4. Jet
JET
Istudy her for a long minute. She is so delicate in this moment. So vulnerable standing here in this cave like room. Too small. Too fragile.
Breakable.
Broken.
The hair on my arms stands on end and, at the same moment, she shivers. I watch as she hugs my jacket closer to herself. It’s so big it envelops her and there’s a pang inside me, a muscle tightening in my chest, that I shouldn’t be feeling.
She’s off limits. I know that.
But there’s only one thing I want to do right now.
I want to go to her. I want to take her in my arms and pull her to me.
I want to press her face to my chest and hold her and tell her she’s safe.
Tell her I will not let the evil out there touch her.
I will never allow those monsters just waiting for their chance at Malek Lombardi’s daughter get to her. Ever.
My phone vibrates once again, forcing me back to reality.
Cassian has ordered me to bring her back.
A test of loyalty for my stepbrother and me.
I know he’s struggling with his decision when it comes to Amal.
I know Allegra, his wife, is the reason Amal is still unmarried, still in school, still somewhat safe from this world she was born into.
But that reprieve is coming to an end, and no one knows that better than Amal.
I take her glass and cross the room to the bar to set it down. Keeping my back to her, I pour myself another drink.
She tries to mask her fear with bluster when she’s out there in the world but I see right through that. I wonder if I’m the only one who does. I doubt it. And there’s something inside me, predator or protector I’m not sure, that wants to cage her in and keep her.
Lock her away.
Safe and sound and mine.
All mine.
I study her, her words repeating in my head.
She wants to stay.
She wants to stay here. With me. Even knowing what I am. Knowing the violence I’ve committed, I’ve liked committing, she wants to stay.
She steels her spine and slides my jacket off her shoulders. She drapes it over the arm of the couch. She’s wearing a pink dress that falls just above her knees. It’s simple, elegant and almost deceptively modest. It hints at her curves and leaves the rest to my deviant imaginings.
But it also betrays her softness, her vulnerability.
The color is a contrast to the blue-black of her hair, the heavy kohl around eyes more vivid than anything I’ve ever seen.
I first met Amal when she was seventeen. I’m a fucking decade older than her. Even then, though, I’d never have called her na?ve. She’s clever and has always had a way of looking at reality with eyes wide open. I know what it takes to do that. It’s a courage most don’t possess.
I flash back to Cassian and Allegra’s wedding. How Amal looked that day. How she kept her eyes locked on mine, unafraid, as she walked down the aisle as Allegra’s one bridesmaid.
She was a woman by then. The war her father started was over. She’d lost everything and yet she stood with her head held high.
Now, four years later, some of her fire has dimmed. Like the darkness has forced its way in and she’s found a way to coexist with it. Fitted herself around a reality she knows she ultimately cannot escape.
The thought of it, of the world stealing any of that light, that fire, turns my hands to fists and I make a silent vow to put that fire back inside her. To show her she shines brighter and more fierce than even the sun.
Amal slips off her heels. The act brings me back to the present. She stands barefoot, losing three inches and suddenly looking too exposed. Like she’s letting me see her.
Like she wants me to see her.
They call me the Devil for my violence. I earned my name, for my particular love of violence.
I think it’s why she asked me what she asked.
It’s not the role I was meant to play after everything that happened, but it’s come so naturally and I wonder if that outlet is what’s kept me solid, what’s made me stronger.
With her, it’s not that these four years have cut something out of her.
The opposite. They’ve carved something into her.
Something darker.
Something harder.
I recognize it because the same beast lives under my skin.
What happened to her, as shit as it was, it’s forged this woman who is standing before me now. The woman who had the balls to ask me if I like violence.
And that darkness inside her, it doesn’t need fixing. No.
It is, she is, my Achilles Heel. Always has been.
“Can I have another one?” she asks, gesturing to the whiskey.
“We are being reckless so why the fuck not.” I pour her a glass. I walk it over to her, my shoes the only sound in this unearthly silent place. Even Cotton is quietly watching from her corner.
“Reckless, huh?” She sips her whiskey while I watch. She licks her lips.
Her pale skin is a contrast to her dark hair. She takes her lower lip between her teeth as she looks around the room properly, the walls, the ceiling made of the raw curving natural rock of the cliff. It is something to see, my house. Almost as interesting to look at as she is.
It took three years to build and cost a fucking fortune. It is my sanctuary. The only place I call home. And the fact that she’s the only woman I’ve ever brought here is not lost on me.
She finishes her whiskey sets her glass down on the coffee table.
“You know you sip those, right?”
“I don’t feel like this is a night for sipping whiskey by the fire.” She walks toward Cotton whose tail starts thumping as Amal gives her a few cuddles. “No TV?” she asks casually, turning back to me.
“That’s my TV,” I say, gesturing to the windows through which we watch night turn the water a black. “You hungry?”
She shakes her head.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. She hears it because her gaze drops to it. I ignore it. I know who it’ll be. What he’ll want. But Cassian’s not one to drop things so when I don’t respond to his texts, he calls.
“You should probably get that,” she says. She, too, knows who it is.
I don’t. I silence the call instead. Fuck Cassian. I want to hold on to this moment a little while longer.
“You like it?” I ask, gesturing around the house.
“Are you serious?” she asks with a disbelieving smile. “It’s…” she starts, turning a circle, eyes wide taking it all in. “It’s impossible,” she finally says, then looks at me. “And the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I smile a true, generous smile. I am more pleased than I should be. “With enough money, nothing’s impossible,” I say, deciding something then and there.
She doesn’t want to go back. I won’t take her back. I’ll take hell from Cassian for it but fuck it.
“Come.” I gesture to the dimly lit corridor beyond the kitchen. As we walk toward it, the lights brighten enough to guide us. Her footfalls are silent on the polished concrete.
“Is the floor heated throughout?” she asks, glancing back at me as her fingertips brush along the sometimes-jagged edges of the rock wall. Most have been shaved down but some I left natural.
“Yes. That and the fireplaces heat the space. And can’t get better insulation than this.” I say of the wall. “Although if you’re not careful…” I trail off, touching one of the sharp points.
“Why didn’t you smooth it all down? I mean, if you can build this, surely you could have done that.”
“Because it’s beautiful as is. And beauty is never without its sharp edges.” I say that last part looking directly at her.
Pink warms her cheeks and she smiles.
“Where does this lead?” she asks of the door carved into the rock.
“Pool.”
“Pool?” her eyebrows rise.
“Another impossibility,” I say with a grin. “I’ll show you in the morning.”
When we get to the end of the corridor, I reach around her to open the door.
She catches her breath when she steps inside.
I stand close enough that I faintly smell her shampoo, a pretty, flowery scent, clean like a fresh spring day.
I find myself creepily breathing her in even as I wonder what the fuck is wrong with me.
“This is your bedroom?” She glances back at me before stepping fully into the bedroom which is nearly as big as the living space with the same wall of windows and high ceilings.
“This is crazy,” she says, awe and pleasure on her face.
She runs her fingertips over the rock wall as she walks along.
The rock of the mountain curves deeper around the bed and she stops to take note.
“That’s almost cozy.” She glances at me with her eyebrows raised like she’s learned something new about me.
“Or claustrophobic,” I counter. “Depending.”
She shakes her head, faces me, eyes locked on mine. She’s unafraid to look at me, to see me, too. That’s the tradeoff. If I see her, she might see me, too. Is that what I want? Am I ready for someone to see me? To really see me.
I shift my gaze away, watching her through her reflection in the glass as if that could somehow protect me. Protect us from each other.
“No, not claustrophobic. It’s perfect,” she says softly. Her gaze meets mine in the glass like she can’t quite look at the real me when she says what she says next. “You can disappear here.”
I shift my gaze to study her in profile. Her eyes are still on the reflection of me. “Do you want that? To disappear,?”
“Sometimes,” she says.
The pain in that single word is immense. I don’t only hear it. I feel it at my core.
The two of us stand in the aftermath of this confession. Amal bared for me to see. Exposed. By choice.
In the end, she’s the one who breaks the silence.
“You don’t have someone making your bed for you?” she asks, casual as can be. Like we didn’t just have that moment.
She walks around the oversized king bed that sits on wooden pallets. No headboard, no nothing. It’s unmade, the heavy duvet resting half on the floor, a stack of books and a lamp on my side of the bed. Nothing on the other. No one sleeps here but me.
“I told you. I’ve never brought anyone here.”
“No girlfriends?” she asks this without looking at me.
“I don’t do girlfriends.”