50. Jude
50
JUDE
I usually got FOMO when Nolan and Rafe worked without me, but this time I’d definitely gotten the better end of the deal. A night alone with Lilah in the City of Lights, complete with a fancy dinner and a walk through Paris at night?
I was all the fuck in.
Besides, I didn’t need to be there for the meeting with Ghost, one of the few guys we’d served with in the SEALs who hadn’t bought into Sandoval’s narrative about what had happened in the desert, about what he’d said we’d done.
Ghost left the service two years ago and set up shop in a suburb of Paris after he fell in love with a Parisian woman. He was a gun for hire, but not the way Rafe, Nolan, and I were: Ghost focused entirely on protecting rich people and their fancy houses and their fancy boats and their fancy kids.
We were hoping he’d know something about the estate where the MdM (we still had no idea what that stood for) was being held on the 16th. If he didn’t, we were going to have to dig into some of our less cooperative sources, some of whom were connected to the Paris Mob.
Definitely not our first choice.
While Lilah took a bath, I took a shower, then dressed in a silk black button-down and tailored black slacks that ended just above my ankles. After all, we were in Paris, where black was always king, which suited me fine.
I came out of my room dressed for dinner and found Nolan and Rafe heading for the elevator, both dressed in jeans and T-shirts.
Rafe stopped in his tracks. “You fucker.”
He’d been more transparent about his feelings for Lilah since they’d fucked in the gym and he was obviously figuring out that he’d made a critical error by volunteering to talk to Ghost while I stayed with Lilah.
I laughed. “Sucks to be you.”
“Just take care of her,” Nolan said.
I scowled. “You don’t have to tell me, bro.”
Somewhere along the way Lilah had become the most important thing in my life — in all our lives. She’d become our VIP security client without even realizing it and without paying a dime. She probably didn’t even notice the way we worked around her, but we were always in some kind of formation, always packing heat, always on the lookout for potential threats.
Because no one was getting within five feet of her unless we allowed it. And I wasn’t going to allow it.
They continued to the elevator.
“Give Ghost my best.”
Rafe flipped me off without turning around.
I was still laughing when the elevator doors closed, but I wasn’t laughing a few seconds later when I heard Lilah’s voice behind me.
“Is this okay?” I turned around to find her standing in the suite’s living room, wearing a simple black dress that skimmed every curve of her body and green satin heels in a deep emerald almost the exact same color of her eyes. “I don’t have a lot of fancy clothes. This is one of the ones Rafe bought me in Greece.”
Looking at her made my heart hurt. Lilah was a pistol when she was ready to fight, wearing jeans and T-shirts and carrying her knife around like it was a favorite stuffed animal. But get her in a situation where she had to put on a dress and she was suddenly unsure, having no fucking idea how beautiful she was, how effortless her beauty.
I walked toward her and drank her in. The dress was modest, with a boatneck that showed off the delicious rise of her collarbone. I wanted to trace it with my lips, draw it over and over in my sketchpad, the way Nolan listened to her heartbeat.
The dress ended just above her knees, leaving enough to the imagination that my imagination — which was pretty fucking vivid when it came to Lilah — went into overdrive.
She’d left her hair down and kept her makeup light, proving that she needed absolutely nothing extra to be the most beautiful girl in any room.
“You’re stunning.” I took her hand, then gave her a little twirl so I could see her ass in the dress.
Just because I wanted to draw her didn’t mean I didn’t also want to fuck her.
I pulled her against me and kissed her cheek, trying to remember a time when kissing a woman’s cheek had made my dick hard and my heart soft at the same time.
She put her hands on my chest and looked up at me. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
I fell into her eyes. “Ready for dinner?”
I wanted to give her Paris at night. Wanted to give her the world.
She nodded. “I’m starving actually.”
I laughed. “Of course you are.”
I loved that about her: her unabashed appetite for everything. And the truth was, I loved everything about Lilah.
Which was why it was going to hurt like a motherfucker when she left.