Chapter 22
22
RAINE
W e rest for a while without saying a word. Finally, he sits up.
Killian’s hand runs down my body from breast to hip, as though he’s stroking the leather interior of his expensive car. Licking his lips, his eyes meet mine. “Thirsty?”
I nod.
He rises all the way to a standing position and walks off the end of the bed.
“Killian? Is there tea?”
“I think so,” he says as he leaves the bedroom.
A few minutes later, he returns with a steaming cup.
I sit up and take a sip. There’s honey, liquor, and a splash of milk in it. It’s as delicious as my matcha latte from Espresso Yourself. “It’s great. Want some?” I extend the cup toward him.
He shakes his head. “I need to feed you. What do you want to eat?”
After another big swallow, I tilt my head. “I don’t know what you have.” I don’t suggest I’ll go out and see. For some reason, it’s important to him that he gets to keep me naked in his bed, and I want to see how things play out if I go along with it.
He yawns and stretches, then he turns and walks out again. I’m not the only one who’s naked, but somehow it’s different. Killian’s comfortable walking around with no clothes. I don’t know if that’s because he’s so confident or if it’s because he’s an athlete used to locker rooms. Maybe it’s even the sociopath part of him that makes him not care. He could feel no shame in being naked because he’s shameless. Again, I realize it must be liberating to be him.
I prop the pillows against the headboard and sit back, drinking my tea until it’s gone.
Killian returns, pulls on a pair of boxer-briefs and a t-shirt and then scoops me up in my sheet and carries me out to the seating area with the black couch. He’s pushed it back from the coffee table where there’s a world-class charcuterie board assembled.
Meats, cheeses, crackers, slices of brown bread, spicy mustard, fruit jams, assorted nuts, and grapes and dried apricots. He sets me on a cushion on the floor next to the table. Then he sits on a chair across from me.
I pull the sheet around my shoulders, but as soon as I reach for food, the sheet starts to slide down. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
“I did.”
After wrapping the bedsheet across my chest, I knot it on one side. That lasts for a few minutes as I dig into the amazing spread. “This is so good. You know what would be really cozy? If we had fairy lights and candles, so we could turn off the overhead lights.”
He rises. “We’ve got candles, I think. Not for light, but for… other things.” Killian goes to the kitchen and searches the pantry.
I watch with a small smile as he moves on to check the cabinets. Is he actually searching for candles right now? That’s sweet AF. What is going on with him?
He returns with several dark red soy pillar candles and matches. After he creates a half circle around the board, he turns off the lights. Even though the blood red candles make it seem like we’re about to do an occult ritual, the flickering flames create coziness. Give me twinkling lights in a dark room, and I’m gone .
I get tired of having to re-secure the sheet, so I let it pool around my waist. He’s seen me bare. What’s the point of fighting to cover up?
For a long time, I eat, the flames dance, and he watches me.
When I’m finished, I pull the sheet back around me like a little tent and rest back against the couch. “That was delicious. So what’s next in your “Raine is my sex slave” fantasy?”
There’s a brief smile on his face, but it disappears after a few moments. “You’ve been good, so you get to do whatever you want for a while.”
“I need to work.”
He nods. “Wait here.”
“Killian?”
He turns back toward me.
“In your fantasy, am I paralyzed?”
“No. Why?”
“Well, I can walk. But you carried me into your bedroom, dragged me around the bed like a rag doll, and then carried me out here.”
His broad shoulders rise and fall as he chuckles. “I never had a toy doll as a kid. It’s too bad because you sure are fun to play with.”
KILLIAN
Lying on the media room couch with her, I drift in and out of sleep. Raine lies in front of me on the sofa with my arms wrapped around her. With her body pressed against mine, I’m no longer itching to be anywhere else or to distract myself with video games. This is the place.
The flatscreen’s sound is muted, apparently to let me sleep. I guess she’s reading subtitles and watching shot compositions. I don’t know a lot about filmmaking, but I’ve picked things up from being around her and hacking into her electronic communications. I know there are different types of shots and camera angles. And tricks for making people and settings look better in videos.
My left hand slides down to rest between her thighs .
She turns her head so she’s looking over her shoulder in my direction. When she whispers, it’s in that sweet voice I remember from when we were younger. “I’m working. Go back to sleep, Killian.”
I don’t move my hand, but I also don’t use it to distract her. Instead, I touch my nose to her scalp, inhaling the scent of her and letting myself fall back to sleep.
When I get up in the morning, she’s finally asleep herself. I carry her into my room and put her in my bed while I shower.
Once it’s clear she’s not going to wake up and give me something better to do, I start digging into the Lambda Delta alumni, looking for NightOn from the wall. I find him quickly. Josh E. Jones, former president of the GU chapter. I read his bio. Born and raised in Connecticut, graduated magna cum laude from Granthorpe with an Art History major and Biochemistry minor. It says he planned to pursue a career in medicine.
Medicine? I scowl. This deviant fuck is going to be someone’s doctor?
I try to hack into GU Academic Affairs to read his file but can’t get in. That’s the one problem with GU. With most institutions, I can blaze right past their firewalls and unlock their encrypted files by injecting a worm into an unprotected computer and letting it give me access to the parts of the network I want. GU, however, is the alma mater of tech billionaire Drew Ralston, so parts of GU’s administration have cybersecurity that’s on par with the Department of Defense’s.
My online investigations reveal Josh E. Jones has finished medical school and is in a psychiatry residency in Cambridge. Psychiatry… That’s a good avenue for scooping up troubled young women. I bet he doesn’t last a decade before he’s caught sleeping with a patient or involved in some other misconduct scandal.
Given that he grew up in a different state and was long gone by the time Raine and I got here to GU, I can’t see how or why he would be the initiator of the Side post he forwarded. Still, his ties to a sketchy fraternity with long, powerful fingers and a recent history of vicious crimes is suspicious. Maybe he sent the post to me as a favor for someone else from the frat? But who? Wilson couldn’t have known someone would hire a killer to come for him and that that killer would be me.
Maybe it was just a coincidence that Jones spotted and forwarded the Raine post. When we met, he saw the kinds of scenes I engaged in and knew I was at GU. Anyone would’ve guessed the post might interest me. And he was talkative the night we met. Seemed to be looking to strike up a friendship.
I scratch my neck and tilt my head. Do I really think his sending the post could be a coincidence? In a vast universe, they happen all the time. But I’m just making headway into pulling Raine back into my life. If this is anything but a coincidence—If someone is trying to hurt her, I want to find him and kill him.
Of course, that would break the C Crue no-moonlighting policy. My gaze slides to the bed and Raine’s pretty face, half-buried in a pillow. I like working for C Crue, but they’re the moon and Raine’s the sun. The moon affects the Earth. Animal behavior and the tides would be fucked up without the moon. It matters. But if it were gone, adaptation and evolution would happen eventually. Now, the sun, though… the sun is necessary. Without the sun, life stops.
So yeah, if there’s a threat to her, I’ll kill it. The Crue trained me well, so if I’m careful, they’d never even find out.
The best way to determine how Jones got the Cabaret picture post is to ask him in person. If he hesitates to tell me, well, he’ll get to know the side of me I reserve for men who try to get close to Raine.
Just as I’m starting to run down NightOn Josh’s schedule and address, War and Jamie roll in. They’re noisy bastards this morning and Raine stirs, so I cover her ear with a pillow and close the door when I leave the room.
The pair are in the kitchen, talking softly. Two black bags sit on the nearby stairs. My eyes linger for a second until I remind myself there won’t be anything key in the bags, just personal gear. Extra street clothes. Maybe toothbrushes and condoms.
We rotate on the two-man jobs, but the third guy is ready to mobilize if a cleaner is needed. Last night, I wasn’t on call for them because they wanted me to have a chance to do some love-bombing for Operation Stockholm .
I assume they’ve disposed of any evidence, but if there’s something left to do, I’m the one who should do it. As proof that I’m still invested in the partnership and to keep them motivated to remain partners with me. At eleven-thirty, it’s full light. Whatever we do would need to happen in the shed for privacy. So, no barrel burning.
Leaning against the counter, I notice War has a red smudge on his neck near his left collarbone. It’s too smooth and bright for dried blood. Looks more like lipstick.
“How’d it go last night?” I ask.
“Yeah, all right,” Jamie says. “We were on a gun run, but they had an experienced crew on either end, and the route was quiet. Went so smoothly we finished early. We stayed away so we wouldn’t crash your party with the girl.”
“You didn’t sleep in the truck, did you?”
“Fuck no,” War grumbles. “Am I a fucking contortionist?”
Jamie and I smirk. We’ve started to suspect War has low-key claustrophobia. Whenever we’re closed up in a car or hole in the ground or wherever, he gets highly motivated to move things along.
“We visited a Crue sex club,” Jamie says. “Top tier.”
That explains the lipstick.
“In Boston?”
Jamie nods. “Yeah, edge of.”
War pulls out the tray of food I made Raine, lifts the cover, and sweeps half of it onto a plate.
“So, I missed all the action,” I say.
“You’ll see it next time ‘round. We’ll hit it again.” Jamie lowers his voice. “How about the in-house op?”
Grabbing a handful of grapes from the tray, I nod. “On track.”
I’m not gonna share details, which is good because then I don’t need to mention I deviated from the “treat her like a princess” plan and used her to satisfy myself instead.
Overall, I don’t think it set back my progress. It’s not like I left her unsatisfied. She came multiple times. Also, who wants fucking sweet missionary vanilla sex, when you can have intense, mind-blowing sex in all kinds of positions? Definitely not me. And not her, either, I don’t think. She smiled seven times while eating and used the sweet voice to tell me to go to sleep when we were in the media room. Mission-wise, the night was a success.
“Well done,” Jamie says. “I’m heading to bed. Shoot a text if you need one of us to watch her.”
“Nah, I’m good. Slept hard last night.”
War pauses near the stairs and glances back. “Fucked her, then? Good. That’s the best way to get them under control.” Without another word, he heads upstairs with his plate of food.
Jamie grabs a couple of cookies from the counter. “If you’re rough, don’t forget to pet her after. The barbarian doesn’t need to do it because when a girl’s shell-shocked, I step in.”
“Pet her? We’re not playing that.” At least not yet, I think. I wouldn’t mind trying it out some day.
“Didn’t necessarily mean to literally pet her, though she’d make a cute kitten, wouldn’t she? I just meant cuddle up and whisper whatever she wants to hear. Make her feel like your darling girl.”
“I’ve got it,” I say, though I haven’t. Say sweet things? Yeah, no. Pretty sure I couldn’t carry that off if I tried. Just the thought of it makes me frown.
“Right,” Jamie says, heading upstairs, too.
About ten minutes later, I hear the bedroom door open. Raine mutters something, and that’s followed by quick footfalls and the bang of the bathroom door.
A few minutes later, she dashes out into the living room, wearing the red dress, which is rumpled from laying on the floor all night. She has wild bedhead.
“My gosh. I overslept.”
“For what?”
“You heard him. I need to make calls to get my schedule sorted out.” She opens cupboards and bangs them shut. “It’s almost noon. I wish you’d woken me up.”
“You needed sleep.”
She turns to me with wide eyes and then she smiles. As she speaks, she reaches over to squeeze my arm. “That’s sweet of you.”
If she considers stating a fact sweet talk, the bar is low. The mission is definitely on track .
“Where are the pods for this coffee maker?” There’s some frustration in her voice.
I open the drawer on the island and take out a box of pods. Then, I sweep her aside. “I’ll make it for you.” I almost add the word baby on the end. That’s what Liam calls his wife and what Aiden calls most women he’s friendly with. I don’t think it would land right from me though. At least not yet. Partly because it wouldn’t sound natural coming from me and partly because I’m not sure we’re at a stage where she wants to be called a pet name.
Pet. That makes me think about Jamie’s advice. Like Aiden, he can pull off using terms of endearment within five minutes of meeting someone. Asshole . Maybe I’ll practice saying it when I’m alone so it’ll sound more normal rolling off my tongue.
When I finish making Raine coffee, she sits at the island with a bowl of granola in yogurt and her laptop. I set the coffee down next to her, and she looks up and smiles.
“Thank you, Killian.”
“No problem.”
She takes a sip and returns to her screen.
I’ve got shit to do myself but nothing that can’t wait. I want to initiate more touching outside the bedroom while we’re alone, so we can push forward. But in her position, I’d be pretty fucking irritated if I’d said I wanted to get a bunch of shit done, and someone interrupted me to touch me with no good end game of sex in sight.
My best option is to position myself strategically. That way I’m not intruding, but I’m close enough to make a move if the opportunity presents itself. I grab my laptop and notice I’ve got a secure message ordering me to call in using a burn phone.
After I grab one of the burners from upstairs, I get C when I make the call. He instructs me to get intel on an organization that’s sniffing around an area of Maryland the Crue uses as part of its route to Florida. My job is to clean up video footage and run recognition software to identify the players. Should be a couple of hours work at most.