Chapter Nineteen
S he’s not wearing a fucking bra.
The shirt is huge on her, but there’s no hiding the way it forms to her chest, her nipples pressing against the material. How pathetic does it make me to be fucking jealous of a damn T-shirt?
It’s taking everything I have not to look. I try really hard not to be that guy, but fuck, I want to look. Torture would be easier to manage.
“You gonna eat that?” There’s an amused lilt to her voice, and it draws me out of the staring match I was having with the slice of pepperoni in my hand.
Fuck.
Shaking my head, I take a bite, but I have no appetite and haven’t all day.
“I ordered too much,” Sloane stares at the two untouched pizzas, the other two barely missing any slices either.
“Maybe a little,” I agree.
“I didn’t know what you liked,” She laughs.
“I would have cooked,” I offer as I drop the barely touched slice back into the box and close the lid.
“With one arm?”
She has me there. “Thank you for ordering.”
She nods, a blush brightening her cheeks as she closes the remaining boxes and stands from the stool, moving to transfer them to the fridge.
We clean up in a companionable silence, moving around each other like we’ve done it for years and not the week it’s only been, but we don’t touch, not even a single brush of our arms and when everything is back to normal, I open my mouth to suggest watching a movie but she beats me to it.
“I’m going to head to bed,” She fakes a yawn.
“Sure.” Lifting my arm, I rub at the nape of my neck and don’t miss the way her eyes watch my arm flex. I may even add a little extra tensing for her, like a fucking teenager. It’s the meds, because surely I’m not this pathetic.
She leaves with a blush on her cheeks, only this one spreads down her pretty, slender neck and disappears beneath the neckline of my T-shirt.
There’s something right about seeing a woman in your clothing, how it hangs off her, how she looks so free and comfortable in it, but it’s like a claiming. Even if Sloane isn’t mine.
The door to her room shuts with a soft click I hear only because of how silent the house is, but instead of sitting down here alone like I do so often, I grab my laptop and head up too.
I need to figure out who targeted me on the street and deal with the threat before they decide to take another shot.
The guys have been working on it, but they don’t know these systems the way I do, don’t know the tricks and hacks to breach security systems and security feeds. Shutting my bedroom door, I carry the laptop across to the bed and lean against my headboard, placing it on my thighs to work.
Behind my head, I hear the shuffle of her body against the sheets; the bed knocking lightly against the wall, as if she’s just tossed herself onto her side or back.
I groan as I hit my head against the headboard, squeezing my eyes closed. I should not be imagining what she looks like in bed, the sheets all wrapped up around her body, how her hair might spread across the pillow.
The shuffling from her side of the wall stops.
Running a hand down my face, I listen for more sounds from her, the desperation for a mere sound keeping my muscles drawn tight. I’ve been semi fucking hard since her little tease earlier.
Naked, actually.
Fuck.
The thought of her sleeping naked in my sheets, in my house… the images had come hard and fast. I could see it so viscerally I’d almost choked on my damn tongue.
She’s my daughter’s nanny, my employee; she doesn’t want me . It should all be enough to put a halt to all these delusions with her, but Sloane has crawled under my skin, and I’m not sure anything can carve her out.
Forcing my attention to my laptop, I open the app I use to hack the city’s security feed, bypassing the firewalls effortlessly to bring up the last week's worth of footage and scan the timestamps, finding the date and time of the shooting.
I didn’t get a good look at the shooter while it was happening, too busy trying to not have my brains blown out, and I’m hoping I’ll recognize them or at least figure out who hired them. Sure, it could have been a random attack, but I doubted it.
Pulling the feed, I skip forward until I spot both me and Sloane on the sidewalk and then bring up the second camera, showing further down the street. We’d just gotten Lily in the car when the first shot was fired, so I slow the feed to begin just before that.
About seven seconds before the first shot, a motorcycle pulls into the street, coming to a stop three car lengths away.
A helmet covers his face, but he’s only in a black t-shirt, showing off a series of tattoos on his arms. Zooming in, I take as many snapshots of him as I can so I can run them in the database to see if there’s a match on any of the files I have.
I start to play the video again, watching him pull his gun from the back of his pants, and he doesn’t hesitate to open fire on us. It wasn’t random; he was aiming for me and the car, not giving a fuck that I wasn’t alone.
I am being watched, and someone wants me dead.
Not my first fucking rodeo. Closing down the app, I open the database and load in the images of the tattoos before I hit the search button, watching it as it starts to scan all the files inside, the names of every person in there flicking on the screen too quickly to read.
It eventually stops and pulls up a profile.
“Motherfucker,” I growl and reach for my phone, dialing my brother.
“You good?” He says by way of greeting. I can hear him moving around, his steps echoing across a hard floor.
“Fine,” I put the phone on loudspeaker and place it down since I only have use of one hand, “I’m sending you a file.”
“What for?”
“Need it dealt with, and while I’d love to do it, I can’t.”
“Must be torture,” He laughs, “But the arm will heal. Who is it?”
“Kurtis Nolan,” My lip turns up at his name.
Richard fucking Taylor’s right-hand man.
Richard must have clocked on to my investigating him and ordered the hit.
He always claimed he didn’t want a war with the Farrows, but he’s just brought one to his doorstep.
So, what is he trying to keep hidden that he’ll risk his own life for?
More women have gone missing in the past week, and no one is batting a fucking eye at it, except us.
“Richard Taylor’s guy?” Killian asks, “Why?”
“He was the shooter.”
“Fuck,” Killian hisses, “Are you sure?”
“Bring him in for questioning, but I’m certain, got a match on the tattoos.”
“You better be fucking certain, Dean,” Killian is moving again, and a door opens. He speaks away from the phone, his voice muffled, and Savannah’s voice replies. “Malakai won’t be happy if you’re wrong, and we make a damn mess.”
“You heading there now?”
“Yes,” He answers.
“Dial me in when you get there, I can’t come right now.”
“I know,” The sound of the engine revving to life fills the speaker, “Are you good, though? You need anything?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“And Lily?”
“She’s fine,” I close the laptop, “Just dial me in.”
“Will do.” He hangs up, and I hit send on the secure mail, waiting until I get confirmation that it’s received before I close the laptop.
As I’m waiting for Killian to call back, I hear the door beside mine open and her soft steps against the hallway, moving toward the stairs. I’d left the light on in the kitchen in case she got up in the night so she could see, but she’s barely been in bed an hour.
Knowing I have time, I get up and open my door quietly, peering out.
She’s already making her way downstairs, so I follow her, watching her take each step as quietly as she can.
From this angle, I can see the kitchen and small hallway in front of the door, but I don’t go down, instead, I study her from where I stand at the top of the stairs.
She moves toward the front door, and I hear the lock move.
She doesn’t unlock but instead wiggles it, checking it’s secured, and then she moves into the kitchen, going out of view.
I listen as a few knocks and taps happen in there and then she comes out, doing the same in the living room and only when she’s happy, she makes her way back toward the stairs, stopping when she sees me waiting at the top.
“Dean,” She breathes, her eyes blinking a few times.
“What were you doing?” I ask.
“I just,” She glances behind her, “Um, well, I just wanted to make sure I locked up.”
“I locked it,” I watch her as she tentatively steps up, “And there’s a security system.”
“Right, of course.” Another step up.
“You’re safe here, Sloane,” I tell her gently, “Nothing can happen to you here.”
“Yeah,” She nods, “Yeah, I know.” But the way her voice wavers tells me she doesn’t believe me.
Does she feel safe anywhere? What happened to her?
What made it this way for her? It isn’t the first time I’ve noticed the obsession with the locks, or how she constantly checks the corners of the room when she enters, or how she looks over her shoulder and positions herself with her back to the wall.
She’s guarded and in defense mode, always.
“Truth for a truth?”
But she shakes her head and moves to step past me. I quickly grip her by the wrist, my hold gentle enough that she can easily slip out of it if she wanted.
“Dean,” She swallows, her voice a little more than a whisper.
“You’re safe,” I repeat to her.
Her eyes drop to my mouth and then back up, “I know, but sometimes it’s hard to remember that.”
“What do you need?” I hold myself real fucking still as she inches forward just a touch. Close enough, I see the dark blue specks within her eyes and the darker rim around her pupils. So fucking pretty. Her breath stutters across my mouth, and her eyes drop once more to my lips and hold there.
“Too much to ask for,” She whispers.
My fingers flex against her warm skin, “Then take, don’t ask.”
She makes a soft humming sound, lashes fluttering as she processes my words. The moment shatters in the next second. She jumps away from me, eyes wide, “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, Butterfly,” I reach for her again, wanting that proximity to her, but she moves further away, walking backward to her bedroom.
Her panic is a living thing consuming her, but there’s no way to save her when she locks herself away and shuts me out.
I can’t tell if I want to rip the door off the hinges to demand answers or kiss the shit out of her.
“I’m so fucked,” I grumble to myself as I shut my own bedroom door and palm myself through the material of my sweats.
Out of fucking control. She makes me want to throw away all the rules I’ve given myself, all the boundaries I have set to ensure I never get hurt.
I want her fucking hands on me. Her touch.
Yanking at my sweats, I free my cock, gripping the shaft and pump it one, two times, stopping at the crown to smear the bead that has formed there.
The silver balls of the piercing through the tip glint in the low light of my room.
She’d look so fucking pretty taking my cock, legs spread wide, those perfect tits in my hands.
My teeth clamp together. So fucking close, and yet unattainable.
She is my walking ruin.
And yet, I feel like I’ll walk happily into her flames and lose myself within the ashes.