Twenty
Ian
Kori kissed me. I’d half expected her to rip my arm off for touching her hand, but instead she kissed me, and every bit of spark in her—every blaze of temper and passion she smothered just to survive in her world—it all burned bright in that kiss. She’d found an outlet for everything she felt but couldn’t show, and I took it all. I swallowed her pain and her anger. I devoured her isolation and frustration. And I reveled in the hunger she was showing me, and in my own need, awakened by hers.
When she finally dropped onto her heels again, her hand trailing down my neck and lingering on my chest, I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t see anything but Kori, and the confusion and desire warring in her eyes. Flickering across her expression, one side of her face shadowed, the other illuminated by light shining through the racks from the lit section of the cellar.
Then the men’s voices grew louder, accompanying their footsteps toward the cellar entrance. They’d have to pass by us again to get there, and if they got a sudden craving for an eight-year-old Cabernet—or even just glanced to their left—we were screwed.
Kori’s breathing grew shallow and quick. She turned toward the sound of their steps and her gaze flitted back and forth as she tried to spot them through the racks all around us. I knew what she was thinking. What were the chances that they’d miss us twice? How could they not spot her phone?
I pulled her close, careful not to grab her arm and trigger automatic resistance, and with her pressed against my chest, her cheek on my shoulder, I wrapped the shadows around us. Not true darkness—an anomaly like that would be noticed in a semilit room—but just a thickening of the existing shadows, decreasing the chances that a casual glance our way would reveal us.
We both wore dark clothes, which blended easily into the shadows, leaving her face and hair the only pale spots in my darkness. So as the voices came closer, the footsteps echoing from mere feet away now, I wrapped my arms around her and turned us both carefully, putting my body—my own dark head and clothing—between her and the rest of the cellar.
She tensed, but didn’t object, and I knew she wasn’t used to being sheltered. Kori was the type to throw herself in front of a bullet to protect someone else, but I wanted her to know it didn’t always have to be like that. That she didn’t have to fight the world alone. That I wanted to fight with her. If she would let me.
The host and his customer passed our aisle, and I turned my head to watch their progress across the open area. And as I rotated us again, I couldn’t resist touching her hair, where it trailed down her back. It was so impossibly soft, as if her hard edges couldn’t quite tame that one feature, or disguise its beauty with function.
When the lights went out and the cellar door finally closed, we both exhaled in relief. But I held her a second longer, with no good excuse. And when I let her go, she stayed pressed against me for one more second, and my heart beat harder. I wanted to freeze that moment in time and live there for eternity. Alone in the dark with Kori. No immediate threats. No fear strong enough to push her away from me. No lies standing between us.
However, like all good things, that moment expired and real life descended again, bringing with it bitter obligations we couldn’t ignore. But things were different now. Real life had been changed forever by that moment, at least for me, because Kori had let me in. She’d trusted me, and I didn’t have to be told how rarely anyone saw past her shields to the woman beneath.
But with her trust came an obligation to prove myself worthy. If I let her down—if I betrayed her trust just once—I would lose her forever.
When I couldn’t figure out how best to acknowledge what had passed between us without scaring her off, she finally gave me a tiny smile, then brushed past me to grab her phone from across the aisle. “You know, it’s a minor miracle that we’re not being drawn and quartered by Jake at this very moment,” she whispered, shoving her phone into her pocket.
“That’s a rather antiquated form of punishment,” I said, handing her the bottle I’d picked out for Tower. “Please tell me you don’t mean it literally.”
“I’ve never actually seen anyone ripped limb from limb, no, but Jake’s certainly pulled people apart figuratively, and that’s bad enough.”
“No argument from me…” I pulled another bottle of Cabernet from the rack to my right, then headed deeper into the cellar in search of something lighter and fruitier.
“Ian, we’re not shopping, we’re escaping. Let’s go.”
“One minute…”
“Thirty seconds,” she conceded, following me past the blushes and into the whites. “Then I’m leaving you here.” But she wouldn’t, and we both knew it.
I pulled a bottle of pinot grigio from the nearest rack, crossing my fingers, since I was unfamiliar with the label, then I let her pull me into the shadows. A moment later, we emerged in the unlit bathroom of the hotel suite.
Kori followed me into the living room, where I set all three bottles on the occasional table against one wall. “I believe you still owe me lunch,” I said, pulling open the minifridge. At which point I realized I was too hungry for snack food. “But I’m guessing going back to the park would be a bad idea.”
“I think leaving the west side at all would be bad, with Cam and Liv after you. But if your stomach’s set on nitrates, there’s a decent street vendor a couple of blocks over.”
“Or, we could order in.” I held up the room service menu. “There’s a vegetarian section, if you think your sister might like to join us.”
Kori frowned. “Okay, I get that you want to get to know the person who’s about to bind you to Jake Tower. But if I invite Kenley over, her bodyguard of the day will come, too, and I really don’t want to spend the next hour with someone who’ll report everything we do or say directly to Jake.”
“Okay. No problem. What do you want from room service?”
“A burger. A big one.”
Kori ducked into the bathroom and I placed an order, then texted Aaron for an update on Steven and Meghan. I’d just hit Send when I heard the bathroom door open, and when the message went through, I deleted it from my phone, just in case. I wanted to tell Kori the truth. I would tell her. But I couldn’t, while the chain links on her arm were still live marks. And to fix that, I needed to talk to Kenley. Alone.
When Kori walked into the living room, she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at her phone. Staring at it. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
Instead of answering, she dropped onto the couch across from me and handed me her phone.
On the screen was a picture of a framed photograph on an end table. It was a photograph of Meghan. And me.
“Okay, that’s not what it looks like,” I said, but she waved off my explanation.
“Don’t bother. You don’t owe me an explanation, and you never swore not to lie. But now I need the truth.”
“About Meghan?”
She shook her head and gestured back and forth between us. “About this. About us. I’m not a Reader—though Jake does have Readers. I can’t tell you who they are, so just…don’t lie to him—but I know you were telling the truth last night. You didn’t know I was under orders to do whatever you want. But today, you’ve been lying.”
“It’s not what you think,” I insisted, setting her phone on the coffee table.
“Look, I don’t care who you were screwing before two days ago. I don’t care how long the two of you have been together, or how cute and sweet she looks, or what kind of jam she spreads on your fucking toast before she sends you off to analyze systems every morning,” Kori said, and I had to glance at my watch to verify that it had indeed been more than twenty-four hours since she’d agreed not to cuss for a day. “What I want to know is whether or not what happened in the wine cellar means anything to you. If not, fine. No hard feelings.” But now she was lying. I could see it in the line of her brow and hear it in the tone of her voice. “But if that meant something…I need to know.”
“Yes, it meant something,” I said, and she studied my expression so intently I felt exposed, like she was seeing more than I meant to be saying. “It meant a lot. And that’s not me.” I pointed to the image on her phone, and Kori rolled her eyes. “Seriously. That’s my brother.” I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, preparing to say the part we never voluntarily told strangers. “My twin.”
“You had a twin?” she asked, and I nodded, but I couldn’t tell whether or not she believed me. “Seriously? Because now you sound like the subject of a made-for-television movie.”
“I can’t help what it sounds like. Twins are actually a pretty common natural phenomenon.”
Kori laughed. “No wonder your ego’s the size of Texas. You think you’re a born phenomenon.” She glanced at the picture again. “Identical?”
“Fraternal. But we always looked a lot alike.”
“Okay…” She wanted to believe me. I could see it. “But your brother’s been dead almost seven years, and Liv says this picture was taken an hour ago.”
“Olivia sent you that?” It was from Meghan’s apartment. It had to be. Thank goodness she and Steven were staying at her parents’ house.
Kori nodded. “That, and an offer from Cavazos. He’ll ‘make every reasonable effort’ to buy my contract from Jake if I take you to him.”
For a second, I couldn’t breathe. “Is that what you want?”
“Hell no. I’m not leaving Kenley. And Jake wouldn’t sell my contract anyway—not if I take you across the river. Cavazos is getting desperate.” She picked her phone up again and stared at the picture. Then she looked up at me, and this time she was studying me for a different reason. “He looks just like you. Like you look now. But this has to be at least seven years old. Right?”
I shrugged. “I’ve aged well,” I said, and when she smiled, I exhaled in relief. “Kori, the wine cellar meant a lot to me. I understand if you don’t believe me, but…I wish you could. I want more of you.”
She stiffened, and I wanted to take the words back.
“I didn’t mean that as any kind of order. I’m not asking for anything,” I said. “But I am offering…whatever you want.”
“Ian, I don’t know where this is going.” She looked like there was more she wanted to say, and there was definitely more I wanted to hear. “I don’t know if it can go anywhere. So if that’s really you in the picture, you should just—”
“That’s not me. And this can go wherever you want it to go. Your marks won’t always stand between us.” I let her think that was because I’d soon have a mark of my own, but I’d never been more determined to find a way to rid her of hers, and her next words only underlined that fact.
“No matter what happens, Jake will be in the way,” she said. “That’s how he likes it—his hand in every pie, so that even couples who’ve been together for years know that’s only because he lets them stay together.”
Chills were building at the base of my spine, spreading icy fingers out from there. “How the hell does he justify dictating the terms of his employees’ private lives?”
Kori shrugged. “Why would he bother justifying it?” she said, and my chills became a river of ice flowing up my back and down my legs. “If a match doesn’t benefit him in some way, he’ll dissolve it.”
“If you want to be with me—even on a trial basis—I’m not going to let Jake Tower stand in the way of that.” Since I was painting fantasies with a palette of lies, I might as well paint something nice for her. For us. “That’ll be the first contractual demand I make—Tower and his people have to keep their fingers out of my personal life.”
Kori met my gaze, her eyes swimming in guilt. “I never wanted this assignment. Not even for a single second. But I’ve never wanted it less than I do right now. I don’t want to be the thing that ties you to Jake. I don’t want to be the reason you sign away your free will. And I really don’t want to be the person who makes you look like the sun just set and it’ll never rise again.”
My chest ached. “This isn’t your fault, Kori.” But I couldn’t truly absolve her of her guilt without admitting my own, and I couldn’t do that while she was still bound to Tower. “Besides, the dark is my natural habitat, remember? Who cares if the sun never rises again? We’ll thrive in the dark together.”
“No one thrives in the syndicate. No one worth knowing, anyway.” Her eyes flashed with anger, and my pulse raced in response. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to kiss her again, and find out if anger made her as passionate as fear did. I wanted to snatch her away from the world and keep her for myself, so no one could ever put out the fire she breathed with every thought that sparked in her brain and every word that left her mouth. “He’ll change you. He’ll make you do things. Hurt people.”
And finally I understood. “You’re not responsible for what Tower makes you do. He is.”
“You don’t know—”
“Yes, I do,” I insisted softly, wishing the coffee table wasn’t between us. “I know he’s used you as a weapon, but even when you’re the gun, he’s still the one pulling the trigger. The blood is on his hands.”
“I’ve done horrible things, Ian. You may have heard, but you don’t really know. You can’t really understand. And I can’t forget.” Her voice cracked, but no tears came, and again I was floored by how incredibly strong she was. How determined to hold everything together, when her world was clearly falling apart beneath her feet.
I loved that she was so strong. But I hated that she had to be.
“What if we left?” I said. “What if we just go get Kenley and you take us as far as you can go? And farther still, from there? We could do it.” I’d lived off the grid for the past seven years. “I could keep us safe.”
She shook her head slowly, and that blaze of anger in her eyes evened into wistful frustration. “Even if defaulting on our contracts wouldn’t kill me and Kenley—and it would—he’d find us. He knows our real names. Part of them, anyway. And if he couldn’t find us, he’d go after my brother. My grandmother. Kenley’s girlfriend.”
My brow rose a little at that unexpected bit of information, but she was still talking, constructing verbal obstacles to every exit strategy I could possibly have come up with.
“Whoever you have, Jake’ll find them, too. And they don’t have to be bound to him to suffer at his hands. Or his surrogate hands.”
I thought about Steven, and Meghan, and Aaron. I thought about everyone I wouldn’t want to see hurt, any more than they already had been. But above all of them—above everyone I’d ever shared a cup of coffee or a kind word with—it all came down to one thing.
“You,” I whispered, staring down at her. I hadn’t realized how empty my life was, so far from everyone I’d ever loved—until I met her. “I care about you, Kori.”
She blinked up at me, her eyes sad, and more scared than I’d ever seen them. “Then that’s how he’ll get you.”