chapter eleven
Lucia’s eyes flew open and for a moment, she didn’t know where she was. The sound of a gunshot echoed in her head. She shivered and her fingers curled around her comforter, clenching the fabric so hard it hurt. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the dream receded and the panic that had put her heart in her throat faded a bit.
She was home, safe in bed.
With a soft moan, she buried her face in her pillow, grateful tears welling in her eyes.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She focused on slowing her breathing until she was calm enough to open her eyes again. It took a few seconds for them to adjust to the darkness, but then she was able to pick out the shape of the table next to the bed and the chair by the window where she always threw clothes when she was deciding what to wear. It was comforting to focus on the familiar shapes that told her she was home. Not back in the courtyard of an unfamiliar building with her brother’s dead body on the ground next to her.
She sat up, dragging the sheet around her shoulders. The nightmares were becoming more frequent. Before this week, it had been a few months since the last one. Was it really accurate to call it a nightmare when it had really happened? It was more like her memories deciding to torment her. If she concentrated hard enough, she could feel the cold weight of steel in her hand and the blast of pure rage that had fueled her as she pulled the trigger. Certain details were so vivid it was like a painting she could reach out and touch. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see his face, her brother’s killer. The man she’d shot in a rage, desperate to protect her brother and herself.
Thinking about that always led her down a rabbit hole of depression that took weeks to crawl out of. After years of self-reflection and a short bout of therapy, she’d learned that it was best to stay positive. She’d lost her brother but Lucia had survived. There was nothing to be gained from lamenting the way things had happened in the past when she couldn’t change it.
Lucia had long ago learned that staying in bed staring at the ceiling after a nightmare didn’t help her fall asleep so she decided to go watch a movie in the living room. When she tried to stand she sucked in a sharp breath.
“Oh, whoa.”
Moving slowly, she sat back down on the edge of the bed. The dull throbbing between her legs brought back the more recent memories of what had happened right here in this very room. The fact that she was completely nude was also a dead giveaway. She’d slept with Noah. How could she have forgotten? Only a nightmare could have distracted her from the most monumental event of her adult life.
She smiled remembering how wild and passionate Noah had been and how…intense it had been to be completely one with him. It had been overwhelming but in the best way.
“Noah?”
She waited to see if he was in the bathroom or perhaps had gone to the kitchen to get a drink. When there was no reply, she stood again, dragging the sheet around her naked body like a toga. The hallway was dark but she could make her way from memory. She flipped on the light in the kitchen. It was empty. She got a glass down from the cupboard and filled it at the sink. After taking a drink she walked into the living room.
Where the hell was he?
Lucia swallowed against a rising tide of panic. He wouldn’t just leave her after last night, would he? She curled a hand around her neck and rubbed the knot of tension at the base of her nape. Maybe he was walking around outside just to make sure they were safe. She opened the door and poked her head out in the hallway.
One of the bodyguards Noah had hired last year stood across the hall. She had only seen him around the office sporadically but thought his name was David. Or was it Derek?
He straightened up, and then his eyes slowly widened as he took in what she was wearing.
“Um, hi. Did you need anything?” He asked while keeping his eyes somewhere over her left shoulder.
Lucia blushed so hard it felt like her cheeks were melting. When she glanced down she almost choked as she realized that her toga-style sheet had slipped and was exposing an extreme amount of cleavage. Freaking perfect. No wonder the poor guy was so uncomfortable.
She was going to kill Noah for this.
“No, I don’t need anything. Sorry about…well, whatever. See you later…Derek?”
“It’s Dylan,” he said with a small smile.
“Right. Dylan. Well, see you around.”
She backed up and then closed the door, careful not to catch her sheet. The last thing she needed was a wardrobe malfunction. They’d both spontaneously combust from mortification.
She stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do. Noah had left. He’d just…left. What did that mean? Things had been so great, hadn’t they? At least they had been for her. Maybe it wasn’t good for him?
Feeling completely lost, she walked back to her room and picked up her cellphone. Then put it back down. She wasn’t going to be some needy girl who called him crying because he’d slept with her and then bailed before she woke up. She was a modern, independent woman and she could handle this. He was the one missing out because she was awesome.
Lucia climbed in bed with the sheet still wrapped around her and snuggled beneath the covers, an angry tear escaping. A few seconds later her hand shot out and grabbed her phone. It only rang twice before JJ answered in a sleepy voice.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. I slept with Noah last night and then he was gone when I woke up. What does that mean?”
There was a pause before JJ answered. “Motherfucker. I’m coming over.”
“Knock knock. Is it safe to come in?”
Noah looked up to find Jonas standing just outside. Normally he would have just barged right on in. Any of them would. But everyone had been giving him a wide berth that morning. He was as prickly as a bear and starting to get on his own nerves.
“Come in.”
He waved a hand absently for Jonas to take a seat in one of the modernistic metal chairs in front of his desk. Everything in the office had been designed to be efficient, functional and easy to clean. That was exactly what he’d wanted at the time, but in his current mood, the stark atmosphere wasn’t helping any. That was one of the side effects of spending the night wrapped up in Lucia’s softness. It had been like ascending to heaven, only to be dropped back into hell a few hours later.
How was he supposed to walk around in the world after an experience like that? She’d been so sweet and so damn eager to please. Noah gripped the paper in his hand, no longer able to see any of the words on the page. All he could see was Lucia’s lush curls tangled on her pillowcase, the hesitant but trusting expression in her beautiful eyes when she’d taken him deep for the first time.
That look in her eyes had smashed him over the head at about five o’clock this morning. He’d been in the middle of rearranging the caseload for the next month so he could have all available agents covering Lucia. One minute he was seeing the scheduling system on the computer. The next, all he could see was her beautiful face and that damn look of blind trust and love.
“Damn, you have it even worse than I thought,” Jonas muttered.
Noah looked up to find his friend watching him with a mixture of pity and disgust.
“Don’t even say it.”
“Fuck that. I’m the only one who has the balls to come in here and confront you, but somebody has to. What the hell are you doing, man?”
The softly spoken question hit the target, making Noah feel even more like shit than his own conscience had been able to. Worst of all, he had no answer. There was nothing he could say in his own defense.
“This is not the time, Jonas. I know I fucked up. Believe me, I am fully aware.”
“Are you really? Because if you don’t want us all up in your business, maybe you should have Matthias kill the video feed beforehand.”
Noah groaned and pressed the heel of his hands against his temples. He regretted reinstalling the camera over Lucia’s door. He’d been singularly focused last night, first on getting Lucia home safe and then protecting her from the newest threat. Nowhere in all of that had he even considered that the entire team would witness the aftermath of his monumentally bad decision-making.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered.
“Luckily, we couldn’t see that part,” Jonas said. “But we all saw Lucia wandering around this morning wearing nothing but a sheet. We all saw her face as she was looking for you and finally realized that you weren’t there.”
It broke Noah to imagine his sweet princess waking up to discover that he was gone. For her to have to face the fact that she’d given herself to the worst sort of man. All those guys he’d driven off, and he’d been unable to protect her from the worst predator of all. Himself.
Jonas seemed to sense Noah’s inner torment because he slid forward in the seat, his face softening a little. “Look, everyone knows how you feel about her.”
Noah squeezed his eyes shut. “You don’t know shit.”
“I don’t want to see you mess up a good thing,” Jonas continued, as if he hadn’t heard the bullshit coming out of Noah’s mouth. “Stop being a dick. Lucia loves you, too. We can all see it. Don’t push her away out of fear.”
Anger rose up in Noah, blinding him with its ferocity. Did they think he didn’t want to be the kind of man that deserved a woman like Lucia? He would give his left nut and probably the right one, too, for even a shot at making her happy. But wanting something didn’t make it possible, and there was no amount of redemption that could ever clean his slate. There was nothing he could do to come back from where he’d been, and he would never expose the purest, brightest thing in his life to that kind of darkness.
He owed her that, at least.
“Let’s be real here. She is…perfect. I’m not going to pretend I don’t want her. A dead man would rise up from the grave for a chance to be with her. But you know who I am, Jonas.”
Noah held the other man’s gaze until his friend dropped his eyes with a defeated sigh. Jonas stood, and after a moment, put a hand on Noah’s shoulder. The touch would have pissed him off coming from anyone else, but the warm weight that only a decades-long friendship could bring was much appreciated right then.
“I know you feel like you don’t deserve her. I get it. But you are the only one she has left, too. Are you really going to trust her safety to someone else?”
After he was gone, Noah dropped his head to the back of his chair. Jonas could give him all the pep talks in the world and feed him a bunch of kumbaya bullshit all day. But in the end, they both knew what kind of depravity lurked beneath the surface of Noah’s skin. They’d both witnessed what it was like when Noah lost his veneer of civility and returned to his roots. And what was in him was not pretty. It was not civilized.
Would Lucia look at him with those trusting eyes if she knew how many lives he’d taken? Could she hold him close at night knowing that she was nurturing a man who could torture another without losing a wink of sleep? As a young boy, Noah had learned that the parents he adored had died, and since then he hadn’t had the luxury of emotions or weakness. He’d never even wanted them because in his world, staying alive was the difference between caring too much or not at all.
All this self-reflection wasn’t changing a thing. He’d fucked up by getting involved with Lucia. She’d be angry with him for a while, rightfully so, but that didn’t change his conviction to protect her. All he could hope was that he hadn’t hurt her too much.
The look of trust in her eyes flashed through his mind again. Then Noah sat straight up as something occurred to him. Something he hadn’t thought of this entire time and should have.
Lucia was a sweet girl. Shy. Quiet. For years, she’d lived under her grandmother’s roof, and for years after that he’d scared off any guy who tried to get close to her. Noah prided himself on his attention to detail, so the fact that he could have missed something so monumental was unbelievable. But all the signs were there, plain as day.
“She is never going to forgive this.” He dropped his head into his hands.
How the hell had he missed the fact that she was a virgin?