Chapter 4 Solomon #2
Percy appeared from the kitchen with a glass of water. “Solomon built most of it. The man’s basically a lumberjack with commitment issues.”
“I don’t have commitment issues.”
“You’ve been working on that back porch for eight months.”
“The angles are complicated.”
Mira looked between us with an expression that might have been amusement. “You two argue like brothers.”
“Worse,” Percy said cheerfully. “Goes deeper than that. We’re stuck with each other.”
Lucian cleared his throat. “Your room is upstairs. Best one in the house.”
She followed him up the stairs, and I followed her. Close enough to catch her if she stumbled, far enough that she wouldn’t feel my presence as a threat.
I was very aware of the distance between us. Of the inches separating my chest from her back. The way her hips swayed as she climbed each step, the curve of her ass visible even beneath the loose scrubs.
My mouth went dry. My hands ached to grip those hips, pull her back against me, feel her body pressed to mine from shoulder to thigh.
I kept my hands at my sides, counting my breaths. Reminded myself that she was traumatized and exhausted and the last thing she needed was to feel my erection pressing against her from behind.
The room we’d chosen for her was at the end of the hall. Big windows overlooking the forest. An attached bathroom with a bed large enough to disappear in.
A bed I’d imagined her in more times than I could count. Spread out on those sheets, copper hair fanned across the pillows, reaching for me with soft hands and softer sounds.
And a door with a lock.
Lucian crossed to it immediately. “This is how it works.” He demonstrated, sliding the deadbolt into place with a solid click. Then unlock it before locking it again. “No one can get in when this is engaged. Not from outside, not with a key. You’re the only one who can open it.”
Mira stared at the lock then at Lucian again.
“You can leave whenever you want,” he continued. “No one will stop you. No one will follow you. If you decide tomorrow that you want to go, we’ll drive you wherever you need to be. No questions asked.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
The question hung in the air. Lucian’s jaw tightened, and I knew he was fighting the urge to explain everything.
The bond. Our forgotten week. The desperate, consuming need to keep her close that made every word out of his mouth feel as if it was a lie of omission.
“Because you need to know you have choices,” he said finally. “Whatever happened before, whatever that man made you believe about yourself, you have choices here.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she nodded, a small, jerky movement that said she didn’t quite believe him but was willing to pretend.
“Thank you. Again.”
Lucian looked as if he wanted to say more. A lot more. Instead, he just inclined his head and walked out, his shoulder brushing mine as he passed.
Percy bounded in a moment later with an armful of supplies. “Towels, toothbrush, toothpaste, some of my clothes because they’ll fit better than anything Lucian owns. He dresses like a Victorian undertaker.” He dumped everything on the bed and grinned at her. “Anything else you need, just ask.”
“I keep on thinking this but you really are a golden retriever.”
“Well, you’re not wrong. I’ll take it as a compliment.” He backed toward the door, still grinning. “Get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll figure out the details. Food, clothes, burning your ex’s life to the ground. The usual.”
“Percy.” Lucian’s voice carried from somewhere downstairs.
“Coming!” He pointed finger guns at Mira, which was possibly the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen him do, and disappeared down the hall.
That left me.
I stood in the doorway, not entering but not leaving. She’d moved to the window and was staring out at the forest beyond the glass. The lamplight caught the copper streaks in her hair, the ones she’d tried so hard to hide.
Beautiful.
She was so goddamn beautiful, and she had no idea. I wanted to cross the room and press myself against her back, wrap my arms around her waist, bury my face in her neck and inhale until I was drunk on her scent.
My cock throbbed against my zipper. I didn’t move.
“You can go,” she said without turning around. “I know you all have things to do.”
“Nothing important.”
She turned then. Studied me with those beautiful eyes that saw too much.
“You’re the quiet one.”
“Yes.”
“The one who doesn’t ask questions.”
“I ask questions. Just not out loud.”
Her eyebrows rose slightly. “What are you asking right now?”
I considered lying. Giving her the kind of non-answer that usually ended conversations. But she was looking at me with an expression that said she actually wanted to know, and that made honesty feel less dangerous than usual.
“I’m asking what you actually need to feel safe,” I said. “Not what you think you should need or afraid to ask for.”
Her breath caught, just slightly. My whole body went tight at the noise. I wondered what other sounds I could pull from that throat if she let me.
The silence settled between us. It wasn’t uncomfortable or tense. Just present, the way silence could be when two people were taking each other’s measure.
“Could you stay?” Her voice came out smaller than before. “Just outside the door. I know that’s weird. I know I just told you to go. But I think...” She stopped then started again. “I think I might sleep better knowing someone’s there.”
The request hit me in the chest.
She was asking me to guard her. To be near her, be the presence between her and the world while she was at her most vulnerable.
She had no idea what she was offering me. No idea that I would have stayed outside that door for the rest of my very long life if she’d asked.
“I’ll be here,” I said. My voice came out rougher than I intended.
“All night?”
“If you want.”
She held my gaze for another moment, searching for whatever it was she needed to find. I didn’t know if she found it. But eventually she nodded, and I stepped back into the hallway and settled against the wall beside her door.
The lock engaged with a click.
The sound should have been a barrier. Instead, I felt trusted. She’d locked herself in, yes, but she’d asked me to stay on the other side.
I adjusted myself through my pants, biting back a groan.
This was going to be a long night.
I sat there in the darkness and listened.
Her footsteps crossing to the bed. The creak of the mattress as she lay down. The rustle of sheets, the soft exhale as she tried to settle. I imagined her sinking into those pillows, her body going loose with exhaustion, my jacket still wrapped around her shoulders.
Silence followed.
Long enough that I thought she might have fallen asleep.
And then crying.
Soft at first. Muffled, as if she was pressing her face into a pillow to smother the sound. Then harder, deeper, the kind of crying that came when you’d been holding yourself together for too long and the seams finally gave way.
Every instinct I had screamed at me to go to her. To open that door and pull her into my arms and hold her until the tears stopped. Bury my face in her hair and breathe her in and tell her she was safe now, that no one would ever hurt her again, that I would dismantle anyone who tried.
But I didn’t move.
She hadn’t asked me to come in. She’d asked me to stay outside.
And she needed to know that when she asked for something, she would get exactly what she asked for. Not more, not less. Definitely not some man deciding he knew better than she did what she needed.
That was what Hudson had done.
I would rather cut off my own hands than become another man who ignored what she asked for.
Eventually, the crying stopped. Her breathing evened out into the slow rhythm of sleep.
I closed my eyes and let myself remember.
Day five of the forgotten week. The back room of her bookshop, the two of us surrounded by boxes of new inventory. She’d been trying to lift something too heavy for her, stubborn as always, and I’d come up behind her to help.
My hands had covered hers on the box.
“I can do it myself,” she’d said.
“I know.”
“Then why are you helping?”
“Because you shouldn’t have to do everything yourself.” I’d lifted the box easily, setting it on the shelf she’d been aiming for. “Because I want to.”
She’d turned to look at me. We were close, too close, her back nearly touching my chest. I could smell her shampoo. I could see the pulse jumping at her throat.
I’d wanted to kiss her back then. Wanted to press her against those shelves and taste her mouth and find out what sounds she’d make when I slid my hands under her shirt.
I hadn’t. Because she hadn’t asked. Because I was playing a long game, earning her trust inch by inch, waiting for her to come to me.
And then the fire had taken everything.
The hours passed slowly and the cabin settled around me. Lucian appeared at the end of the hallway sometime around three in the morning, checking on me without words.
I nodded. He nodded back, disappeared again.
Percy came by an hour later, two cups of coffee in hand. He didn’t say anything, just handed me one and sat down on the floor across from me, his back against the opposite wall.
“You should sleep,” I said.
“So should you.” He took a sip of his coffee. “We’re both going to ignore that advice.”
We sat there together until the sky started to lighten.
Just before dawn, the lock clicked.
The door opened.
Mira stood in the doorway, hair tangled, eyes swollen from crying.
She was wearing one of Percy’s shirts this time, the hem falling to her knees, and the sight of her bare legs made my mouth go dry.
I could see the shape of her thighs beneath the fabric, the soft curve where hip met waist. My fingers twitched against the floor.
She stared at me. At Percy. At the fact that we were both still there, exactly where we’d been when she’d closed the door hours ago.
“You stayed,” she said.
“You asked.”
Her expression shifted. Not trust, not yet. But the hairline fracture in her walls, the first sign that maybe, someday, she’d let us through.
She didn’t say thank you or anything else at all.
Just looked at me with those mismatched eyes and I saw an emotion in them that wasn’t just fear.
Recognition. Faint and confused, buried under layers of trauma and lost memories, but there.
I held her gaze and let her look. Let her see whatever she needs to see. Let her see the hunger I couldn’t quite hide, the want that burned beneath centuries of practiced control.
Then she stepped back and closed the door. The lock clicked into place.
Percy looked at me across the hallway, his coffee growing cold in his hands.
“That was something,” he said quietly.
Yeah. It was.
It was a start. And a start was all I needed.
After all, I am a very, very patient man.