Chapter 38
Black Knights Inc.
“Where ya headed?”
Hew leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb outside Sabrina’s room. Trying like hell to sound casual, friendly.
She stood before her dresser, clad in a forest-green gown that cinched in her waist. It held her breasts high and flirted with her ankles and the black patent leather heels strapped to her feet.
She tugged a brush through the waterfall of her hair, and it looked so shiny he thought he could see his reflection in the long, dark locks.
He loved it when she wore it down, when it cascaded over her shoulders and curled around her clavicles. Then again, he loved it when she wore it up, too, when it showed off the softness of her neck, highlighted the delicate line of her jaw, and exposed all the lovely, pale, perfect skin.
His throat went tight with the memory of what it’d been like to run his hands through the strands. They’d slipped through his fingers, as soft as seafoam, as cool and clean as a spring morning. And she’d sighed at his touch, tipping her head back. Trusting him. Letting him in.
In that moment, he hadn’t felt unloved or unwanted. He’d felt like he finally, finally belonged somewhere. Belonged with someone.
And then it had all come crumbling down.
As castles built in the sky tend to do, he told himself.
Then, with a silent curse, he did what he’d been doing for the last two weeks. He shoved the memory into a mental closet, turned the key, and told it to stay put. To stay hidden. To please, please, please have mercy on him.
“Martin’s finally back from his business trip.” Her South Carolina drawl swirled delicately inside his ears. “He’s taking me out to dinner,” she finished without turning from the mirror.
Martin Massey. Great.
After meeting her for a drink the day after her abduction, the shiny hedge fund manager had hopped on a red-eye flight. Which meant Hew had been granted a blessed reprieve while the man was overseas.
Apparently, though, the clock had run out. And there was no more denying the fact that Sabrina had a boyfriend and Hew had…nothing.
Nothing but the image of Martin stepping out of his expensive Mercedes in a suit tailored to within an inch of its life, with shoes so shiny they could blind a man, and wearing a 100-watt smile that had won over the hearts and minds of investors, boardrooms, and social media mavens from Charleston.
What did Hew have in comparison? A tragic childhood, scars across his knuckles, and a wardrobe full of T-shirts that smelled faintly of aviation fuel.
You were lucky she deigned to let ya—
What was he supposed to call that singularly glorious afternoon? A tryst. An encounter? An all-too-brief sexual rendezvous?
The day that wrecked me and changed everything I thought I knew about my feelings for her?
Whatever name he gave it, it all boiled down to the same truth.
He’d been a damned fool to promise he could make love to her and then act like nothing had changed. Like he hadn’t been fundamentally changed by the act.
He’d done his best to hold to his word, though. To keep things easy between them. To act no differently than before.
But he had to admit, his pretense was cracked six ways from Sunday.
Things between them no longer felt like a comfy blanket on a cold winter’s night. Now, they walked around each other like the space between them was a minefield. Every step was cautious, careful. Every word was honed with an edge of tension.
She no longer sought the seat beside him at the conference table.
Didn’t catch his eye from across the room to share a conspiratorial smile that told him they were in on the same inside joke.
And hadn’t once come knocking at his door to talk or to swipe the stuffed lobster off his dresser…
even though he’d left his door ajar in invitation.
Even though he’d kept an ear cocked and his fingers crossed. Waiting. Hoping.
He couldn’t say if it was him or her creating the awkwardness between them. What he could say was that he missed the easy way she used to laugh around him. Missed how she would touch him without reluctance or tell him what was in her head without him first having to ask.
Lying awake at night the last two weeks, he couldn’t help but wonder if it might not have been better had he kept his damn hands to himself. If it might not have been better had he never known the gentleness of her touch or the sweetness of her lips.
Then he’d remember the glory of loving her, of making love to her, and he couldn’t bring himself to regret having experienced that one perfect thing. That one perfect moment.
Even if he took nothing else with him to his grave, he could take that.
For one blissful afternoon, Sabrina Greenlee—the Roman river goddess—was mine.
She set aside the brush and turned to him. Just like always, her big brown eyes sucked him in like whirlpools. He wanted to drown in them. He did drown in them all day, every day, because he was helpless to do anything else.
When she walked over to stand with him in the doorway, her perfume drifted around him like sweet morning mist. That pear and lavender scent would always remind him of their time together, because it lingered in the space between her breasts, in the hollow of her belly button, and in the crook of her knees.
All the places he’d explored with his hands and his mouth.
All the places he wanted to explore again. A million times over.
“What’s on the agenda for you tonight?” she asked, her voice polite. Too polite.
This was how they were around each other now. Too polite.
“I’m goin’ to hunker down with that dragon book you were pestrin’ me to read.”
Her smile flickered, but it didn’t light up her face like it used to. “Be prepared for fast flying, sword fighting, and wars between realms. There’s also romance. Which, in my humble opinion, is what takes a book from good to great.”
“Mmm,” was all he said, because she didn’t want to hear what he wanted to say.
Romance is what takes a life from good to great. I love you, Sabrina. Say ya love me, too, and I promise ya more adventure than either of us will ever find in a book.
They stared at each other then, each waiting for the other to speak. To say something real. To find the one word or phrase that would return them to how they used to be.
Neither of them did.
Neither of them could.
And that silence…that chasm of everything unsaid…was the most desolate place on earth.
“Right.” She finally nodded. “Guess I’ll see you later, then.”
For the briefest second, he saw sadness flicker in her eyes. Or maybe he was projecting his own thoughts and feelings onto her—hoping to see his own melancholy mirrored back to him—because she quickly turned, and he was left to listen to her heels tapping down the hall.
With each echoing footfall, he would swear she dragged a piece of him with her. And the farther she went, the hollower he became until he was nothing but an empty shell standing in the hallway.
He waited until he heard her step off the last tread before he trudged into the TV room. With a defeated sigh, he sank onto the couch, picked up the damned dragon book from the coffee table, and opened it to the first page.
No matter how hard he focused, though, he couldn’t stop the words from blurring. He kept imagining Sabrina sitting across a candlelit table from Martin Massey, laughing that laugh and smiling that smile that Hew hadn’t heard or seen in days.
That he feared he might never hear or see again.