Chapter 11 Blindside #2
The following week, we sparred as usual, but his concentration lingered more on the walls and windows than on me. After almost an hour of struggling to best him despite his distraction, I snapped. “What’s with you tonight?”
“Mmm?” He’d been gazing out the window, but his attention drifted to me.
“You got something on your mind?”
He took a silent moment to examine my face, thoughts whirring behind his eyes. The flicker of two candles accentuated the amber freckles hiding in the blue of his irises. So pretty, those eyes. The man was lightning—dazzling, but deadly.
“What sorts of things do sixteen-year-old girls think about?” he asked.
My lips parted. Uh… “What?”
“Lily Wyatt. I’m not sure she’s a normal sixteen-year-old.”
“Why?”
A subtle flush of color appeared over his sharp cheekbones, and ravenous curiosity attacked me. What horrible thoughts could be happening in that jaded, murderous mind to make him blush?
He cleared his throat. “I think maybe they…groomed her.”
“Groomed? Like they brushed her hair?” My thoughts, however, lingered much further south than the girl’s head.
“No. Not like that.” He pressed his lips together. Took a breath. Then…said nothing.
“Like what?” I prompted.
He released that breath. “Like they…prepared…her for me.”
Several seconds of silence passed while color crept further across his face. I fought down the rising nausea. “That cannot mean what I think it means.”
He shuddered, expression contorting. “She knows things I don’t think normal sixteen-year-olds know.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised what sixteen-year-old girls know.”
A beat passed.
His mouth opened with a tsk, and he pointed at me. “Okay. Definitely going to have to elaborate on what you mean by that.”
I shook my head, chuckling. “Tell me what she did.”
Another few seconds elapsed in which he did nothing but trail his attention over the popcorn ceiling. I waited, ensuring he sensed my impatience with the whole crossed arms and tapping foot bit.
“She’s very…affectionate,” he said eventually.
“Ugh. Okay, stop.” That was not what I was thinking. “I don’t want more details.”
He grimaced. “I think she’ll need help once she’s with you. She thinks her only worth is in what she can offer a man.”
Ew. The NAO ideals were just the worst. Men and their worship of the almighty dick were going to ruin this planet. “That’s disgusting. And yet I’m not surprised these are the things you people teach your children.”
Everything about him sharpened. He stepped closer, gaze dropping to me. “She is the product of a timid, obedient mother, and a psychopathic father. I don’t have children. I don’t fuck children. And if I ever had a daughter, I certainly wouldn’t allow her to act like that.”
I snorted in his face—probably not smart. “You are a Blood Colonel in the NSF.”
“Only Defiants call us that.”
I ignored him. “That isn’t an easy rank to reach. You really expect me to believe you’re different from them?”
“I don’t care what you believe. I’m telling you the truth—like I always do.”
We stood an arm’s span apart, glaring at each other, assessing.
The silver spark of the scalpel he used to execute people flashed across my mind. Cold crept across my skin. I lifted my shoulders. “I can’t trust you.”
“I don’t need your trust.”
“You do, though. You don’t want anyone else to play this game with you.” I motioned to the room around us, as if it encompassed the entirety of my relationship with him.
He said nothing.
“You’ve armed me. Hidden me in giant clothes. Killed your own men for me. You’ve done everything in your power to make sure I continue to be the one to receive your information, even though you think I’m incompetent and reckless. For some reason, you only want me, and you won’t tell me why.”
His gaze flickered over my face, but his silence screamed into the void between us. Pressure built, crushing, like sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
I let it embrace me, pushing harder on his hidden buttons. “What would you do if I were killed?”
He stiffened. His expression hardened, then iced over entirely. Those remarkable eyes fixed on mine, raptorial as a jaguar.
“Would you accept someone else?” I asked.
“That won’t happen.”
My heart jumped into my throat. “It might—”
“No. It won’t.” His tone was final. Commanding. “You will stay safe.”
The choked sensation from when I first met him washed over me. Full of threat and danger, the sarcastic man I’d grown accustomed to transformed before me into the ruthless Blood Colonel—a killer hiding behind pretty eyes…
Coveting my safety.
“Alright.” My voice was barely more than a breath.
His intensity faded by degrees, and he watched me as a predator might, like he thought I might run.
“I’m not sure who convinced you that you hold no value, but let me be clear about something.
Your life matters, and if you continue to act as if it doesn’t, we’re going to have a problem. Do you understand?”
No, I didn’t understand at all. I was no one to this man, just some Defiant who served as a glorified text messaging service.
He stepped closer, and his voice honed to a sharpened blade. “Do you understand, Sophia?”
My throat closed up at the implied threat in his words, so I merely nodded. He kept insisting he wouldn’t hurt me, so what was this? If I told him right now that I was worth very little to the Defiance, that losing me wouldn’t affect them in the slightest, what exactly would he do?
It was a simple truth.
“Is there a plan for tomorrow?” he asked, changing the subject entirely.
Still reeling, it took me a moment to remember what was happening tomorrow. Ah, right. Lily Wyatt’s rescue. “I assume there is. It’s not information they share with me.”
“And you won’t be there? They’re not sending you out into the field to die again?”
Bemused, I shook my head. “I’ll be in the hospital wing, like usual.”
His gaze narrowed. Did he think I was lying?
“So maybe try not to kill anyone,” I added.
The ice around him melted, his muscles relaxed…and I drowned in the confusion. What was that? His head canted to the left, thoughtful. “But if I kill them, won’t that ensure you an easy shift?”
My mouth fell open. “Was that a joke?”
“No. Of course not.”
Something behind my belly button pulled tight, and I floundered in the bewilderment. Was he…teasing me? Right after he scarily declared I must somehow become immortal?
Who was this man?
Lucas sat cross-legged on the floor and patted the carpet.
Okay, so we’d just ignore it all, then. I could do that. I was excellent at the head-in-the-sand option.
I settled before him while he detailed once more his itinerary for the following night. He gave tips and suggestions about ways to help us succeed. Knowing his ideas would wound Theo’s pride, Lucas wanted me to present them as if they weren’t important or he was trying to keep them secret.
“Tell him I ‘let slip’ that the river will be low enough to cross that night.”
“Oh, mention the part about the empty warehouse off-handedly.”
The man understood how to exploit people’s weaknesses, and I couldn’t help but wonder which of my flaws he was sucking dry. When the time came to leave, he opened the door for me. “Until next week.”
I allowed myself to give him a cheeky smile. “Mission tomorrow sounds dangerous, and you’ll be the primary target. Will you even be alive for me to meet you next week?”
“With any luck, no.”
My smile fell.
He clocked that reaction with a smirk of his own. “Aw, cheer up, darling. As long as I’m alive, you still have to tolerate me.”
I rolled my eyes.
“And hey, as a bonus prize, if I die, this castle of dust”—he spread his arms to indicate the house—“can go to the girl who would most enjoy my death.”
“I’m sure there are some who’d enjoy it more than me.”
His smirk turned wry.
A moment passed in which we stared at each other, and unlike all the other Thursdays, I hesitated to leave. “So that’s the last will and testament of Lucas Scott?”
“Mm. A celebratory document the nation over, I’m sure.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “Sad little murderer. No one likes him.”
His expression flickered, his lips pressed together, and I startled when a smile broke over his face like sunshine emerging from heavy rain clouds. Real and bright. Even teeth. Shallow dimples.
And then he laughed. Pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes squeezed shut, he laughed.
He just…laughed.
Logic told me he was made of flesh and blood and therefore capable of the full range of emotion, but this introduced a whole new side to him. I didn’t want or need this proof that he was human.
“Your mouth is going to get you killed,” he said.
Despite my suddenly pounding heart, I shrugged as if I routinely stood at Hunters’ doorsteps to witness their fits of hilarity.
Vivid eyes found mine, full of mirth, sparkling like the Caribbean Sea. “I have something for you.”
“More presents?”
Motioning for me to follow him into the night, he led me to the side of the house, where a bicycle leaned against the brick. He wheeled it to me. “They can’t catch you if you’re faster than them.”
He brought me a bike? I never bothered to check one out from headquarters because the walk was so short. Lucas, however, had no way of knowing that, and even if he did, I suspected he’d prefer me on the bike.
I stared, mystified by this further evidence that my safety mattered a great deal to him. “Why are you so obsessed with my being caught?”
“Call it a personality flaw,” he said without looking at me.
The bike was a simple black cruiser, one speed with a coaster brake. “This is in good condition. Where’d you get it?”
“It’s mine.”