23. Christian
CHRISTIAN
Y ou shouldn’t lie to them.”
“I was wondering how long it would take you.”
She narrows her gaze on me across the car and I don’t have to look at her to know her cheeks are bright red.
“Well, I am not Mrs. C,” she huffs, leaning back in the seat.
Not yet.
“Some of the girls get a little . . . attached.”
“So, you used me,” she points out, and I make no move to deny it.
“Shall we even the playing field, little devil? I can think of plenty of ways you can use me in return.”
“You’re impossible,” she groans, brushing a hand over her face to hide her smirk.
“You’re beautiful.”
She shakes her head, turning back forward, and I chuckle under my breath.
So easy to rile up.
“So, some of the girls get attached . . .” she says, and I can tell she’s nervous to ask. One glance at her, and I see her shifting in her seat. “Lindsay, or whatever her name is. She seemed . . .”
“Attached?”
She nods, biting her lip between her teeth.
I cock a brow at her, and she avoids my grin.
“This new side of you is turning out to be my favorite.”
“What, curious?”
“Jealous.”
She gawks at me, her mouth falling open, and my mind goes to all the dirty, filthy things I want to do to her.
Between our argument earlier and watching her come out of her shell at Home of Hope, to just having her in my fucking space, filling the car with honey and vanilla, I’m starting to think this hard-on is perpetual. I’m not sure it’ll ever fucking go away.
“I am not jealous,” she argues, though her tone of voice suggests the exact opposite. “I’m observant.” She brushes her hair off her face. “They totally saw through your lie, by the way. I don’t even have a ring.”
“That can be arranged,” I murmur dryly, running a thumb over my bottom lip.
“I’m serious, Christian.”
Funnily enough, so am I.
“Lindsay was a case I took while I was away. It was simple. In and out.”
“Last year?”
“Last year,” I nod.
“Is that why you left?”
I grit my teeth, mulling it over. For once, I decide to tell the truth.
“No, it had nothing to do with why I left.”
“You’re her savior,” she says after a moment when I don’t answer. She shrugs. “It makes sense.”
It doesn’t. I’m not their savior.
“I’m no one’s savior, Mila.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I know what she wants to say. I’m happy when she doesn’t. The last thing I need is her thinking this is anything but what it is. My bringing her back to her family and putting an end to a problem I created. Nothing more.
I’ve known she would hate me since I walked back into her life.
She will, too, soon enough.
“It’s better she gets the idea out of her head now rather than later.”
“Do you . . . you don’t think it’ll hurt her, thinking we’re married?”
To tell the truth, I don’t really care. Not in the way Mila does. She’s worried about her feelings. I’m just worried about the effect it’ll have on her treatment. Lindsay, like a lot of women at the home, doesn’t know what real love looks like. Fuck, I don’t either, but I know it’s not me.
“No,” I answer, hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. “I think it’s best she learns to focus on herself now and worry about shit like that later.”
“Easier said than done,” Mila says dryly, sinking back into the seat and resting her head on the headrest. I side-eye her, and her expression’s grim. I don’t fucking like it. “What about Lily?”
My spine stiffens. “What about her?”
“What’s her story?”
I grit my teeth, pulling down the path that will lead to our island.
“It’s dark, Mila.”
“Everyone’s story is dark in the wrong light, Christian.”
I shake my head. Lily’s story is one that keeps me up at night when I can’t sleep. I’ve watched her grow up from a five-year-old crying little girl to an eight-year-old that doesn’t take shit from anyone.
Oddly enough, she reminds me of Mila.
“She was sold by her grandfather to pay off an underground brothel in New York.”
She’s silent and I feel her stiffen beside me.
“How old was she?”
“Five.”
“And her mother?” Mila asks quietly. “She spoke about her.”
“She was murdered. Shortly before Lily was sold.”
She lets out a deep breath, trying—and failing—to discretely wipe a tear from slipping down her cheek. My chest feels tight. Heavy with each breath. I think I surprise even myself when I reach across the center console and place my hand over hers in her lap. She jumps but doesn’t push me off.
It shouldn’t mean anything, but a new kind of darkness stirs inside me.
The dangerous kind.
Carefully, like I might bite her, she twists her hand over and entwines our fingers. Both of us are silent.
Why does holding her hand feel like the most intimate thing we’ve ever done?
“I would like to help her,” Mila says softly.
“What would you like to do?”
She blinks at me like she’s surprised I’m open to the idea.
“New bedding, for a start. Their blankets are tattered. All of them.”
I nod, my fingers tightening around hers when she attempts to disentangle them.
Fuck her, she’s not getting it back.
“She’s been there a long time. Three years in a month or two.”
“And she has no family?”
“None that wouldn’t put her through a worse hell than what she’s already suffered.”
She’s quiet, staring out the window ahead. I wish I could step inside her mind and see what’s really going through that pretty little head of hers. Especially after I found her screaming and in a full panic.
“Mila.”
She peeks over at me, finding me watching her.
“Do you think I’m being harsh with my own mother? Disappearing the way I did.”
It’s the first time she’s spoken about her mother out loud.
“I think you were dealing with a lot of shit happening all at once.”
“I don’t know,” she breathes, a tear slipping down her cheek and falling on top of my head. “I can’t help but feel like maybe if I had spoken to her . . .”
“This trip wasn’t about guilting yourself, Mila. You’re allowed to have demons, just like everyone else. It’s what you do now that matters.”
“I feel guilty for the way I left. In the middle of the night. She didn’t deserve that. She . . .” Mila turns away, wiping her hand across her eyes.
“It’s not about who deserves what.”
Part of me wants to tie her to my bed until she tells me who was after her. The other half is prepared to burn the world down and rid it of anyone who could even have the chance.
“Thank you. For today. I know it’s outside our rules.”
“Don’t thank me, Mila.”
I pull to a stop at the dock, and neither of us moves, staring out over the water at the dim lights of our island.
“Why do they call it Shipwreck Island?”
“Because there’s a ship sunk just off the north side.”
A shiver rolls through her at the thought, and she falls silent for a moment.
“You know, when you’re not stroking your own ego, kidnapping someone, or being a flaming dickhead, you aren’t so bad,” she smiles.
“Thought I was an egotistical asshole?” I muse, throwing her earlier words back at her.
“You are,” she admits quietly. “But you’re also a good man.” We both fall silent, and the air between us hums with unspoken shit I’d rather not think about.
Like the way my chest tightens when I look at her.
Or how my heart quickens when she smiles.
Definitely not the picture I’ve kept in my wallet for three years that’s worn and tattered from being taken out and held too many times.
Fuck.
Something sickening slips through my veins. A bitter resentment that I can’t tell her about our past. That I didn’t leave because I didn’t care.
I did care. Just way too fucking much.
“I’m not a good man, Mila.”
“I . . . think you’re afraid of anyone finding out you are.”
I grit my teeth, my hand tightening on the steering wheel.
“I’ve hurt a lot of people. Killed a lot of people.”
“Would you hurt me?”
I’d chop my fucking dick off first.
“If I had to.”
She’s silent for a moment, and I wait for her to exit the car. The part of me that wants to take her in the cottage and spend the next five days reminding her exactly who the fuck I am wants me to grab her and drag her inside.
Slowly, she raises up on the seat and moves towards me as if she’s approaching a wild animal. Right now, with the scent of her enveloping me, she’s not fucking wrong.
“ Mila, ” I grit, my voice rough when she slips into my lap.
I push the seat all the way back as she hovers over me, her legs straddling me on either side and her cunt pressed against my dick.
Fuck. Me.
Her eyes are heavy, her lashes fluttering over her cheeks when she looks down at me in the darkness of the car. It’s nearly pitch black, save for the dash and what little light streams through the tinted windows, but she’s never looked sexier than right now, taking what she wants.
Fuck, I want to give that to her.
My hand slips up the back of her smooth calve to the pulse point just behind her knee, my fingers digging in.
She leans forward, her lips hovering over mine, and my cock presses painfully against my zipper at the taste of her. “You have until the clock strikes two to do whatever you want to me,” she breathes, her pulse fluttering.
My gaze flicks to the clock.
Three minutes.
I’ll make it fucking count.
Most men would reach for her pussy, slip their fingers inside her until she caved and stayed longer than her allotted time. This isn’t about getting her off, though. It’s about making her desperate for me. It’s about getting her addicted to me.
So, when her lips meet mine, my hands start to roam. I go for all the places I know will have her wanting more.
I kiss her rough, my tongue tangling with hers and drawing a whimper from her throat that has me gripping the backs of her thighs until I’m sure there will be bruises from my fingertips tomorrow.
Good. I want her to have a reminder that I was there.
She kisses me while I explore her body, memorizing the way it feels in my palms after so much lost time. My hands slide over her ass, then under her dress, toying with the edges of her panties. Then they slip down to her front, stroking over her inner thighs. Goosebumps rise on her flesh under my hands, and I bite back a smile against her lips when her breath hitches.
Her hands come up to my shoulders, the blunt ends of her nails scraping across the back of my neck, and a tremor rolls through me.
The kiss grows stronger when I grip her hips and roll her over my cock, just once, to let her feel me against her center. She’s so fucking warm, I can feel her through my jeans and boxers, and it takes everything in me not to fuck her right here.
“Christian,” she breathes, and I groan when she breaks the kiss, my fist tightening in her hair while I nip a line from her jaw down to her throat when she meets the next thrust of my cock.
Fucking perfection.
She lets out a desperate whimper, and her head falls back to the ceiling with a shuddering breath.
Then, as quickly as it started, it’s over.
“Times up,” she breathes, shakily climbing off my lap and practically hurling herself out the door.
I want to go after her and drag her back. I want to pin her to the bed and make her come until she tells me her secrets. I want her screaming my name until it raises the dead on that miserable, sunken ship just past our island.
Unfortunately, none of those things will happen tonight.
“Fuck,” I rasp under my breath, my cock aching in my jeans. I scrub a hand over my face, my gaze finding her standing at the front door, waiting for me.
I can’t keep her, but the thought is enough to have me picturing just how pretty she’d look in my bed. Coming home to her happy and smiling every night. Fucking her into the early hours of the morning and crashing with her wrapped in my arms, only to do it all over again the next day. Sounds like fucking heaven.
And also as unrealistic as a world with no crime.
Getting out of the car, I slam the door behind me, unlocking the front door while Mila heads inside without a word.
The air between us has shifted. Something tense and volatile lying just beneath the surface.
The thought of giving her up puts me in a dark mood. Like I either need to fuck her or kill someone.
There is no in-between.
I have a plan.
Is it a good one? Fuck no. In fact, it has a high probability of getting me shot.
Am I going to do it anyway?
Watching her take one last glance out over the water towards where the ship lies underneath the glistening black surface, I already know the answer.