Chapter 26
RETH
The house smells like her now.
That’s the thing I notice sitting on the couch watching her argue with Ian in the kitchen about whether muffins count as dinner. But while I’m listening to their banter, my mind is reeling with what happened between us.
This morning. In her bedroom. Her bed. Nothing I could have ever imagined or fantasized about came close.
Her taste—Jesus Christ, her taste. Addictively sweet.
I could lick this woman’s cunt until it blinds me.
And it almost did, because the way I came without a single thread of friction against my cock, just her taste on my tongue and her body a quivering mess, I didn’t think I’d ever get a hard-on again after that.
That’s until I dragged my dick through her wet slit and my cock became steel all over again.
Somehow, this woman took years’ worth of mindfuckery and silenced it, leaving this mind-blanked, glassy clarity that I ride like some lunatic wave all day.
Being inside her is its own kind of high. There isn’t a drug on the planet that could hit me like the syrupy rush of her pussy squeezing every bit of my soul out through the slit in my cock. And the way she said my name? Nazareth. Not Reth. It felt like she was giving it back to me.
I’ve become so used to Valeria using my full name, I forgot what it sounded like when someone said it without cruel intent. Somehow, someway, Sophia found a way to make it mine again.
Nazareth Hale.
I’ve spent thirteen years making myself nothing.
Flat. Manageable. A thing without edges that couldn’t be used against me because there was nothing in me worth using.
She undid that in a morning. One afternoon.
Three extraordinary, mind-blowing times.
Ever since we dragged ourselves out of her bedroom, I’ve just been trying to get her back into it.
But the woman’s hungry, and right now Ian is on the wrong side of that.
“They have eggs in them,” she says, pointing at the muffin in Ian’s hand with the solemn authority of a lawyer. “Eggs are protein. Protein is dinner. Case closed.”
“Eggs are a supporting cast member,” Ian retorts. “Not the lead.”
“You’re a supporting cast member.”
“I’m the lead of every room I walk into, and you know it.”
I watch her laugh—the real one, the one she uses when she doesn’t mean to, the one that comes out before she can decide whether to let it. And I feel it in my chest, like something landing. Like something finding its place.
Sophia’s yellow slippers are scattered on the floor by the couch, and I straighten them, placing them neatly side by side. For the third time.
“Reth, please speak to your woman.”
I look up. Ian is pointing at the muffin with the gravity of a man presenting evidence in court. “She’s trying to tell me this is dinner.”
“It. Has. Eggs,” she bites out. “And blueberries. Blueberries are a superfood.”
“A superfood?” Ian repeats.
“Antioxidants.”
“I will eat my own boot before I accept antioxidants as a food group.”
She finally looks at me, chin slightly raised, waiting for adjudication.
I glance between them. Consider. “She’s right.”
Ian stares at me. “You’re saying that because you walked out of her bedroom with your dick where your mouth should be.”
Sophia snorts, coffee spilling from the cup and spraying from her nose.
Ian blinks. “That’s so sexy.”
“Shut up,” she says, grabbing a dish towel, face blazing.
“No, really. Most women I know would have choked. You committed. That’s a skill.”
She throws the dish towel at him, but he catches it without looking.
I watch the two of them and feel something I don’t have a name for settle across my chest—warm and specific and dangerously close to the thing I told her I wasn’t capable of. In all the years I’ve watched her, there wasn’t a single moment I ever could have imagined this.
Her. Here in this house. With me.
It’s surreal. It’s fucking frightening, because now I have her to lose.
Sophia sits down next to me on the couch—not really next to me, since she’s cuddled up so tightly, she might as well be on top of me. Mmm, that’s a thought.
“I don’t like your employee,” she quips, glancing at Ian, and I swear his face turns bright red.
“Partner,” he enunciates.
“Oh.” She considers this. “So, if I’m being held captive, technically I’m being held captive by a partnership. Is there a company name? Kidnapping LLC? Trauma and Associates?”
“We prefer acquisitions,” Ian says.
She points at him. “I actually like that.”
“Don’t,” I say.
“Too late. We bonded.” Ian looks at me with an expression of pure vindication. I look at the ceiling.
“For the record,” Ian says, settling into the armchair across from us with his beer, “I voted against the acquisition.”
“Did you?” Sophia asks.
“Loudly. Repeatedly. In multiple languages. And look where it got me. A fucking muffin for dinner.”
“And a therapist who can tell you that you have the emotional range of a parking cone.” Sophia smirks.
Ian points at her. “I have an enormous emotional range.”
“Name one emotion you’ve had this week.”
“Hunger.”
“That’s not an emotion.”
“It is when I feel it deeply enough.” He takes a swig of his beer, and my phone vibrates in my pocket.
I dig it out, stand, and swipe the screen to read Andrei’s text.
Compromised. Live tracker on my phone from Prague airport to your location. They know where you are. Get out now.
Three seconds. That’s how long it takes for the information to land, for the calculation to run, for everything in the room to change while every object remains perfectly still.
Ian reads my face. Sets his beer down.
“Remember the plan,” I say to him, and a knowing look passes between us.
“I made you a promise, didn’t I?”
I nod, and Sophia’s voice cuts through the tension behind me.
“What’s going on?”
I turn to face her. She’s still holding half a muffin, crumbs on her fingers, looking between us with that sharp, too-perceptive gaze that never misses anything.
Ian clears his throat, forcing the easy grin back onto his face like armor.
“Nothing you need to worry about yet, Crazy.” He takes her hand, lifts her off the couch. “But if you want to pack a small bag, clothes, those ridiculous slippers, whatever makes you feel steady, now would be a good time.”
She freezes. The playful light in her eyes dims instantly. “Reth?”
I step closer, voice low. “I need you to trust me and do what Ian says. Pack light. We may need to move fast.”
“What’s going on?”
“Now, Crazy.” Ian grabs her shoulders and guides her quickly up the stairs.
I go to retrieve my karambit from the back of the liquor cabinet.
The weight of it settles into my hand the way it always does—familiar, certain, the one constant in thirteen years of variables.
I check it without thinking. Muscle memory older than almost anything else I have.
Ian reappears with his jacket on, two handguns holstered, a third weapon he hands to me without a word. I check the magazine. Full. Rack the slide.
The perimeter sensor goes off, and Ian stills. “How many?”
“Four.”
“Vehicles?”
I nod and stare at the face of the man I’ve trusted with my life on four continents. “Protect her—”
“—when you can’t. I swear on my life, man.”
Sophia appears in the doorway with her coat half-buttoned, shoes on, eyes moving between us and the weapons with an expression I recognize—not panic, not shutdown. Just her, frightened and functional simultaneously, holding herself together the way she always does.
“What do you need me to do?” she says, but I hear the slight tremor in her voice. Something sharp shoots straight through my blackened heart.
“Stay behind Ian,” I say. “No matter what happens. Don’t stop moving.”
Her eyes drop to the karambit in my hand. Then back to my face. “And you?”
Outside, the engines cut. Silence.
Then doors. One, two, three—the specific sound of vehicle doors opened and closed with deliberate quiet, the sound of people who have done this before and know that silence is its own weapon.
Ian moves to the window. His jaw tightens. “Twelve.”
Twelve of Valeria’s best, because she knows what I’m capable of. One variable she has no clue about. Ian.
He looks at me. I look at him. “Back door,” I say quietly.
“Already clocked it.”
“I’ll take the front.”
“Reth—” Sophia’s voice shakes.
“Ian, get her in the car. The keys are in it.” I check the karambit one final time. “Go when I give you the opening.”
Ian’s jaw tightens. He hates the plan, but he’s going to do it anyway because that’s what I need from him and he’s never once failed me.
“Come on, Crazy,” he says to Sophia. “Stay close.”
“Wait—” She looks at me, green eyes wild and panicked. “You’re coming out the front and meeting us at the car, right? That’s the plan?”
I hold her gaze, my heart beating too fast. It’s already happening.
Her being here, the need to keep her safe splits my attention.
The part of my mind that should be mapping exits and calculating angles is instead trying not to think about what happens to her if I fail.
What happens if I fuck up and she gets hurt? What if I can’t keep her safe?
I know what it takes to survive situations exactly like this. I know the particular quality of focus required, the complete, total absence of anything that isn’t the next ten seconds.
She’s the opposite of that.
She is everything that lives outside the next ten seconds. She is after. She is the reason for after. And having her here, in this room, with those eyes on my face—I’m already compromised in ways I can’t afford to be if I want to make sure Valeria never finds her.
This is why I need her gone. Because she makes me human. And right now, she needs a monster to protect her.
“That’s the plan,” I say and reach out, my fingers bracketing the back of her neck as I press my lips hard against her forehead. “I’m not capable of love,” I whisper. “But if I were…it’s you. Always you.”
The front window shatters.