Chapter 2
Liam
I’m not asleep.
I’ve been wide awake since she started hauling me out of that lift like a sack of spuds.
The pain’s throbbing in my side like a right nuisance, but we’re old acquaintances. I’ve had worse. Hell, I had worse than this only last week.
But I keep pretending I’m unconscious. Why? Curiosity, I suppose. And I’ve no interest in doin’ her any harm. Opposite, in fact.
Maybe it’s because being dragged around by a woman who smells like vanilla and soft rain, muttering to herself like a wee bird, is the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in months.
She didn’t check my pockets proper. Amateur hour, so it is. She missed the GPS tracker in my inner jacket pocket. I switched the feckin’ thing off the second I got into her car. The last thing I need is my lads storming the place and frightening the life out of the girl. Not yet, anyway.
I crack one eye open.
She’s in the kitchen, her back to me. The place is…grand. Cozy, like. A small scrape of an apartment, but it bursts with life. Plants hang from every corner—green vines trailing from shelves and the ceiling. Dark romance titles are stacked near her feet. Some pitch black mixed in.
Well, then. A bit of the dark stuff wrapped in a sweet little package, then. It’s always the quiet ones. She likes the monsters in the stories.
I wonder if she’ll like the monster lying on her floor.
I’ve never gone for this type of girl. My father made sure of that.
It was always high-class, sophisticated women—corporate guru daughters with sharp tongues and sharper ambitions, a family princess or two who knew how to work a room, and call girls when I needed something simpler.
The types who wear black heels, red lipstick, and fishnets.
Nothing wrong with any o’ them. They knew the game. They played their parts.
But this girl…she’s refreshing. Down to earth. Inconveniently tempting with her feisty words and full, sassy lips. Made for biting.
Her hair falls in loose curls of sunlight and copper—strawberry gold framing her face just right.
Ivory skin, soft and unmarked save for freckles across her nose and cheekbones, like someone dotted her with stardust. And those eyes, damn.
Bluish gray like the sea after a storm. Quiet, deep clouds, charged, holding secrets she doesn’t even know she’s keeping.
Young body. Ripe in the hips where it counts. Smaller breasts, high and shapely. Still a decent handful. A pert little bottom she can’t hide beneath her dress. Perfect for my hand.
Christ, she’s pretty. The natural sort of pretty. The kind that doesn’t need the armor of makeup or designer labels to make a man look twice. The kind that makes a man want to keep looking.
The kind that’s making this man’s cock throb to the point of discomfort. Good thing I’m a rare shower, not a grower.
She’s making ramen. The cheap, packet kind.
Aww, darlin’. You deserve a proper meal. And an Irish one.
She turns, and I close my lids.
“When you wake up,” she mutters, and I can hear the pout in her voice, “I am not sharing my ramen with you. You royally fucked up my night.”
Right hames of her night, I suppose.
She walks closer. I can feel her near me, the warmth coming off her. I will my dick not to jerk. It doesn’t obey. And I hope she doesn’t notice.
“I don’t care if you’re the hottest guy in my existence, even with all your creepy tattoos,” she whispers.
Well, now. Hottest guy in her existence. A grand start, that. I’ll be filing that away for later.
I can practically feel her gaze roaming across the canvas on my skin.
“Oh, God,” she goes on, her voice dropping to a terrified, little whisper. “You better not be a serial killer who’d love to put my body parts in jars.”
I fight the urge to laugh. It would only do a number on my ribs.
Your parts are lovely as they are, I think. But I prefer them intact. And warm.
She eats her noodles at a small farmhouse table, reading away while she slurps. Once she’s finished, she tidies up, quick and efficient.
“Okay,” she sighs. “Bedtime.”
She disappears into what I assume is the bedroom. I test the restraint on my wrist. A heavy-duty zip tie. Clever girl, so she is. I could snap the wee thing if I had the mind for it—it’s not steel—but I don’t want to. Not yet.
The bedroom door opens again.
I peer through my lashes.
She’s changed. The blue dress is gone. In its place is a matching set of pink pajamas. Short sleeves. I focus. Are those…butterflies? And dogs?
Aye. Pit bulls with butterfly wings printed all over the pink cloth.
Adorable.
She goes back to the kitchen, and the whistle of a kettle follows. Tea.
She returns with a steaming mug and curls up on the far end of the couch, tuckin’ her feet beneath her. She grabs a pink knitted blanket and pulls it to her chin.
“Time for a comfort show,” she announces to the empty room. And to me, though she doesn’t know it.
She points the remote at the telly. And scrolls through.
Alice in Borderland.
All of Us Are Dead.
Slasher: Flesh and Blood
Christ. For a girl who looks like a woodland fairy eating ramen in winged dogs, she has a savage taste for blood.
She selects Squid Game.
“Red light…Green light,” the telly chants.
She sips her tea, fixated on the screen while the folk are getting massacred. She looks completely at peace.
Everything about her is beautiful and real, pure in a way I have never fathomed.
The light from the telly plays over her face.
Her body softens into the couch as she drinks her tea, slow and savoring.
Good girl, respect for the oldest drink in the world.
The flutter of her lashes. Her occasional sigh.
She’s feisty, so she is. Saved a stranger, hauled him home, stitched him up, and threatened him over a bowl of noodles.
I could leave. Snap the tie, get my piece from the freezer—I saw her put it there—and vanish into the night.
But the rain is lashing against the window. My side is throbbing. And this fuzzy rug is surprisingly comfortable.
I’m not going anywhere.
I let my eyes drift shut for real this time, the sounds of the show lulling me.
Right then and there, I decide. I’m sticking around. I’ll let her think she’s caught me. I’ll let her play the nurse.
And when I’m healed?
Well, Liam Donovan always pays his debts. And he always keeps what he decides belongs to him.
And I’ve a feeling this little wallflower with the dark taste in books is about to become very mine.
Sleep well, mo Róisín.