Chapter 6 – Juliette #2
He looked at me then and I could almost see it happen. The moonlight that flittered through the back door of the mud room showed his huge pupils. Almost like his eyes were designed to see at night. Then he blinked. And blinked again.
His body language changed then. His shoulders slumped. His hand, the one that had been holding the gun, fell to his side.
“Jules?” he rasped.
Then I understood. It had been a dream. He’d been sleepwalking.
Should I try and take the gun from him?
Definitely not, something told me. Not the way he held it like it was an extension of his hand.
“I think you’re sleepwalking,” I told him. “There’s no one else here in the house.”
“There’s no one here,” he repeated. He blinked a few times and shook his head. “Did I wake you up?”
Did he fucking wake me up? I wanted to slap him across his face after what he put me through. But he was clearly going through something of his own.
“You need to go to bed,” I told him. “And make sure the safety’s on that thing.”
He looked down at his hand as if he was just seeing the gun. In less than a second, he’d not only clicked on the safety but removed the magazine as well.
I took his non gun holding hand and led him back through the kitchen into the living room and off the hallway that led to his bedroom. I didn’t follow him inside, just waited for him to put the gun away in the drawer in the nightstand by his bed.
He was looking down at the floor when he said, “I…sometimes I sleepwalk.”
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” I said.
Because this was a new sort of fucked up situation.
“I lock my door from the inside,” he said, still not looking at me. “Usually by the time I’ve figured out how to open it, I wake myself up.”
But tonight I’d let him fall asleep on the couch.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning. Go back to sleep.”
But he didn’t move. Just stood there, in his briefs. All hard muscles and sharp angles.
It occurred to me he had the body of a highly trained athlete.
Or, like he’d once told me, an elite killer.
“Night,” I said, for lack of any other words.
Yeah, this was going to be one heck of a conversation tomorrow.
But as I made my way back up to my room, locking the door behind me, although I wasn’t sure why I bothered as it was basically zero deterrent to a man with his kind of skills, it occurred to me that he’d truly been ready to kill anyone who had dared to step inside this house.
They come for what’s mine…
Was I included in what he considered his?
The next morning I came downstairs to the smell of coffee. This wasn’t unusual. Creed was typically up before me and always had a pot of coffee still half full on the warmer, ready for me.
Except normally, he was already dressed for the day, usually without enough warm clothing for what the weather was outside, and headed out to the barn to start the day, leaving me to some morning privacy.
However, this morning he was sitting at the kitchen table, in a pair of sweats, a chain around his neck and nothing else. His massive chest and six pack was on display for all the world to see.
“Could you put on a shirt?” I said, as soon as I stepped into the kitchen.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need to see all that,” I made a motion with my hand in the direction of his hairless chest with wide aureoles surrounding his hard nipples. “Before I’ve had my coffee.”
“We’re married. You’re going to have to get used to seeing me naked eventually.”
I pulled my favorite mug down from the cabinet and filled it with coffee. Creed liked it strong, which was fine with me because I added all the milk and sugar I could to it.
“Not if you kill me in your sleep first,” I said as I sat across from him, one leg bent with my heel on the edge of the chair.
No point in beating around the bush.
“In my defense. I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was trying to protect you.”
That was true. But it didn’t make me feel any safer. What if he decided I was the they coming to take what was his?
“What are we going to do?” I asked him, and thought it was weird to hear the word we come out of my mouth. We weren’t a we. We were a me and him and one of us wanted out of this situation before she ended up dead. “My offer still stands. You give me the fifty thousand and let me walk.”
He looked at me then.
I was still wearing the same oversized shirt from last night.
Although I’d put on a bra because I’d caught him looking at my breasts on more than one occasion and didn’t need to provide any more titillation (pun intended), and a pair of plaid flannel pajama bottoms. My hair was pulled up into a messy top bun and, obviously, I wore no makeup.
I didn’t even own any. Just a lip balm that had some pink in it.
I had to look incredibly young to him, because right now he seemed at least ten years older than I knew him to be.
“I thought we’d moved beyond that,” he said, like I’d disappointed him.
“I’m never going to want to be in this marriage,” I told him. As honestly as I knew how. “So that’s the baseline. Add to that, the man I’m sharing space with is armed and has sleepwalking nightmares where he thinks someone is out to kill him.”
“When you say it that way, it sounds bad,” he said dryly.
“Let me go.”
But he was shaking his head. “No, I do that and you’ll regret it. Losing the house, the farm. You think walking away from everything you’ve ever known is going to be easy? It’s not.”
“I would rather try than get shot.”
He grimaced then. “I’m not going to shoot you. When I pull the trigger I know what I’m fucking shooting at. Awake or asleep. You weren’t in any danger last night. I just scared you.”
“Understatement,” I said, then sipped my coffee.
He folded his arms over his chest and I watched his pec muscles bulge as he sat up. There was a small charm that dangled from the chain around his neck. I don’t know why, but I assumed it would be his military tags. It wasn’t. Definitely some kind of symbol.
“I’ll buy a safe,” he said, breaking my concentration on his chest. “Keep the gun locked in there. If it happens again, I’ll have to get through my locked door and through the safe. I always wake up.”
“Always,” I said. “How many times has this happened?”
“Since being here?” he asked, then shrugged. “Last night was only the second time. I don’t do well waking up in strange places. You usually wake me up and tell me to go to bed if I fall asleep on the couch.”
“Oh no, we are not putting this on me.”
He instantly backed down. “I don’t want last night to ruin the progress we were making.”
“What fucking progress?” I asked, astonished by where his head was. “Dude, newsflash. Just because I’m not trying to light your insides on fire on the daily, doesn’t mean I’m not still plotting my way out. To be clear. This is a jail. I am a prisoner. And I will escape.”
He smiled then. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Babe, you haven’t been able to keep your eyes on my face this whole conversation. You’re looking at my chest and you like what you see, which tells me you’re straight.”
“Fuck!” I barked. Not because he was wrong, but that would have been a perfect out. “You would have let me go if I was a lesbian?”
He barked out a laugh. “No, babe. I would have tried to turn you first.”
“You know that’s not a thing,” I said, like he was an idiot.
“I would have made every effort. You’re staying. I’m staying. You make sure I get to my bedroom every night. I’ll keep the gun in a safe. Deal?”
“For now. Sure. I’ll just find some other way to break you,” I told him, straight up.
He stood then and maybe he was right. Maybe his naked chest was a little distracting. I mean, I was a human female with hormones. And, apparently, I was straight.
A girl could look, couldn’t she?
He walked over to the sink and emptied his cup, washed it and put it on the drying rack.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the window above the sink, his back to me.
I could tell that wasn’t easy.
“Okay,” I said.
Then he turned and took a few steps toward where I was sitting. Then he did this crazy thing by dropping his lips to mine before I could even react. It wasn’t even a kiss. Just his lips, pressed against mine for a second, warm, full, and then it was over.
“The hell?” I said, pushing against his chest when he finally lifted his head.
“You’re cute as fuck in the morning. Been wanting to do that for a while now. Get used to it. A husband kisses his wife good morning.”
“Wow, you’re really picking up stuff from those shows we’re watching. Because I know you don’t know jack shit about husbands and wives.”
“Yep. Get dressed. I’ll see you out in the fields. You’re going to direct me on the tractor to make sure I plow those rows straight.”
He left the kitchen, presumably to get dressed himself, and I wanted to throw my coffee mug against the wall. Except I was still drinking my coffee and it was my favorite mug.
The absolute delusion of this man. That he was going to make me come around to being married to him because I liked the way his chest looked?
Wait, that wasn’t a thing, was it?
No. The plan didn’t change. Get him to divorce me, take the money and run to Seattle.
Before I got dead.