Chapter Twenty
Twenty
LAILA
I can’t sleep. Despite going to bed early after such a traumatizing and exhausting day, I’m lying in bed and going over every single thing that happened, replaying it in my mind like a movie. But instead of just dwelling on the events like a normal person, my mind is creating new events that never even happened.
What if I hadn’t put Bjorn behind me in time? What if he had gotten stabbed?
What if James hadn’t been fast enough or there was another attacker?
What if the attacker ended up stabbing James fatally?
What if I lost him before I had a chance to tell him I love him?
It does me no good to entertain the what-ifs, yet I can’t get my mind to stop. After we got back to the estate, everyone was on edge and wired, and I never got a chance to talk to James afterward, never got a chance to thank him for saving my life, and now I crave his company, his body, like a balm on a wound.
It’s much later, past midnight, when I finally hear James getting into his bed, the headboard knocking slightly against the wall. He’s been good at trying to be quiet lately and probably doesn’t realize I’m still awake.
“James?” I whisper toward the wall.
His throat clears. “Yes?” he asks, sounding surprised.
I press my lips together for a moment, scared. Then I whisper, “Can you come over here?”
A pause. “Yes.”
I hear the bed move again, then his door quietly open, the creak of the hardwood floors outside the room, and then the door to my room opens. A crack of light from the hall shows his tall silhouette, then the door closes.
I reach over and flick on the light at my bedside.
He’s wearing only thin pajama pants, the dim light casting flattering shadows on his muscles. He stops at the side of the bed and stares down at me, searching my face, brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
I sit up, staring down at my hands, so damn scared. I don’t want to tell him how I’m feeling, but at the same time I need to know how he feels. If it’s even possible for him to fall in love with me. I’ll hang everything on just the possibility.
“I don’t feel like being alone tonight,” I manage to say. “Not after what happened.”
“Sure,” he says softly.
I stare up at him, a strand of hair coming across my eyes, and he reaches out and brushes it away. “You saved my life,” I whisper.
He swallows audibly, pain brimming in his eyes, that same pain I saw in the car afterward. Something about this pain scares me. “It’s my job,” he says, his voice strained.
“I know, but—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says roughly. “Please.”
I understand that. I nod. “Okay.”
Then he gets on top of the bed, prowling over me, his knees bracketing me in.
I lean back against the pillow and the headboard as he braces himself up with one hand, the other cupping my cheek. He kisses me, his tongue sliding across my lower lip, taking his time.
I could kiss this man for hours. Just sink into his mouth, let him lead the way. Sparks and joy and desire rush through me, crackling down my spine as the kiss deepens, making my toes curl.
We start off strong, but we quickly grow messy, and aside from the stolen kiss the other week, it’s been a lot of avoiding each other, of pretending that we don’t want each other, need each other, and it’s coming to a head. Our lips turn from soft to violent, teeth clashing, a voracious beast inside me wanting to claw its way out.
I want him, I need him.
I love him.
My nightgown is pulled over my head as he hastily tugs off his pants, fully commando. He throws back the covers and then slides his knee between my legs, his fingers curling over the hem of my underwear, yanking them down over my legs quickly, like they’re on fire.
Every inch of my skin is alight, my breaths feel short and feverish, like I can’t get enough air and the air that I do get is burning away. I need to have him inside me, need his hands over every part of my body, to put out the flames or kindle them.
He makes quick work of me tonight, and for that I’m grateful. He positions himself and pushes into me with a long, hard thrust and I’m gasping again, the air expelled.
“Fuck,” I whisper, breath catching. My nails scratch down his back, feeling every inch of him, how warm he is too, and growing warmer by the second as he starts pumping inside me.
His mouth goes to my neck, rough stubble tickling me as he licks and sucks at my skin, every touch and sensation combining the feeling of him hot and hard inside me, making me feel dizzy and elated and alive.
I grab his face, forcing him to look at me. He’s been so good at eye contact, but not tonight, not when I want to see him.
There’s an awareness in his eyes now, mixing with the determination to get me off, to come. It’s like he’s seeing me, really seeing me, and I wonder if he knows now. If he knows I love him. I wonder if I don’t have to say a word.
He stares at me, a million emotions passing through his eyes, and I’m trying to grab hold and examine each and every one of them, like trying to pluck shooting stars out of the sky. Then he kisses me, the spell broken, groaning breathlessly into my neck as he moves so deep, in and out, hips pumping in expert circles.
I’m so close to coming as it is, but when he reaches between our hot, slick-with-sweat bodies and touches me, I know I don’t have a lot of time.
“Fuck, James,” I cry out, feeling it come for me, the way my limbs tighten, the pressure building to that sweet and scary point of no return. I just hope I keep my mouth shut.
“Oh god!” I dig my nails into his shoulders, holding on as every other part of me lets go, and then I’m just light and starshine and opening, opening, opening.
My back arches as the orgasm rips through me, my eyes looking up at him just as he starts to come.
The look on his face startles me.
The intensity turns from desire to pleasure to fear as he comes inside me, grunting loudly before his eyes pinch shut, his neck going back. He stiffens, thrusting harder and harder until he stops and shudders, his whole body shaking the bed. He lowers himself on top of me, his face in my neck.
And I know something has changed already.
I can feel it.
The air in the room has become electric, like before a storm.
He knows.
He fucking knows how I feel.
I didn’t have to say a word.
“James,” I whisper. “Are you okay?”
Please be okay. Please be okay with this.
He doesn’t say anything. I can hear him breathing heavily, feel his heart beating fast against mine.
“James,” I say again.
He finally lifts his head to look at me, and that look in his eyes is the bearer of bad news. My heart automatically drops.
I try to smile. “Are you okay?” I ask again.
But the fear in his expression doesn’t go away. I know that expression so well. I saw it in my head for far too long afterward.
His jaw shuts, the muscles tense, like he’s not letting himself say something. He swallows thickly, and then I see the worst look of all cloud his features.
Regret.
He pulls out of me and then gets off the bed, pulling his pajama pants back on. I pull the sheets up to cover myself and then I grab his wrist, holding him in place before he can walk away.
“What is it?” I eke out.
“Laila,” he says to me. He blinks, unsure of how to proceed.
But this time I don’t want to be left in the dark.
“No,” I say, shaking my head violently, panic clawing up through my chest, my hands gripping the edge of the sheets. “Don’t do this, James. Not now. Not when we’re finally figuring this out.”
God, are we figuring it out? Was it all in my head, this feeling that we were heading in the right direction together, that it was only a matter of time before we decided to take the plunge and be together?
Was I delusional this whole time, just as I had been before?
“I almost lost you today,” he says, his tone turning sharp and hard though his eyes hold all the pain. “I almost lost you. What was I thinking? What was I thinking that I could be with you, be with the very woman I have to protect?”
“You’re not supposed to protect me. You’re there for—”
“For you!” he exclaims, eyes flashing. “For the boys, for Ella, and for you. I saw that man come at you with the knife and all I could think about was you. For a moment it wasn’t about the kids and it wasn’t about the royals and it wasn’t about anyone or anything but you. How can I do my job properly when all I care about is you?”
I’m not sure what to say to that. I press my lips together, my heart pounding wildly, trying to think, trying to figure out how to talk him off this ledge he’s on.
“It doesn’t matter—”
“It does matter. This is my job, this is my purpose.”
“Can’t you have both? Can’t I be your purpose too?” I ask softly.
“You are my purpose,” he says adamantly, running his hands down his face. “And that’s the problem. I should have noticed that man well before he reached you. But instead of focusing on the bloody people I was hired to protect—people who feel like friends, who feel like family—I’m losing myself to you. It’s unlocked a new level of fear, and I don’t think I can go through that. Everything is so messy and complicated now.”
“James, I like it messy and complicated. I like what we have.” God, I hate the pathetic tone of my voice, like I’m almost begging him to reconsider. I’m having déjà vu, and it’s making me sick.
“I just can’t risk you getting hurt,” he says with a shake of his head. “Everyone I’ve ever cared for has left me. I almost lost you today, and I already feel like my heart is being torn apart, like I’m splintering. I don’t think I can go through this, having you so close if it means putting you in harm’s way.”
“I’m not asking to get married to you, James, or have your babies. I’m not even asking you to be my boyfriend. I’m just…”
“What?” he asks, looking wild. “You’re just what? What do you want, then? What do you want from me?”
My chin starts to tremble, and I know that if I lay out the truth, if I tell him how I truly feel, it won’t change anything. He’s already afraid, so afraid, and it will only give him a reason to push me further away.
It’s what he wants.
It’s his default.
He gets close to me and then gives in to the fear. The fear of losing me permanently, the fear of compromising his job…it’s still the same outcome.
“I just want you to care for me the same way I care for you,” I finally say.
“And how do you care for me?” he whispers, words broken. “How do you feel about me?”
But I can’t answer him honestly anymore. That ship has sailed. My words, my heart—they’re not safe with him. Not when it won’t change a thing.
So I lie. “I care about you as a friend,” I tell him. “We’re just two friends having fun. That’s all.”
It’s such a lie that I don’t think he’ll even buy it.
But he takes it. He pretends to buy it. He’ll use it as a way out.
“I see.” He clears his throat, eyes drifting down to the pattern on the duvet. “Then I think maybe it’s for the best that we go back to just being friends again. Colleagues. While we still can.”
Even though I knew that was coming, even though I enabled it by lying, it still stings. “Sure. That’s fine with me.”
But I can’t look at him anymore. I close my eyes, trying to keep it together.
“Laila?” he asks gently. I feel his fingertips at my cheek.
The nerve of him. To say all this shit and then to still show me this kind of soft touch, this kind of affection.
When I open my eyes to look at him, I know he sees my anger.
That we won’t even go back to being friends now.
That we’re right back at square one, when he waltzed into this fucking place and turned my whole life upside down again.
“You hate me,” he says, his voice cracking with emotion.
I harden my heart against his words. “I don’t care about you enough to hate you, James.”
He flinches like I slapped him across the face.
Eyes going dark.
He nods, getting to his feet and striding quickly toward the door.
He closes it behind him, and I hear him go down the hall, open the door to his own room. Hear the headboard knock against the wall as he climbs into bed.
I can’t handle it.
I get up and go into the washroom, sitting down on the toilet.
The only place I can cry without him hearing me.