” His voice is deep and strong, like an anchoring rock in a wild hurricane. He’s on the bed with me. I think he climbed up to restrain me. “You just had a bad dream.”
I nod because I can’t speak—I’m still trying to calm my ragged breathing and pounding heart.
He releases me and backs off the bed. “I’ll get you some water. Just stay there.” He turns and sprints to the bathroom. I hear the water go on.
I blink and work my legs free of the tangle of sheets. Everything is shaking. The lightweight pajamas leave me chilled, and the stone floor is cold on my bare feet. I’m trying to stand by the time Ree returns with a cup of water.
He glares at me while holding the water out. “You don’t take direction very well.”
My hand shakes as I try to bring the water to my mouth.
“Hey.” He moves smoothly to my side, slipping an arm around my waist. His body is like a mountain of granite next to my wet-noodle one. I can’t help but lean into him. It’s either that or sit down again. He steadies my hand with the paper cup. “Take it slow,” he says, and this time, I don’t fight his commands. I let the warmth of him—the solidity of his body—brace me while I take a dozen small sips. My parched throat unlocks. My body starts to calm. “That’s good,” he says as I drain the last of the water. He takes the cup, crushes it, then tosses it to the floor. He’s still holding me around the waist, but then he tips my face up to look at him. “You steady, there?”
“Fine,” I mumble. I try to pull away—the closeness of him, so strong and intense, is making me uncomfortably aware of his body touching mine. My heart is racing, the fear mingling with attraction, and it’s unsettling. But I’m weak, and he’s not letting go.
“Hang on.” He adjusts, so he’s only holding my arm, not my entire body. “Can’t have you breaking your head open on the slate flooring. The housekeepers would be very unhappy.”
I slip him a sideways look, chastising him for the bad joke, but he’s busy navigating us across the room, heading for the door. “I can walk,” I say.
“Sure.” He’s still got a grip on me. “Othe
rwise, I’d carry you.” He says it without a trace of a smile. I can’t tell if he’s joking or… if he’d actually prefer it that way.
We do this shuffle walk, him bracing me so strongly my feet barely have to carry my weight, all the way to the couches in the main room. By the time we get there, I’m feeling much better. I reach for the armrest of the couch and ease myself down into it. He lets me go this time, but it seems reluctant.
His sweeping gaze over my lightweight pajamas, loose around me as I curl up on the couch, feels hotter than it should. His dark eyes find mine. “The nightmares,” he says. “Do you have them often? Or is this because of last night?” Meaning the decapitated Vardigah that almost made me throw up.
“I’m fine,” I repeat. I don’t want to explain that I have them every other night. That they’re always the same. Except for this time with Grace. She’s usually just a voice. None of that matters—it is what it is.
He’s unimpressed with my answer. “Can I trust you stay put if I promise to bring you your laptop?”
That perks me right up. “You have it? How did you get here so fast—”
He holds up a finger to stop me, then points at me. “Don’t move.”
He waits for my agreement.
It rubs me the wrong way, but in truth, I’m still a little shaky. “Fine.”
He tips his head then strides off, heading back to the bedrooms. I haven’t explored the place at all, but I glimpsed other rooms further down the hall from mine. There’s nothing on the couch to keep warm, but now that I’ve brushed off the dream, I’m not shivering so much. Ree quickly returns, and I’ll be damned—he somehow got my laptop and a bag of my clothes all the way from New York. I just stare as he hands over my phone, which he must have lifted from my room and recharged. Before I can get the thanks out of my mouth, he commands me to stay put and heads off to the kitchen. I just watch him go with my mouth hanging open.
Special forces, private security, keeps his word, practically carries me to the living room after a bad dream, and he’s making food? All while looking damn fine in a well-used pair of jeans and a black t-shirt that hugs all those muscles? And bare feet. I have a very weak spot for a man who’s comfortable enough in his own skin for that. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone as thoroughly self-contained as this man. I can’t imagine anything that would make him tremble for even a second.
I blow out a low breath and place a hand flat on my closed laptop. You’re in the middle of something here, Jayda. Something really messed up. And you’ve got work to do. Stay focused. But damn, this boy is hot.
Just as I’m opening my laptop, he returns with a tray filled with gorgeous food: a tiny spinach quiche, a big fluffy croissant, an enormous chocolate-dipped strawberry, and a glass of orange juice with plastic wrapped on top to keep it from spilling.
“Pain au chocolat pour madame.” His accent is suddenly very French. And sexy as hell.
“I’m sorry, did you say chocolate?”
He smiles and pulls a padded chair opposite my spot on the couch. “I had pâtisseries brought from Paris this morning while you slept.”
Is this guy for real? I decide I don’t care—the food definitely is. I dive in, suddenly famished. Work can wait while I scarf this unbelievably delicious chocolate croissant.
He bites his lip while he watches me eat, his eyes darkening. I pause in my inhalation of the food. “I’m sorry, did you want some?” I say around a bite way too big to be polite.
A smile grows on his face, slowly, luxuriously, like he’s waiting for me to get the joke. Only he hasn’t said anything. Finally, he says, “Yes.”
I’ve never heard a single word filled with so much sex. I swallow my bite and set down the rest of the croissant. Then I work to clear my throat and get the heat off my face. “Help yourself.” I make it clear I mean the food, not me. Although my body is in a full flush of heat that’s screaming me, me, me.
“No, please.” He gestures to the tray. “Continue.” The smile settles into a smirk, and I feel like he hears the heat of my body more than the words coming out of my mouth.
Which is unsettling as hell. I don’t understand anything that’s happening here, not really, and Ree coming on to me feels wildly dangerous. Not that he would hurt me—I feel unquestionably safe. Maybe it’s just his dark looks and military resumé. I force myself to remember he’s part of this whole cabal of cosplayers, engaged in some insane, apparently international, game-playing that is dangerous—deadly so—and I want nothing to do with any of it.
I open my laptop and try to focus there. I left the office hanging with promises to get our report ready for Monday’s merger meeting—I was supposed to send it to the team last night after the gallery opening. Or was that this morning? I have no idea, but my inbox is filled with people wondering where the slide deck is, and I’m still pulling the numbers together. And making up for my sketchy-as-hell attendance record lately. I tap away and quickly reassure my team that I’ll have a preliminary set of numbers to them very shortly. And the slide deck after that. My fingers are flying over the keyboard, but my mouth is begging for more food, so I send off one more quick email then pause to eat again.
Ree is still studying me. “Your work is important.” He says it flatly, almost like a challenge.
“Well.” I take a sip of juice. Fresh squeezed. Oh, my God, I haven’t had food this good in forever. It’s always take-out or whatever I can scrounge between meetings. “It’s important to me.” I can’t claim I’m serving some higher purpose in helping one billion-dollar company scoop up another—or more often vacuum up the little guys who might be competition if they grew to full-sized before being absorbed.
Ree leans forward, his gaze intense. “And why is that?”
I chew through my strawberry, considering him a moment, but he seems genuinely curious. “I grew up in Georgia. My family wasn’t poor, but they weren’t exactly rich, either. Money was always tight. Life was always one blown-out tire or broken arm away from disaster, and we’d be eating out of the food pantry for a month. I determined early on I was going to do better than that. Not because I think money is everything—I work in finance; I see the guys who sell their souls for another zero in their brokerage accounts—but because I could. I was just as smart as anyone in my class, no matter what class, and I worked three times as hard.”
“Because you had to.”
It’s so unexpected, it stops me cold. I have no idea how to take that.
He laces his fingers, his gaze hot on my face. “You want to prove yourself to your family.”
I frown. “My family loves me, no matter what. They have my back, always. It’s the rest of the world that never quite believes you’re capable. I have to prove myself to the company. There’s no room for error. No messing up. I already lost one job for a mistake that I paid for dearly… I’m not going to lose this one. And all this…” I wave around at the luxury apartment that’s apparently somewhere in the French countryside. “…isn’t helping. Not to mention, I just disappeared for two weeks—”
“You were kidnapped.” His intensity ramps up.
I lean back and give him a look. “I can’t tell them that!” Does he not get this at all? I set the laptop aside because I’m just too agitated—I’ve got to stand. I jab a finger at him. “Someone like you wouldn’t understand. Everyone will look at you and just assume you know what you’re doing. If something bad happened to you, well, that couldn’t be your fault, could it? But not me. People take one look at me and assume I must have done something to deserve it, no matter what it was… no matter if it almost… got me killed…” I’m shaking. My finger jabbing the air is quivering, and it’s fucking embarrassing.
Ree springs to his feet, so smooth and fast, I hardly realize it until he’s in my face. “So you’re relentless.”
“What?” I pull back my hand and lean away.
“You work day and night.”
“How would you know that?”
He edges closer
. “You’re smarter than they are. Savvier. You do all the homework. You have to understand everyone’s game just to survive. And they sit back and wait for a chance to smack you down. Do you know why? Because if they had to compete on a level playing field with someone like you, they’d lose. Every time. And they know it. Trust me, they know.”
I’m reeling now, just blinking and staring at him. So close. Intense. Like he wants to breathe me in, but instead, he’s standing inches away and saying things… things I know, I’ve taken for granted because of course that’s how the fucked-up world works, but he’s confirming it to my face, and that rarely happens. “I can’t afford to mess up.”
“I know.” Then he leans in, and I freeze because I think he might touch me, and I’m not sure if I want to be touched… or if I’m dying for him to touch me. But he just leans past me, reaching for the couch, then coming back. I’m like a statue, waiting for him to clear my space, but he hovers close and whispers, “I like a woman who knows how to get things done.” Then he pulls away, and it feels like he’s taking my breath with him. He’s suddenly handing me my phone. “Call whoever you have to. Let me know what you need. You’re not going to lose this job, Jayda. Not on my watch.”
My mouth is hanging open again. He flashes a look across my pajamas, gives me a small smirk, then swipes the juice glass off my tray and heads back to the kitchen. I watch him go, my heart thudding, and wonder what just happened. It’s as if he’s inside me, under my skin and in my mind. Like he knows where my secret fears live, and he just took them out, dusted them off, and tossed them aside, saying, You got this. I don’t understand this feeling whirling inside me, but it’s making me light-headed like the world is unsteady.
