The Bleeding House (The Mire Institute #3)

1. The Good Girl

The Good Girl

The morning light caught the edge of the knife blade and split itself into something beautiful.

I watched it happen from across the room, my hands still wrapped around a coffee mug that Nathan had bought me last month—ceramic, hand-thrown, the exact shade of blue that reminded me of the ocean I'd never seen.

He'd noticed me staring at it in a shop window.

Had gone back the next day to buy it without being asked.

That was the thing about Nathan Cross: he noticed everything, and he acted on it before you even knew what you needed.

"You're staring," he said from the kitchen, his voice still rough with sleep.

"I'm admiring." I took a sip of coffee that tasted exactly right—he'd learned how I took it within the first week, had never gotten it wrong since. "There's a difference."

"Mm." He crossed the room in bare feet and loose sleep pants, his chest still bare, the scars I'd catalogued a hundred times catching the light.

The bullet graze on his left shoulder. The knife wound on his ribs.

The thin white line along his hip that he'd never explained, and I'd learned not to ask about. "Admiring what, exactly?"

I set down the mug and reached for him, my fingers finding the waistband of his pants. "Everything."

The kiss started soft—the way morning kisses should, all slow warmth and the lingering taste of sleep.

But Nathan had never been content with soft for long.

His hands found my hips, lifted me onto the counter with an ease that still made my stomach flip, and I wrapped my legs around him as the kiss deepened into something hungrier.

"I have to go to work," I murmured against his mouth.

"It's Saturday."

"I know. Matt needed someone to cover inventory."

"Matt can wait." His lips traced down my throat, finding the spot where my pulse hammered, and I let my head fall back against the cabinet. The coffee mug sat forgotten beside me, steam still curling into the morning air. "I've been thinking about you all night."

"You were asleep."

"Dreaming, then." His teeth grazed my collarbone, and I gasped. "You were wearing that blue dress. The one with the little flowers."

"The one I wore yesterday?"

"That's the one. You were making breakfast, and I was watching you, and I thought—" He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes, his own dark with want. "I thought, that's my girl. That's the woman I'm going to marry."

The word still hit me like a physical thing.

Marry. Three months since Gabriel, three months since the world had rearranged itself around Nathan's steady presence, and I still wasn't used to the idea that someone wanted to keep me.

Not condition me, not train me, not mold me into something useful—just keep me, exactly as I was.

"Say it again," I whispered.

"That you're mine?" He shifted closer, his hips pressing against mine through the thin fabric of my nightgown. "That I'm going to marry you? That I've never felt anything like what I feel when I'm inside you?"

"Yes." The word came out breathless. "All of it."

He kissed me again, harder this time, and I tasted the coffee on his tongue and the hunger underneath. My fingers found the drawstring of his pants, pulling it loose, and he made a sound against my mouth that was half laugh and half groan.

"You're insatiable."

"You're the one who started this."

"I started with a kiss. You're the one taking my pants off."

I paused, my hand still wrapped around the drawstring. "Do you want me to stop?"

"God, no." His forehead pressed against mine. "Never stop. Don't ever stop."

The first thrust made me gasp. He lifted me slightly, adjusting the angle, and when he pushed inside I felt the familiar stretch of him—that perfect fullness that still surprised me every time, no matter how many mornings we'd done this.

His hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise, and I welcomed the marks.

Evidence of being wanted. Proof that I existed in someone else's world.

"Look at me," he commanded, and I did. His eyes were the color of pine forests, dark and deep and full of something I was still learning to name. "I love you."

The words hit different than they used to.

Before, they'd been something I performed—words I'd been trained to say on command, sounds that meant nothing except compliance.

But Nathan had spent months teaching me that love could be a choice instead of a reflex, and every time he said it now, I believed him a little more.

"I love you too," I said, and meant it.

He moved faster, his rhythm building toward that edge we both knew, and I held on to his shoulders and let myself fall.

The orgasm built slow and then crashed over me like a wave, and I cried out something that might have been his name or might have been prayer.

He followed seconds later, my name on his lips like a benediction.

Afterward, we stayed tangled together on the counter, breathing hard. The coffee had gone cold. Outside, the city was waking up, traffic sounds drifting up from the street below.

"I should shower," I said eventually.

"Stay a little longer."

"I'll be late."

"Matt can wait." He kissed my forehead, gentle now. "Five more minutes."

I stayed.

The shower was hot enough to turn my skin pink, and I stood under the spray longer than necessary, letting the water wash away the lingering ache between my thighs.

Nathan had left for his morning run—his discipline about fitness was one of the things I admired about him, the way he maintained his body like a weapon kept sharp—and I had the apartment to myself.

The vitamin bottle sat on the bathroom counter where I'd left it yesterday.

I'd been taking them every morning since Nathan had suggested them—something about supporting my system after the chemical damage Gabriel had done.

I trusted Nathan's judgment on medical matters.

He'd been the one to help me through the withdrawal, the nightmares, the moments when my body remembered things my mind tried to forget.

I shook out two pills into my palm and paused.

One of them was different.

Smaller. Slightly more yellow than white. A shape that didn't quite match the others.

I held it up to the light, studying it. The vitamin company probably just had quality control issues.

That happened sometimes with supplements—Nathan had mentioned it before, when I'd asked about a previous bottle that had seemed off.

He'd explained about manufacturing tolerances and natural variations in ingredients.

I should take it. I should trust that Nathan knew what was best for my body, the way I trusted him with everything else.

Instead, I wrapped the strange pill in a square of toilet paper and tucked it into the back of the medicine cabinet, behind the spare shampoo. Then I swallowed two of the normal ones and finished my shower.

The flashback hit while I was getting dressed.

One moment I was buttoning my shirt—a soft cotton blouse in pale pink, Nathan's favorite color on me—and the next I was somewhere else entirely. A basement. Concrete floor. The smell of copper and fear. My hands were wrapped around a pair of pliers, and the man in the chair was screaming.

"Tell me about the shipment," I heard myself say, my voice bright and cheerful as a bird. "Tell me about the girls, and maybe I'll let you keep the rest of your fingers."

He babbled something—names, dates, locations—and I made careful notes in my phone. Nathan stood in the corner, arms crossed, watching me work. His expression was unreadable, but when I glanced at him for approval, he nodded once.

"Good girl," he said.

The words hit like a physical blow, and for a moment I couldn't breathe. Then the flashback faded, and I was back in my bedroom, my hands shaking, my reflection in the mirror showing a woman I almost recognized.

"Bunny?" Nathan's voice from the doorway made me jump. "You okay?"

"Fine." I smoothed my blouse, forced a smile. "Just... remembered something. From the old days."

His expression flickered—concern, maybe, or something sharper. "Want to talk about it?"

"It was nothing. Just the Anderson job."

"The one with the pliers?" He moved closer, his hand finding the small of my back. "That was a good mission. You got excellent intel."

"I know." I leaned into his touch, letting it ground me. "I just... sometimes I forget how easy it is. The violence."

"It's a tool." His thumb traced circles on my spine. "Like any other. And you use it to protect people. That's not something to be afraid of."

"I'm not afraid."

"You're shaking."

I looked at my hands. He was right. "I don't know why."

"It's probably the memories settling." He pulled me against his chest, and I let him hold me. "Your brain is still healing from what Gabriel did. Flashbacks are normal. It doesn't mean anything's wrong."

Normal. Healing. Nothing wrong. The words were a script I'd memorized, a litany I repeated to myself on the bad days.

"I should get going," I said. "Matt will be waiting."

"I'll drive you."

"You don't have to—"

"I want to." He kissed my forehead. "Humor me."

Matt's bar was called The Lost Hours, and it occupied the ground floor of a building that had been a speakeasy during Prohibition.

The original brick walls still showed through the plaster in places, and the basement—my basement, the one Matt had let me convert—connected to the old bootlegging tunnels that ran beneath the city like secret veins.

I loved this place. Loved the smell of old wood and older whiskey, loved the way the regulars nodded when I came in, loved the sense of purpose that came with every shift.

Before Nathan, before the hunting, before I'd remembered how to be human again, this bar had been my first anchor.

Matt had given me a job when I'd had no references and a fake name.

He'd let me use his basement for things that most bosses would have called the police about.