Chapter 13
CALLIE
I walk into the house after work to the sound of men talking and the click of metal. Fear grips my throat, but the door swings shut behind me, and the noise must alert them to my presence.
“Callie?” Reid calls, and the other voices are instantly silent.
“Yeah, I’ll just go to the kitchen.” I don’t know what is going on, but I’m sure I shouldn’t be involved with it.
“No.” Reid’s response is immediate. There’s the smack of quick footsteps, and then he’s before me.
I can’t help the way I light up when I see him. It’s like he’s helium. My heart lifts. My chin tilts up to see his gorgeous face. He hasn’t shaved, and his hair is mussed, as though he’s been running his hands through it. Even my stupid voice goes all high and breathy. “Hi!”
I’m thinking of last night, when he was insistent about my pleasure. When he put his mouth on me.
I wasn’t sure how to act this morning when he casually kissed my cheek before I left for work. He’s his usual dark self, but his actions speak louder than anything he could say or any superficial smile I’ve had from other people. “Come on. We’re just finishing up.”
I follow him through to what was a bedroom, but has become Reid’s office. It’s complete with a half dozen of his men, standing around a large wooden box that’s full of guns. All the blood drains from my head, and for a second I think I might faint.
They’re all holding guns—big ones, I don’t know the technical term, I’m a nurse not a mafia boss—and they look to Reid for guidance.
“Callie, you’ve met…” He reels off the names of his men, and each one nods respectfully. They don’t reach out a hand to shake or anything like that.
“Hi!” I squawk.
“Get this stuff out of here—”
“I don’t mind!” I say cheerily, but my voice is shaking, because there is a massive pile of deadly weapons in my house. It’s like walking in and discovering a load of poisonous snakes in glass terrariums. I know in theory it’s fine. But it’s a shock. It feels risky.
“We’ll do the rest tomorrow.”
The rough layered wood, the sawdust that’s packed between the guns, the click of metal as Reid’s men pack them in.
It’s a physical reminder that Reid Maddox runs a mafia.
He’s not a businessman, although maybe he is that too.
He’s not just my patient. He killed my father for me.
He’s a man who deals in arms, and has lost men to pointless disputes with other mafias.
I’m sure he’d disagree that it was pointless. And yeah, it’s easy for me to say that, safe in London that’s protected by the London Mafia Syndicate and not subject to the kind of cruelty that you hear happens in other places.
They leave, taking the box of guns with them, and being extremely careful to avoid me, or even brushing near me. And I suddenly have an instinct that if they touched me, Reid wouldn’t like it.
Really, really wouldn’t like it.
No one touches him, either. They are fine with giving him shit, and speaking their minds, but there’re no slaps on the back, or even brushing past him.
The only person I’ve seen him touch, or touch him, is me.
I don’t know what to make of that.
“Now, how was your day?” Reid asks as his men close the door behind them. He focuses entirely on me, as though now he has his job out of the way, I’m the only thing that matters in his life.
Despite the evidence of the danger that I was just shown, I glow under his gaze.
“Not bad, you?” I smile up at him, and awareness shimmers over my skin.
“The best part is seeing you,” he admits hoarsely, his brows low as though this is something he doesn’t like but can’t prevent.
I shouldn’t. This is wrong… he’s dangerous and grumpy. But I want to feel his arms around me again. The space between us shrinks without either of us seeming to move.
A lean, a breath. One step, and then another. We’re staring into each other’s eyes the whole time, as though we’re magnets being pulled together. Slowly, surely.
“I should check your arm,” I say softly as we almost touch. His pristine charcoal-grey suit and my jeans and T-shirt. We couldn’t be more different, and this just proves it. He’s casually examining guns with his men as I stitch people up and care for them in hospital.
But whenever we’re together, it’s impossible to remember why he’s a bad man. It’s only the two of us in the whole world.
That time he made me come is seared into my memory. I can’t get rid of it, and I don’t want to. And more than that, I want to kiss him. I want to feel that rough beard on my cheek and have him enclose me with his arms.