She’s a mess.

The light in my kitchen is harsher than the dashboard glow, and for the first time tonight, I see her. Sia’s makeup is smudged. I never heard her cry, but there are two dark tracks of mascara underneath the blue of her eyes. Her dress, with all its starry sequins, is twisted around her legs, and she’s barefoot. A streak of dirt runs up one shin. Where the hell did that come from?

She is supposed to be the girl I hate most in the world, but right now, she is gorgeous. She looks gorgeous and fragile and precious, something to be protected. Something to be hoarded. Something to be claimed.

Fuck me.

I wrestle back the urge to tear that dress from her body, then her bra, and whatever panties she’s wearing, and I get myself under control at the same time.

I’ll do what my father asked me to do.

Just not yet.

I need time. I need time to see for myself if this is the solution to my family’s need for revenge. I try to remind myself that this girl is from the bloodline that killed my mother, that took her from me for all my life, but the blue-eyed girl blinking in my kitchen wasn’t the one who held the knife in her hand.

It’s too late—or too early—to think clearly.

The crucial thing is not to become attached to her.

I can be human without becoming attached.

Sia raises her eyes from the kitchen floor to meet mine. Her lips tremble. “I need a shower.” Her voice doesn’t shake, but there’s a tremor at her fingertips that makes me wonder how long she can stay upright. It could all be a ruse. She could be as deadly as I am. She’s a Ricci, after all.

She blinks, her forehead wrinkling, and drops her gaze back to the floor.

She’s not dangerous.

“Fine,” I tell her, even though my mind has long since run away with the image of her naked body under a stream of hot water. “Come this way.”

“Are you serious?”

I’m halfway across the living room when she speaks, and I turn back. She’s still rooted to her spot in the kitchen. I show her my hands. “I’m not going to shoot you in my townhouse,” I tell her, an edge to my voice as if this is obvious. “If you want a shower, come take one.”

Upstairs in the bathroom, I turn on the shower for her and stand outside the open door while she lifts her dress over her head. She doesn’t ask for me to look away. She must know better. I tell myself I’ll only watch as long as necessary, but my eyes linger on the curve of her neck down to her shoulder. The sight of that creamy skin makes my cock bulge against my pants.

She steps behind the curtain, disappearing into the steam. “Can I—” Sia clears her throat. “Can I borrow your shampoo?”

“Sure,” I tell her, and every inch of me strains toward the shower. I want to be under that water with her. I want this fucking situation to be gone.

The scent of shampoo fills the air, then the smell of body wash assaults me, and after a few minutes, she pokes her arm out from behind the curtain and takes the towel I’ve hung on the rack. When she steps out, it’s wrapped around her, perky breasts hidden behind the fabric.

With her makeup gone and her hair shining and stringing wet down her back, she looks every bit Sia Andrews.

She bites her lip. “I don’t know—this is all very fucked up, but I wondered if—”

It makes me exhausted, this dance. This was supposed to be simple. “Ask.”

“Do you have something I could wear? I don’t have any other clothes.”

Of fucking course.

I leave her in the bathroom and step across the hall to my bedroom. Back in the bathroom, Sia looks down into my hands at the t-shirt and sweatpants on offer. Relief crosses her face. She takes them and turns away. I look toward the door. I’m not a fucking monster.

When I look back, she’s wearing my clothes—my clothes—against her bare, smooth skin and rubbing the towel against her hair. Her eyes flicker shut and open again, and she searches for the towel rack with a little yawn.

I sigh. It’s a full-body sigh, that this uncomplicated mission has become the bane of my existence. That the girl of my dreams is the one girl I’m supposed to kill. Sia yawns, a bigger yawn, and it breaks my heart.

“Come here,” I tell her, and she stiffens, but pads along behind me to the guest room at the end of the hall. I open the door and the light from the hallway spills in, illuminating the neat bed, the chair by the window, and the low dresser. “Sleep,” I tell her.

She looks up at me, eyes filled with suspicion. “Are you kidding?”

“Aren’t you tired?”

Her eyes go to the bed, then back to my face. “Yes.” Sia takes a tentative step inside, as if I might shoot her at any moment. “It’s clean in here.” She sounds surprised.

“Yes,” I tell her. “Sleep.”

She doesn’t know it, but my life was clean, it was clean and neat, up to this moment. Until her presence went off like a nuclear bomb, destroying everything I thought I knew.