Chapter 25
LILA
I hear his voice soon after I fall asleep.
I know that because it takes me forever to drift off to sleep, and when it finally happens, the thundering of his voice not only wakes me but it sends me into a spiral of panic.
“Lila?”
I push upright, not knowing where I am or what’s happening. The sky is pink above the horizon. I move my hand over the nightstand, checking for my phone.
Sleeping in his bed probably wasn’t the best idea.
He’s in my room.
He must be there. His voice echoes on the floor.
“Lila Skye? Where are you?”
I slide off his bed, wearing only panties and a cami, and rush to the door.
His silhouette fills the doorframe, and I almost collide with him as I try to get out while he enters the room.
His arms loop around me and catch me at once.
He smells like cologne, a hint of smoke from other people I suspect, as he isn’t a smoker, and metal.
He’s tense, a stern expression on his face, a smile barely moving his lips.
“Are you all right?” he asks, trying to hide his turmoil, failing at it, it seems, or maybe I’m excruciatingly perceptive.
“Yes, I am. I’m sorry. I thought it would be all right if I waited for you here.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure.”
He moves away from me, swiftly removing his shirt.
“I need to take a shower. I’ll be right back.”
He vanishes into the bathroom, while I pick up the shirt he dropped on the chair, lift it to my nose, and inhale the sexy smell caught in his shirt.
He enters the room with a towel hung low around his hips, his hair damp from the shower.
He smells fresh.
He catches me with his shirt pressed to my nose.
“What are you doing?” he asks with a smile.
I drop the shirt back on the chair.
“I missed you,” I say while he wraps his arms around me.
“I missed you too.”
His lips are cold and taste like mint.
He smoothly slips his fingers under my top and peels it off.
At the same time, he kisses me.
My arms loop around his neck while he slides his hands down the back of my thighs and lifts me up.
Within seconds, we’re on the bed, and he enters me without wasting another moment.
Despite his burning passion, I know something's wrong. He carries the burden of something he doesn’t want to talk about.
Maybe it has nothing to do with me.
Maybe it does.
I wish I knew what bothers him.
Before I can delve into that, I think solely about him.
How he moves on top of me.
How he makes me throb with pleasure.
We come at the same time, his hand clutched onto my hair, his lips burning against mine.
He needed this more than I needed it, and I still can’t shake off this feeling that something’s wrong.
We lie on our backs, staring at the ceiling. And then, I find myself speaking.
“Henrietta was here again,” I say, and his reaction is swift.
He flicks his eyes to me, pushes up, and props himself on his elbows.
I slide my hand to his arm.
“Don’t worry. Things are fine,” I murmur with a smile, still basking in the afterglow.
“What did she want?”
“She wants me far away from you.”
“And other than that?”
A grim expression slides over his face.
“There was nothing else, really.”
I search his eyes for a few seconds.
He doesn’t believe me.
“There wasn’t,” I say again.
Suddenly he peels his eyes away from me and searches for his pants. He realizes he has left his clothes in the bathroom, so he slides off the bed, wraps his towel around his waist, and heads that way.
Seconds later, he returns and sets his phone on the nightstand.
The frown on his brow truly worries me.
“Is everything all right?” I ask.
He only nods.
He can’t even make himself talk to me.
“What did she tell you?” he asks, running a tense hand through his hair without looking at me.
I keep my eyes fixed on his profile.
“She told me why you’d forced her to marry you.”
He moves his eyes to me at once.
“She told you that,” he mutters incredulously.
“Yes, she did.”
He tilts his eyes down.
“What else did she say?”
“That you want my money.”
“I don’t need your money.”
“She probably knows that, but she also knows a lot about how you operate.”
He looks at me.
“What else did she say to you, Lila?”
I give him a smile.
He doesn’t seem to be amused.
“That you like to fuck two women at the same time.”
His eyebrows slowly lift in surprise before his stern expression dissolves and a chuckle rocks his chest.
“What?”
“Yeah… She said that. What? Isn’t it true?”
He laughs wholeheartedly.
“She’s fucking nuts,” he says, still laughing.
He shakes his head in disbelief.
“Did you believe her?’ he asks eventually.
“Yes, I did. Why wouldn’t I?”
He shifts his inquisitive stare to me.
“Do you really think I’m into that?”
“Aren’t all men into that?”
His smile subsides.
“I’m not.”
“So, she lied to me?”
“She surely did.”
I study him suspiciously.
“You believe her and you don’t believe me?” he asks.
“I want to believe you, but… How could I?”
He turns to his side and folds an arm under his head.
“Henrietta likes to blabber a lot. She also projects on other people. She doesn’t like women in general, let alone in connection to me. She said that to you because she wanted to hurt you.”
I push my eyes down, sunk in thought.
“Do you believe me?” he asks.
“Yes, I do.”
I look at him.
“What about me wanting your money?” he asks.
“I don’t know why she had to say that,” I confess. “She wanted me to believe that she’d stolen some money from you because she wanted to get back at you.”
His eyes glint.
“That’s partially true.”
He searches my eyes.
“It wasn’t only that,” he goes on. “He stole tens of millions of dollars. The money is gone. No one risks their life for that kind of money only to get back at someone. I suspect she had an accomplice. A man. Whoever that person was, they’ve never revealed themselves.
Frankly, the idea that someone else was involved in that story made me spare her life.
I wanted to know who that person was. I still do. ”
A few moments pass.
“She said something else,” I murmur.
“I’m listening.”
“She insists on me leaving for New York with her. She thinks you and I could figure out how we feel about each other. She’s perfectly aware you’ve never had feelings for a woman.”
A thoughtful look glides over his face.
My apprehension only grows as he seems trapped in a frozen state. Suddenly, his phone rings.
The loud noise tears into the early morning hours.
I can’t remember a time when his phone was so loud.
His expression hardens as he picks up the phone and answers the call.
“Yeah,” he says as if he was expecting this call.
At once, he pushes off the bed and dashes to the bathroom.
He’s still on the phone when he returns, buttoning up his shirt and sliding his jacket on.
“No problem.”
With that, he ends the call, and just as quickly, another alert arrives, and I quickly learn it’s the gate. He taps the screen and shifts his focus to me.
He seems like a different man, and with every passing second, I feel like I’m swept away by whatever bad event I had a feeling would happen.
“I’m sorry that this night had to end like this,” he says, rushed as the swirling red and blue lights of the police cars glow around the property.
He studies my befuddled expression briefly, mulls over something, and then quickly closes the space between us.
“Leave with Henrietta tomorrow morning. It’s better that way. All right?’
He’s not waiting for an answer. Even if he were, I wouldn’t be able to offer him one.
I should put some clothes on and get ready to watch those people swarm his house.
I start doing just that when he stops me with a gesture.
“They’re waiting for me downstairs.”
“Something happened?” I murmur, naked in front of him.
“It did. But it doesn’t matter,” he says, calm for the first time this evening.
His hand slides into the back of my hair before his lips glide over mine, leaving what might be our last kiss.
“I love you, Lila Skye. I love everything about you. Don’t listen to her. Just go with her. My men will be with you two at all times, so she won’t be able to do anything to you.”
He leaves another kiss on my otherwise frozen lips.
“We’ll see each other again. What better test than this, right?” he murmurs, a sad smile claiming his lips.
It breaks my heart to see him sail these moments with grace, when we both know that this is a bad moment that will change our lives forever.
He winks at me, runs his hand over my hair, gives me a hug, and places a kiss on the top of my head before heading out.
Moments later, voices drift from downstairs, filling the house.
I put on a robe and dash to the window.
The police cars are slowly moving toward the exit.
I don’t even want to know what this is all about.
Frantically, I try to figure out what to do next before I swivel at once and storm out, looking for a room with a TV.
Scrolling through the channels, I find the local news, and there it is. The morning headline news.
Three male bodies were found in a vehicle involved in a car accident. One of the men was the sheriff of a small town up north.
A hand slides over my mouth as I fall into an armchair, overwhelmed by the realization that I may have contributed to the death of these three people by discovering that they were cheating in Damon West’s club.