Chapter 6
I should have had Romano remove her immediately.
That would have been the logical decision. Clean. Efficient. The kind of decision I made without hesitation every other hour of every other day. The girl was drunk, lost, and had wandered into a meeting that could have gotten her killed simply by existing in the wrong room at the wrong time.
Romano was still looking at me from the corner of his eye. Waiting. He had that particular stillness he got when he didn't understand my decision but was too well trained to question it out loud.
I didn't explain myself to Romano. I looked back down at the girl in my lap.
She was looking around the room now with a small frown creasing her forehead, apparently doing some kind of internal calculation. Then she looked back at me with the gravity of someone about to say something very important.
"What? Wrong room?" Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, nose scrunching.
Then she gasped as if the realisation downed on her. She looked at Drago before her gaze settled back on me. Then she spoke in a whisper like she just discovered a conspiracy.
"Are you the.. homose-"
"No." I didn't let her complete that sentence.
She was dangerous. Romano let out a noise which sounded something between a snort and cough.
I glared at him and dismissed the room with a single look.
Drago left without being told twice. His men followed.
Romano was the last to move, and when he passed me his expression said very clearly that he would be requiring an explanation at some point in the near future.
The door closed. Leaving both of us alone. Just me and her.
"You know," she said seriously, "for an escort you have a very scary living room."
I couldn't help raising an eyebrow at her statement. Male escorts? Me? Seriously?
I looked at her for a long moment, my jaw clenched.
"Is that so," I said.
"Mhm." She nodded, very certain. "The other ones were scarier though. You're the best looking so I picked you."
She patted my chest once, apparently satisfied with this explanation. "Worth every penny."
Years in this business. Rivals who couldn't say my name without lowering their voice. Rooms that went silent when I entered them. And this woman was patting my chest and congratulating herself on getting herself a good value.
Then she shifted slightly in my lap and winced, reaching down to pull off one heel, then the other, dropping them on the floor beside the couch with two quiet thuds. She looked at them briefly like they had personally wronged her.
"I hate heels," she announced.
"Then why wear them?"
She looked up at me with the gravity of someone delivering very important information.
"Because I was being defiant." She said it like it explained everything. Then after a beat - "It didn't really work."
I said nothing.
She looked at me again. Really looked, the way she had in the doorway - unhurried, assessing, like she hadn't quite finished deciding something. Her eyes were still glassy but clearer than before. Whatever she was feeling underneath all the recklessness was closer to the surface now. Visible.
"You don't talk much," she observed.
"No."
"That's fine." She tilted her head slightly. "I've been talked at enough lately."
Something in her voice when she said it. Quiet. Worn down to the bone. For a moment the amusement in her eyes dimmed slightly, something quieter surfacing underneath. Something honest. The bruised thing I had noticed before, closer now.
"I had a terrible week," she said.
It wasn't a complaint. It was just a fact, delivered plainly, like she was simply setting the record straight with the universe.
"I know," I said.
She blinked "How?"
I looked at her. At the wine red dress chosen like a dare. The hair down like a declaration. The credit card on a bar counter and the wrong room and the absolute conviction of someone who had decided tonight that the rules no longer applied to her.
"Lucky guess," I said.
"Someone hurt you." I made a statement. It was clear from the look in her eyes, she was too easy to read.
Something shifted in her expression. Not quite a smile. Something smaller and more tired than that. She looked at me for a moment like she was deciding something.
"Two someones. Who I loved the most and trusted over myself. Forget it... I don't want to think tonight," she said quietly. "I just want to - not think. Even for a little while."
She wasn't asking me. Not exactly. She was just saying it out loud, the way very drunk and very honest people sometimes did.
I should have called Romano back in.
Instead I looked at her for one long moment. This strange small creature who had walked into the most dangerous room in the building, sat herself in my lap, patted my chest and told me about her terrible week like I was someone safe to tell things to.
My hand moved before I decided to move it. I tucked a loose strand of hair back from her face. Slowly. Giving her every opportunity to pull away.
She didn't.
Her breath caught slightly. Her eyes found mine and stayed there, wide and glassy and suddenly very present, like the alcohol had stepped aside for just this moment.
I leaned in. She didn't pull away. Her eyes closed, lashes settling against her cheeks and I closed the distance.
She tasted like whiskey and something sweeter underneath it. She was still for just a moment - then she responded, and that was all I needed. When I urged her lips apart she followed without hesitation, her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt like she needed something to hold onto.
When we pulled away she was breathing hard, her fist clenched on the material of my shirt. Her eyes opened. Slightly dazed. Lips parted.
I stood, and she made a small undignified sound of surprise as I lifted her with me, one arm beneath her knees, the other at her back. She grabbed my collar instinctively.
"Where are we going," she said. Not quite a question.
"Room with an actual bed," I said.
"I can walk," she informed me.
"I know," I said, and carried her anyway.
She didn't argue further. She considered this for approximately one second.
"Okay," she said, and relaxed against my chest like she had made a fully informed and reasonable decision.
The suite had a bedroom separate from the receiving room - quieter, darker, the city lights bleeding softly through the curtains.
I set her down and she looked up at me in the dim light, hair loose around her shoulders, and for a moment neither of us said anything.
I set her on the edge of the bed. I reached up and unclasped the chain from my neck.
The sun pendant caught the light briefly before I set it on the nightstand.
An old habit - I never slept with it on.
It had passed through my grandfather's hands, and his father's before that.
The sun of Empire. It had no business tangled in bedsheets.
She looked at me and then reached up and started to remove her earrings, setting them carefully next to my chain on the nightstand following my suit with the focused deliberateness of someone fighting the alcohol for basic motor control.
A thin bracelet followed. She lined them up neatly, which for some reason struck me as unbearably characteristic of her - drunk and reckless and still neatly organizing her jewelry before bed.
Then she looked up at me, with a sudden movement I lowered her on the bed till I hovered over her. My one hand wrapped around her slender waist and another holding her wrists above her head
"Last chance, kitten" I said even though I knew I couldn't let her go when she was like this.
I waited for a while expecting her to pull away but instead she leaned closer, pressing her lips over mine. My hand on her found the zipper on the back of her dress, pulling it down. She gasped but didn't protest. That was all the sign I needed.