Chapter 45
FORTY-FIVE
KITTY
Playlist recommendation:
Eurydice - Killian Scott
Minutes, hours, days later, he carried me to his quarters because I was still shaky on my feet. Not just from that mind-blowing orgasm but the things we’d said to one another.
He hadn’t brought them up, so I didn’t either.
But then, he was matter-of-fact about this stuff. Whereas I felt like I was in the middle of a lucid dream.
I didn’t even want kids, for fuck’s sake!
As he walked into his bedroom, I accepted that ‘quarters’ fit the bill.
I’d seen four-bedroom apartments smaller than this one massive space, but mostly, it stunned me it wasn’t barren.
A part of me knew that he’d scavenged pieces of furniture from one of the other dozen suites this palatial residence probably contained, but he’d chosen well.
A four-poster bed fit for a king, and where one or two had undoubtedly slept over the course of its history, sat alongside beautifully preserved antique dressers.
A massive walnut desk swallowed up one corner and a screen hummed atop it.
The only other modern things in here were the sofa—a low-slung sectional—and a massive TV complete with stacks of looter shooter games and a humming PlayStation beneath it.
And, be still my ovaries, a concert-size grand piano.
My head lolled on his shoulder. “Know what?”
“What, duci?”
“That piano explains a lot.”
“Like what, bedda mia?”
“Why your fingering game is soooo good.”
He smirked, but I’d forgive his smugness. He’d earned it. “You always boss me around.”
“Yeah, but you were an eight out of ten before you took direction, now you’re a grand slam.” I rubbed my knuckles along his jaw. “You’ll have to play for me at some point.”
“I haven’t played in a while.”
I didn’t pressure him, just repeated, “You’ll have to play for me at some point.”
“Se, duci, I will.”
Once he settled me on the couch, he trudged over to one of the dressers, where I watched him grab a pair of basketball shorts.
With his back to me, he asked, “Are you upset about the lab?”
His abrupt tone and how out-of-place the topic was when we’d been talking about the piano told me my reaction to his lab concerned him. But then he began stripping off and my brain was too busy enjoying the show to waste neurons on his Nutty Professor act.
“Are you showering?”
“Yes.”
Despite my agitation, I couldn’t stop myself from offering, “I could join you…”
“If you do, we’ll waste a reservoir of water, I’ll be late for my meeting with Luc, and you’re already exhausted.
” His eyes gleamed when he turned to face me.
The fire in them fed the one in my soul.
“Anyway, I want my cum inside you tonight and I want to bury my nose in your shoulder and smell us when we nap.”
My throat bobbed because that didn’t sound dreamy. At all. “Okay.”
“I ordered food for us earlier.”
“Good, I’m starving.”
His hand turned into a fist, crumpling the shorts he held. “The lab?”
Seeing he wasn’t going to let this go, I allowed the pillow on the couch to take the weight of my head. “Mostly, I’m upset that you have people working for you and they let you be your own guinea pig.”
“Perks of being the boss.” I’d never be exhausted enough for that to go unanswered. I glared at him, and he lifted his hands in surrender. “But I won’t be doing that again. I’m on a promise.”
“Yes, you damn well are. That aside… do I think you’re insane?” I hitched a shoulder. “I figure it’s a mutual insanity.”
He beamed at me like our deteriorating gray matter was a good thing. “Right, I’ll shower. Someone will bring up our food. You okay on your own, duci?”
“However will I cope without you to entertain me?” I wolf-whistled at him.
With his back to me, he rocked his hips in a stripper strut that had me giggling. “Feel free to snoop while I wash up.”
My eyes tracked the movement, belying my words: “Your room is less interesting than your ass.”
“You disappoint me, principessa. I’m wounded.”
“That’s a new term of endearment.”
“Can you figure out what it means?”
“Princess. I’m clever like that.”
“Thoughts on the endearment?” he queried as he walked backward toward a door on the other side of the room.
“Don’t hate it,” I informed him, my gaze dropping to the floor where his shirt slipped from the chair he’d dumped it on.
A white silk shirt.
Expensive.
Splashed with…
Shit.
That red was blood.
“Good,” he purred, unaware my focus had shifted.
But blood spattering his shirt or not, there was no denying his voice should be illegal.
Just like whatever had caused someone to lose that amount of blood.
When he left me alone, with the surprising offer to snoop, I bit my lip as I stared around yet more space.
First the lab, then the ballroom, and the private freakin’ lake. Now, this.
This was… O’Donnelly rich.
And that made it unnerving.
I’d known he was wealthy, but seeing was believing.
That worked for the blood on his shirt too.
But he was a pianist. He couldn’t be so bad, right?
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Catriona Caitlin Frasier, you’re diving headfirst, eyes closed, mouth open into shark-infested waters now,” I mumbled under my breath, barely refraining from making the sign of the cross too.
I wanted Stan.
That was an irrefutable fact.
I didn’t like what he did for a living.
Another fact.
That was a major problem, though, because he couldn’t quit.
This was for life. Which meant if we got together, I was in it for life too.
“Don’t be na?ve,” I said on a sigh.
Simply being related to my da, Cade, and Lucas, I was already.
Martinez had certainly thought so.
Just because I didn’t feel the mob’s external pressure thanks to Da’s premature passing, and Lucas’s preference for us to stay at home until we were ninety rather than to marry us off for his own gain, didn’t mean the pressure wasn’t there.
And maybe, maybe, it was too late with Stan as well.
The things he’d said to me on the balcony—they weren’t words you threw at a hookup.
The things I felt and said and had done…
Fuck.
Refusing to look at the shirt, I stared at the blank TV screen instead. Seeing my reflection, noting how, in my vintage outfit, I actually fit into this gorgeous room, I released an exhalation.
Absorbed an inhalation.
Then forced myself to calm down.
Because panic gathered in my throat, choking me on a reality I didn’t know how to handle.
I crumpled the pleats on my thoroughly wrinkled skirt.
He’d told me not to take the pill.
I hadn’t this evening.
“God, you’re insane, Catriona. Certifiably insane,” I croaked, feeling the hangman’s noose around my throat. “Where’s your mind gone? Did a dozen orgasms make you dumb?!”
I had access to Plan B but—
And that, of course, was when I heard it.
That sinful, illegal voice.
Singing.
In the shower.
My heart pounded with how glorious his singing voice was.
And I recognized the song.
“Eurydice” by Killian Scott.
So fitting.
Enough for me to close my eyes and for my mind to shove aside what I’d seen.
My throat bobbed as I got to my feet and like he called to me, a siren when male sirens weren’t a thing, tempting me to move closer, I obeyed.
Grabbing the gloss from my pocket, I didn’t breach his privacy, simply stood by the doorway and listened to my own personal show of Custanzu Valentini’s performance as I soothed the balm over my kiss-sore lips.
The nuances of his heart captivated me.
This man cared so much that he’d created a drug to heal CHD.
He wanted to heal people’s hearts.
But he’d chosen a destructive path to make it happen.
And here he was, dancing with me like I was his princess, fucking me like I was his personal succubus, then carrying me up to his room like I was a damsel in distress, all while wearing clothes that bore the proof of a crime committed earlier in the day.
In the tiny pocket of time between him leaving me at home and collecting me…
My head ached as much as my heart did when I tried to justify what I’d seen. It only proved that I was a weak woman. Because I convinced myself. I did. Like a fool.
But it was as if fate wouldn’t let me hide from who he was, what he did—his jacket slipped off the stool too.
Quite by chance as the silk lining messed with gravity, enabling his necktie to unfurl with it.
My nightmares continued to unfold.
A clunk came next as a dagger tumbled from his pocket.
One, not yet cleaned of evidence, stained in blood. One that rammed home precisely how he’d garnered that spatter on his sleeves and at his waist. One that messed me up on the inside because what had happened on the balcony…?
I’d thought it was perfect.
But he’d made love to me covered in someone else’s blood.
And that, I recognized, was my hard limit.