Chapter 9
It had been three days since Saint came back and I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. He was here. And I was pathetic with how happy that made me.
He chose me.
No one ever chose me. Not my brother, my sister. Certainly not my father.
No one but Saint.
It still made me giddy, warmth stirring in my stomach.
I was wrapped in a happy bubble, one I was terrified would pop at a moment’s notice.
We had spent the past couple of days wandering in and out of museums and shops, along with visiting some places that I originally had planned to visit with my mom.
We rode the London Eye, where I playfully tried to flash the city until Saint wrestled me onto his lap. He reprimanded me with a bite to my shoulder, before soothing it with his tongue.
Ten out of ten, I would do it again.
He took me for a stroll through the gardens at Buckingham Palace, where outside the gates I did try to make one of the guards crack their stoic concentration. Not with a board, but with a litany of other antics.
I didn’t succeed.
Saint cheered me up with a high tea at Fortnum & Mason, a favorite of my mom’s.
It was hard being in London without her, but Saint made it easier. Helped keep her memory alive. Something my family hadn’t done in far too long.
A calming salve to my aching soul.
While we explored the city during the day, the nights were for a different kind of exploration.
Saint was very conscientious of my body, very in tune with my needs. Going as far as to put them above my wants. Of his.
Some nights we had sex, but others, like the night before last, we simply laid on our sides, Saint’s fingers lazily dancing along my thigh as we talked and laughed.
We didn’t mention my family, though they hung over our heads.
Saint snuck in hours of work periodically throughout the day, telling my brother that things weren’t as locked down on the London front like he had thought.
He needed more time. Needed more time to stay.
Stay here with me.
Archer called me the night Saint didn’t get on his plane. I didn’t answer, too preoccupied with Saint’s return. But he left a message. And that message had Saint’s face creasing with guilt, and had spiked my anxiety.
Anxiety that grew every day since he wouldn’t stop calling. Twice a day, to both of us, Archer reached out.
Last night, he even asked Saint if he could check on me. I sounded distant and he was worried. Saint told him it was no problem, but the guilt that lined his face as he met my eyes broke my heart.
Especially with how grateful Archer sounded, knowing he didn’t have to worry about me around Saint. That he trusted him to look out for me.
Saint went onto the balcony for a long time after the call ended.
I found him, hours after we had gone to bed, sitting on the floor, hunched over his laptop with his glasses askew and screen tilted away from the bed, from me, the light low.
“What are you doing down there?” I rubbed my hazy eyes, voice leaded with sleep.
He startled, slamming his laptop shut in the process. “Just sending some emails. Go back to bed.”
“You said you finished all your work earlier.”
“Something came up,” he answered, almost cagey, as he pushed his laptop off his lap.
I was too sleepy to push for more. In fact, I fell asleep before Saint even stood up.
Now, in the early rise of morning, I touched the base of my neck, feeling cool metal on my fingertips.
With Saint’s surprise return, I forgot all about the present he got me. Too lost in him as we haphazardly made our way to the first available surface, which happened to be a desk with a lamp that got in our way. We broke it but hadn’t even paused for that.
I didn’t get to open the present until the next morning, when I woke up to see it placed on my bare stomach. It was a silver necklace with two stars on it. One star was slightly bigger than the other and hung a little higher.
It was delicate. It was minimal. It was me.
Stars had always been my obsession, and now I had them with me even when the sun chased them away.
Sunlight filtered in through the curtains, cutting the room with a warm, golden glow that stretched across to the bed.
To where Saint slept, hitting the highs of his cheekbones with a light like a halo.
“You’re staring again,” Saint mumbled into his pillow, sleepy eyes opened.
I was totally staring.
With a soft smile, I ducked my chin, my hair falling like a curtain between us.
Two fingers found their way past the strands to my chin, bringing my face back to his to see a seductive, sleep-ridden smile. “I don’t mind.”
Chills touched my skin from the deep rumble of his words, the simmering heat behind his eyes.
“Maybe I do.”
“Yeah?” He rolled over and pulled me on top of him.
I braced my hands on his shoulders as I peered down at him. “Yeah.”
“You don’t want me to know you’re staring at me?” He grinned, running his hands along my thighs.
“No. Maybe I don’t want you to know how obsessed I am with you.”
“I already know that.” He grinned. “You weren’t subtle with the way you used to write Mrs. Delacore all over your notebooks in school.”
I slapped his chest, playfully. “I did not.”
“You did, too. Your brother even found one of them and hit me over the head with it in warning.” The grin he was wearing slid off his face at the mention of my brother. “I told him he had nothing to worry about…”
“Saint.”
He shook his head. “It’s hard to remember the outside world when it’s just the two of us.”
I felt the same way. Like we were protected in a bubble that kept all the negative away.
Not liking the far-off expression on his striking face, I said the first thing that popped into my head. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”
Saint frowned. “Shouldn’t that be my line?”
His hands coasted up my thighs, rendering me momentarily distracted. It felt like a roller coaster followed his touch.
I forced myself to think past the feelings he was stirring up inside me and back on the conversation.
“Men can be beautiful.” Ethereal, masculine beauty.
“And so are you, Madelayne. So beautiful.” He rolled his hips against mine. “Especially when you’re sitting on top of me like that, looking at me with fuck me eyes.”
Oh, God. It still felt surreal. Him being here with me. Him saying shit like that to me. I pinched the skin of my thigh and winced at the sting.
Real. This was still real.
“What’re you doing?” Saint’s brows furrowed.
“Pinching myself.”
“Yeah, no shit, I saw. But why?”
“This doesn’t feel real. Not just you being here with me, but you being here naked with me.” I was already stripped bare, I might as well lay it all out there and ask the question that’d been stirring in the back of my mind for days. “Why are you here with me? Why did you come back?”
He was quiet, eyes lost in thought, while I sat on top of him, waiting for an answer.
“I’ve been set on autopilot for years, never letting myself stop or slow down. I’ve been too afraid that if I did, the things I’ve been running from would catch up to me. Ever since the shit went down with my dad, I’ve just been going through life without feeling.” He drummed his fingers on my thighs. “The other night with you was the first time I stopped to just breathe in years. The first time I didn’t feel like I had to run. I could just be.”
He was just starting to breathe while mine was currently trapped in my chest.
Saint spoke with such honesty, it left me immobile, not expecting to have such an effect on him. “You bring me peace.”
“Why?” The word left on a croak. Why me?
“I know your family hasn’t done a very good job at telling you, but do you truly not see how amazing you are?” He didn’t give me room to answer. “I’m going to tell you this, and I need you to really hear me. You, my little dove, have this wildfire inside you, making you burn brighter than anyone else in the room. Don’t let them ever try to put it out.”
“You keep doing this,” I whispered.
“Doing what?” he whispered back.
“Surprising me with just how much of me you see.”
No one, not even my siblings, saw the fire I always felt burning inside me. It was a steady heat, a constant hum.
My mom did, though. She used to say that I couldn’t sit still because fires weren’t made to be contained. They were made to run free.
“I’ve always seen you.” His voice dropped an octave, husky with passion. “It’s only been recently that I started noticing you in ways I shouldn’t, but I’ve always seen you, Mady.”
I’ve always seen you, Mady.
He had never tried to smother my flames.
Tears pricked my eyes and I tried to blink them away. It felt too much, these admissions he bestowed on me.
It was as if he plucked the words from my soul and arranged them into a bouquet.
“Fuck, Mady. Don’t cry.” He shot up, pulling me into his chest. “I didn’t say it to make you cry.”
“I’m not,” I promised, pushing away just enough to study his face. “I just wasn’t expecting to hear that.” I blinked my eyes a couple of times. “Just give me a minute, it’ll pass.”
For so many years, I had thought Saint was placed in my life to save me, to keep me company as an outcast of my family.
We were two outcasts who found shelter together.
A shelter that kept us hidden. This, whatever was developing between us, didn’t feel wrong. It felt right. Oh so right. But I knew that people outside this hotel room would view it differently.
He was eight years older than me.
I was freshly nineteen.
On paper alone, it looked erroneous.
They would call him sick while telling me I was violated. Say he used his power and status in my life to take advantage of me. No one would believe the young, naive girl had wanted this.
She hadn’t known what she wanted. Didn’t know any better.
These were the thoughts that kept me up at night long after I wanted to be asleep. I heard the whispers, could feel the judgment.
And it all felt like lies.
Especially since the more time I spent with Saint, the more I noticed the little, intimate things about him.
Like how he squinted too hard behind his blue-light glasses at his computer while working.
Or how he’d get this curious, almost pensive expression whenever I moved across the room, like he didn’t know why he was watching but couldn’t make himself look away.
Or when he was stressed out, he’d pull me onto his lap and run his fingers up my inner thighs.
Saint, I discovered, was a toucher. A man not shy of PDA. He was always reaching for me, brushing the hair out of my face and off my shoulder. He’d press random kisses along my neck or on the top of my head.
London was his safe place, he told me one night while lazily tracing over my skin. He didn’t have to hide or pretend.
Here, he didn’t have to worry about being caught. No one knew us. No one would report back to my family about us.
“What about my family?” I had to ask.
Saint wouldn’t look at me for several seconds as a crease formed between his eyes. An internal battle waging. “I don’t want to talk about them right now,” he finally said. “Do you?”
No. I shook my head. The longer I could go without thinking about them, and what would happen if they were to find out about us, the better.
“Good.”
“Saint. My eyes are up here.”
“I know.”
My very naked, very swollen, breasts were a big fan of the attention they were getting. Saint spent some extra time getting to know them last night and they were definitely showing the aftermath today.
And Saint was an artist admiring his work.
Which wasn’t fair when his back was hidden from my view, hiding the scratch marks I’d carved there last night.
Animals. That was how we’d been going at each other. Starved, wild beasts unsure of when our next meal was going to be.
“Ahem.” I cleared my throat with a smirk, secretly loving how attracted to my body he was. “I have other places that are in need of attention, sir.”
His eyes burst with heat at the word sir.
Saint not so secretly loved the moniker.
“Hmm, like where?” He grabbed my ass, squeezing my cheeks as his lips brushed my jaw, down my neck. “Here?”
“Oh, God.” My fingers dug into his biceps as his kisses went lower, his tongue swirling into the hollow of my collarbone.
“It’s Saint, actually.” He picked his head up with a sinner’s grin. So cheeky in the mornings. “Now. Where else wants attention?”
“Do you want me to show you or tell you?”
His eyes danced. “Show me?—”
The sharp ring of his cell phone went off across the room, the sound shattering the sexual haze that wrapped around us.
Instinctively, I pulled away.
“Ignore it,” Saint murmured as he pulled me back where I belonged. Pressed right up against him.
I tried, but the ringing didn’t stop. I gave him a little push. “Answer it, I have to brush my teeth, anyway.”
He chuckled as he rolled off me, amused with my stubbornness of brushing my teeth. I usually refused to let him kiss me in the morning until I did.
In the bathroom, I heard him answer his phone before the conversation was drowned out by the running water.
When I walked out, it was to find Saint on the balcony, a hotel robe wrapped around him.
Something was wrong.
Not even the bulky size of the robe could hide how tense he was as he gripped the wrought-iron railing with one hand while his phone was pressed firmly to his ear with the other.
I couldn’t hear the conversation, thanks to the closed French doors that blocked me out, but that couldn’t stop a hole from forming in my stomach, screaming that this wasn’t good.
What if he had to leave again? What if something happened back in Atlanta while he had been gone that required his immediate attention?
Or—and that hole opened even further with the thought—what if something happened to his mother?
She had been on a rapid decline since her husband’s arrest and confinement in federal prison. People hadn’t been kind to her since the scandal.
Mrs. Delacore had all but become a recluse, finding happiness in her bottle of pills instead of people. She’d had this addiction for as long as I could remember, but it had gotten progressively worse since the arrest.
Not knowing what to do, I let my stomach do the guiding and ordered room service for us.
Probably more food than could even be split between two people, but that was what happened when you let the hungry girl order. My eyes were bigger than my stomach.
Saint stayed on the balcony long enough for the food to be delivered and for me to be done with a third of my waffle. He walked back in with his phone clenched between his fist while his jaw ticked like a bomb.
There was no mistaking the pissed off aura he was throwing off.
I bit into a strawberry, watching him warily as he approached. “I got hungry.”
“I see that.” He took the strawberry from my fingers and plopped it into his mouth, chewing it aggressively.
He reached for another, but I slapped his hand away.
“Who was that on the phone?”
“It was nothing.” He tried to steal my food again, only to be blocked by me slapping him away for a second time.
“You don’t look like it was nothing.” I was treading a dangerous line, prodding when I should’ve let the beast be.
Saint heaved a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Something happened with work that I need to take care of. I have a friend here who’s letting me use their office, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone. You’ll be okay on your own?”
I nodded, not sure if he saw it before turning his attention to his phone.
“I’ll be fine,” I added, as he walked to the armoire where he hung his suits and pulled out a black on black ensemble.
After dressing with frenzied speed, he came to where I still sat on the bed.
“I’ll text you when I’m done and we can meet up.” He leaned down to kiss me, but I barely felt it before he pulled away and was out the door without as much as a goodbye.