Chapter 18
Adelmo
“What are you doing? You know who she is and what she does.” His scowl returns. “Why?”
“Because…she is mine.” There, I said it, and the statement sinks down through me to my balls. When I put my arm behind me to reassure her, she wraps her hands about my right forearm. She’s shaking, and I can hear her hard breathing. “I’ve got this,” I say over my shoulder.
“Yours?” Kasimir chuckles. “How is this possible? Have you been having some affair I know nothing of?”
“It’s none of your business. All you need to know is that I’m keeping her. She’s not to be hurt. So fuck off with that gun.”
He leans, glances around me at her. “She is the last person you should be keeping. You cannot guarantee she won’t write this up and set off alarm bells.” His gaze skewers me. “With enough publicity anyone can be taken down.”
I nod because it’s true. “She won’t. You need me to get you into the presidency. Let that sink in also. Izabella. Promise him you will behave.”
Behave is, of course, a weighted word. It implies, as did the word mine, that I’m giving her instructions. That I have the right to do so. Will she protest?
Considering her past, she might think this an insult.
“Izzy?”
Her sigh is long, but she answers me. “Yes. I will behave.”
Kasimir purses his lips. “You will say that to me, Miss Fenway. And Adelmo, if this goes wrong, you are the one I will hold responsible, after I punish her.” He flicks his hand sideways and waits for her to answer.
Without any urging from me, Izabella steps from my shelter and comes to my side. “I won’t say or write anything against you, Mr. Stern. I will—” Her legs shift, and she sniffs but continues, “I will behave.”
That was hard to say. I stifle a smirk; my mouth barely moves.
I pull her close, kiss the top of her mussed-up hair. “Good girl.”
She tenses at my compliment before leaning into me. Kasimir might be my brother, but in this I am in uncharted territory. I’ve never struck out on my own like this.
Though I’ve hidden my real name for five years, our power and money are intimately entwined. I can almost see the burning trails left by his thoughts, the fire in his eyes, as he processes this.
“Fine. We are done then. Let’s get this place of yours cleaned up, Adelmo. They’ve signaled that the boat is ours. It turned out well…despite you going off script.”
We shake hands then clap each other’s shoulder before he goes off to give orders.
“I’ll leave him to that.” Then I finally get to turn to Izzy and give her my full attention.
She’s pale and wobbling so I drop to one knee and unstick the dress material from her skin. Fresh blood is showing. “Your blood? Are you shot?” A ricochet perhaps. Shrapnel?
How did I miss this?
“Something cut me. I’m okay. Just hold me.” Her plaintive look slays me, and I rise to wrap my arms around her.
“Come with me.”
Which is how she ends up in my bed, upstairs, with the doctor suturing a laceration that cuts across above her hip. More antibiotics are due.
“Perhaps a sedative?” the doctor asks as he packs his bag. “She would be suffering from the trauma and needs rest.”
I look to her, all snuggled within my white sheets with smears of blood here and there. “No. I’ll make sure she sleeps.” The previous drugs might mess with her metabolism, and I’ve no idea what Montez used on her. “You gave her a painkiller?”
“Yes, and there are tablets on the small table. I also rebandaged her hand and checked that it’s not infected.”
“Good.” I walk him to the bedroom door. The staff will take him the rest of the way. I blank the front glass to full opacity. The room darkens, and the blue sky above and the wide balcony full of climbing ivy and furniture, are slowly erased, leaving a dark wall.
I pause, remembering the scene. It is strangely serene outside today. The gods pay no heed to us humans and our evil doings.
It’s done. We are safe. I thought that before but only now does peace truly sift down.
When I go to her and sit on the edge of the bed, her eyes are already closed to slits, her eyelashes fluttering.
“Sleep now. You’re safe.”
I hold her good hand when she sneaks it into mine and stay there beside her, watching until she falls asleep.
Now, I must sort out exactly what keeping her means.
Locking this woman away in my bedroom, forever, sounds good but is impractical.
Unfortunately.
I’ve showered already, so I climb into bed behind her, carefully shifting aside the sheet to get under it with her… Her bandaged hand is uppermost, and I don’t want to hurt it. On second thoughts, I keep the sheet high so I can see her. She’s wearing one of my T-shirts and nothing else. The dress, now only an ugly memory, is buried in the trash.
Fuck me, though, she faced off Kasimir and tried to defend me.
That says everything.
Almost everything. No one is ever one hundred percent trustworthy. Though her lying there lightly snoring, with my white T-shirt barely covering her butt, is quickening the part of my soul that has not seen the sun since my childhood when my mother was alive.
I recall my mother’s smile and laughter and little else.
What will I do with you, Izzy? I lower the sheet and worm in until we are one, spooning, her softer body moving against mine with each breath.
“Hmmm?” she murmurs. I catch her hand in mine, curl her fingers under.
“Sleep,” I whisper.
“I was. I’m stuck awake now.” She peers back at me, shifts halfway onto her back, then hisses. “Owie. It hurts when the sheet touches the stitches.”
“I know. It will heal.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m wondering how to train you so that you are a good little obedient kitten for me.”
She snorts softly and rolls her eyes, though there’s a smile on her lips.
I prop myself onto my elbow.
“Since you’re awake, tell me how you are going to not write or say anything bad about Kasimir? I know you know that today is not the first time we have done things like this.”
She grunts, worries the corner of her lip with her teeth. “It…will be hard?”
“God. The honesty in that is killing me.”
“Why?”
“Because if I were Kasimir… Just don’t.”
“Is it a death sentence?”
“Maybe. Yes. Yes, it would be. Don’t ever repeat that to anyone else.”
“What I said on the boat was the truth.” With her wounded hand, she reaches up and gingerly touches my jaw with her fingertips. Her wince tells me doing that hurt. “Let me find the right people for you to kill.”
“Wait. You meant that?” That’s a switch I didn’t expect.
“I did. I write about the horrible things we do to each other, but there are bad people I would dearly love to exterminate, because doing that would help the whole world.”
“Here I was thinking you were too sore to do more than sleep.”
“Pfft. Someone woke me, and I’m…I don’t know. I’m wrung out from being terrified, but my head is buzzing now. And seeing Montez dead, after what he said, what he has done… He was number one on my bad guy list. I felt vindicated. I felt awesome even. Is that too awful?”
Her frown is adorable.
“No. It’s not awful. It’s you, and it is what most people think. They just never get to do what they are thinking.”
This doesn’t just make sense. It is the last piece in my grand jigsaw puzzle.
“How long is this bad guy list?”
“Huge.” She smiles. “Why?”
“Now I know how to reward you for being my obedient kitten.”
“Oh.” Her mouth stays in that O shape. “You’d kill for me?”
“Within reason.”
“Holy fuck monkeys!”
I laugh. “Was that a real curse? You made my head ache.”
“I was excited. Is this how power feels?”
“Maybe.” I lie down again and pull her into me. It’s a mistake. Her bare ass down there is rubbing into my cock with every movement of her body. I’m severely craving spanking her, hard, then face-fucking her into the bed.
Breathe, I tell myself. Breathe.
“We’re both going to sleep now. Or else.”
She kisses my hand. “Thank you. For saving me.”
“Shhh. Sleep.”
“No. Let me say this. You did something no one else has ever done for me. I will be forever grateful. I owe you everything.” The tearful rasp in her voice, her hesitancy—I’m already at sea—then she destroys me by whispering that word again, “Everything.”
I’m putty. Is this love? Goddamn feels like it should be.
“Same here. Your bravery impressed me. Kasimir is one scary mother when he needs to be.”
“Not the same.”
I place my hand over her mouth to shush her.
Izzy wriggles her ass back into me, and I almost choke.
“Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about this kinky fraternity we’re going to visit after the election. I’ve only been once, to the party they held in Marseilles, and I think you’ll fit right in. You’ll love it.”
I stroke her hair until she calms and relaxes into the rhythm of sleep, then I close my eyes and dream of all the filthy things I will make her do for me, once she is healed.