Killian
Sheer exhaustion is the only thing that manages to knock me out the moment my head touches the pillow. But even in sleep, my subconscious can’t stop frantically spazzing with the knowledge that she’s finally here under my roof. It’s that frenzied restlessness that jackknifes me awake three hours later.
I don’t even try to stay away. I wore sweatpants to bed instead of sleeping in the buff so I wouldn’t need to get dressed when I woke up. I don’t bother with anything else before I leave my room and make my way down the hallway.
In the early hours of the morning while she was knocked out, I disabled the bedroom lock and made sure there was nothing in the room she could use to keep it shut. Nothing that would keep me out indefinitely anyway. She’s resourceful so I don’t count anything out. Except maybe the likelihood that she would sleep in the guest room in the first place rather than in my bed.
We have a lot of shit to wade through. Do I think half of our problems can be worked out in bed? Fuck, yes. But I’m willing to do things her way. For now. As long as she concedes to a few things.
I push on her door and breathe a sigh of relief when it silently swings open. She’s lying facedown, her hair a jet-black stream over one arm. A few heavy tendrils lie across her forehead and temple, partially barring her face from me. My fingers itch with the need to smooth them back, but I see enough cheek and mouth to be momentarily satisfied. I lean against the door and content myself with just staring. For now.
The covers have slipped down around her waist, enough for me to see that she slept in her tank top and the panties she had on last night, instead of using the dozens of night things I supplied her with. I let that go and trace the rest of her stunning body before tracking back up to her face.
Her eyes are open, and she’s staring at me through a veil of hair. “Are you going to stand there all day staring at me like some creep?”
I laugh at her caustic but sleep-sexy tone. God, how I’ve missed that feistiness. Knowing she found her voice with me adds a little extra kick to my obsession that I won’t deny is extremely heady. She broke out of the hideous suburban mold Matt tried to stuff her in and shed a few skins once she left Arkansas. And with each layer of her new, true self exposed, I fell deeper under her spell. “You’re supposed to be asleep so I can creep in peace.”
She rolls to her side, pushing her hair back from her face. The strap of her top slips, and I get an eyeful of her naked shoulder and slope of her breast. My temperature spikes, and the morning wood I woke up with doubles in size.
“I thought it was a dream,” she murmurs almost to herself.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
“Want me to reenact some of the good bits for you?”
Her gaze meets mine and then drops to the hard-on tenting my pants before she looks away. “No thanks,” she snaps before she sits up. Although she turns away, I see her gaze dart back to my cock before she pulls up the covers. “Did you want something?”
“Besides you?”
She rolls her eyes. “Killian…”
Now that I’m satisfied she still wants me, I decide to leave the subject of fucking her alone for a little while, hard as it might be. But there’s something more urgent on my mind. “Tell me more about Axel Rutherford and his clubs.”
Her beautiful eyes widen. “How did you about the other…? Right. Betty.”
I nod. “She came through earlier than I thought but you were asleep, so…”
Her fingers play over the design on the covers. “I told you, he’s my partner-slash-boss. I run his club for him but…”
“But?”
“I sort of came up with the concept, so I get a percentage of the profits.”
I nod, fold my hands under my arms, and ask the question that’s been burning a path through my brain for the last five hours. “Why does he call you B?”
I get pursed lips before she answers. “Because it’s my name.”
“Explain.”
“He calls me B, short for Black. As in Black Widow.”
The tension that whips through me is itching to be let free. I struggle to contain it but I still need several beats for the red haze to die down. “Let me get this straight. You were using your code name in public?”
She tenses at my harsh tone. “My partial code name. My field name was the Widow. Our code name was Knight Widow.”
“I haven’t forgotten. But that name isn’t a million miles from the name you’re using now. You think that was wise?”
“It kept me under the radar for four years, didn’t it?” she returns.
I have to concede that. Until her slipup, she’d succeeded in hiding in semi-plain sight. Like I’ve done all these years. But I’m still pissed.
Faith. The Widow. B. Black Widow. Whatever she chooses to call herself and however she disguises herself, she belongs to me. Only me.
“And he never asked your real name?”
“He didn’t care. Which worked out brilliantly for both of us.”
I only realize I’m moving toward the bed when I step on her discarded yoga pants. My gaze doesn’t shift from her face. “What else worked out brilliantly for you?”
“He didn’t give me endless grief like you are right now, for starters.”
“Good for him. What else?”
She drives her fingers through her hair in a display of irritation. The lift of her braless tits momentarily banks my anger. But only for a moment. Because I learned a long time ago that I’m capable of being turned on by and furious with the magnificently beautiful woman glaring at me from the bed.
“Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? You want to know if I’m fucking him?”
The thought drives me to the edge, figuratively and literally. I lean down and brace my hands at the edge of the bed. My fingers curl into fists with the quiet fury that tells me I won’t react well if she answers yes to my question. “Are you?”
“No, I’m not.”
My fists unfurl. “Did you ever?”
Her nostrils flare. “I learned my lesson that sleeping with one’s boss or partner isn’t the best idea in the world.”
I ignore that. “Doesn’t answer my question.”
“No, I didn’t ever.”
I straighten. But the knots inside me won’t ease. “Why does he talk to you as if there’s something between you?”
She raises one eyebrow. “Wow. Paranoid much?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Faith.”
Her breath sharpens, and she pales a little. “I told you not to call me that.”
“What do you want me to call you? B?” I snarl the name.
“Call me whatever you want, but not…that.”
My gaze leaves her face, taking in her dark, dark hair, her beautiful but more sculpted face. Her stunning but less curvy body. A part of me concedes she doesn’t look like the woman I knew. The Widow was a softer version of the woman in front of me. Faith was an even softer version of the Widow.
Black Widow possesses a savvy wisdom I want to explore and an edge I want to test. The notion that I don’t have to pull my punches the way I did with Faith tweaks a part of my psyche I’ve blacked out for a long time.
But whoever she is, she still owes me answers. “There’s more. I’m waiting, baby.”
“There’s nothing between us! He’s…he’s been through some shit. Don’t ask me for specifics because I don’t know. Plus…”
“What?”
“He has a sketchy past. I’m sure Betty informed you.”
I nod. “His family is the last of the East Coast Irish mob. Father was involved in a war crimes investigation a while ago?”
“Yeah, but from what I can tell, Axel’s not part of that life anymore. He was in the army though, and not just the fun parts.”
“He told you this?”
“I looked into him a little bit before I decided to go into business with him. I may not be in the game anymore, but I can still do a basic search without leaving a trail. Anyway, there’s nothing between us because he’s involved, seriously involved, with someone else. So whatever you think you heard on the phone, it’s all in that crazy head of yours.”
I shrug. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“What does that mean?”
“Betty’s almost done formulating a safe route for us to get from here to your Punishment Club with minimum detection.”
She frowns suspiciously at me. “A few hours ago you didn’t want me to leave, and now you’re champing at the bit to get me to work?”
I slip my hands into my pockets. Her legs have crept out from beneath the covers, and it’s all I can do not to reach out and caress them. It’s a huge strain to drag my gaze from her smooth calves. To stop myself from testing if the backs of her knees are still supersensitive. “You’re right. You’ve taken the day off but you can’t just not turn up after that. You’ve just told me you work for a guy who has mob and army connections. He may not have been curious before, but I know what I heard in his voice. He knows something’s up. I prefer to look him in the eye and see for myself whether he’s a threat or not. So once I have a few more contingencies in place, you’ll be good to return and properly hand in your notice. But we’ll need to move fast after that if—”
“What are you talking about? I’m not giving up my job.”
I stifle the urge to tackle this argument in a completely different way. My cock is certainly urging me in that direction. “I took care of the CCTV photo of you, but it was still out there for at least half a day. For all you know, Galveston has it too. You know what happened to the rest of our former team. How long do you think you can stay under the radar in a club with over six hundred members? Especially looking the way you do?”
She glares harder. “Looking the way I do?” she parrots.
My gaze travels over her body, the urge to taste killing me. “Yeah. Like fucking sex on legs.”
“That’s a seriously sexist comment.”
“Well, I’d rather be the sexist asshole who keeps you safe. Deal with it.”
With a growl of frustration, she throws the covers off and gets out of bed. “Do you even have a plan beyond tomorrow? Other than us being cooped up in here?”
The pressure in my groin intensifies, and my answer dries up in my throat at the sight of her bare legs and the flimsy panties hiding her pussy from me. My feet are moving toward her before my brain fully engages.
Her eyes widen, and she throws out her hands. “Killian, no!”
I stop in front of her, my breath not quite hitting home when I inhale. “Throw me a bone, baby. Do you have any fucking idea how hard it is for me to look at you like this and not touch you?” My voice is a rough growl that echoes in the space between us.
She backs away. “I…can’t…”
“You so fucking can. Just stop fighting me for a second. Admit you’ve missed me as much as I’ve missed you. That you want to kiss me as much as I’m dying to taste your gorgeous lips again.”
Her gaze slowly drops, as if she’s fighting the urge, to my mouth. She licks hers, and my whole body tightens with the need to take what she’s so stubbornly refusing us both. I barely manage to remain where I am.
“I can’t start this with you again, Killian—”
“We won’t be starting because we never ended.”
Pain drifts across her face, and for the first time, that haunting that became so familiar in our last weeks together, the haunting that I tried to convince myself didn’t exist, films her eyes.
“What we did was—”
I silence her with a finger on her mouth. “If you don’t want things to get more fucked up than they are now, do yourself a favor and don’t call what happened between us wrong.”
The gravity of my words gets through to her. She flushes and looks away. Toward the dressing room. We both take a breath before she looks back at me. “You kept my things. Why?”
She’s trying to distract me. I allow it for a moment and let my finger drop. “Too much effort to throw them away.”
“Seriously, you have literally dozens of minions at your beck and call.”
“Seriously. I tried to give them away. For some insane reason, I got into an argument with Debbie every time she pulled out the suitcases. The last time I tried, she point-blank refused and threatened to quit. And since she’s the best housekeeper I’ve ever had, and I wasn’t in the mood to do it myself…” I shrug.
“Well, you wasted your time bringing the clothes with you. My tastes have changed.”
“I look forward to discovering the new changes for myself.”
Her chest rises and falls in agitation for almost a minute before she shakes her head. “I’m not going to fuck you, Killian.”
I breach the last few feet between us. Back her up against the wall. Just like I did last night, I lean in close and catch her earlobe between my lips. The sound of her breath hitching transmits straight to my cock. “That’s fine. I’ll do all the work. I have four years’ worth of energy just dying to be expended. All you’ll have to do is take it.”
She makes another sound, a cross between a whimper of need and a growl of frustration. Then she dives beneath my arm and backs away quickly. “I’m going to the bathroom. I don’t want you here when I come out.”
I have to lock my knees not to follow. “Come to the kitchen when you’re done. Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes.” At her wide-eyed surprise, I smile. “No, baby, I’m not cooking. We have company. So make sure you’re wearing something other than that indecent thong and top. I’d rather not commit grievous bodily harm against the chef for catching a glimpse of you like this.”
I walk out of the room before temptation pushes me to my breaking point. I ignore the sounds coming out of the kitchen and head back to my bedroom. My cold shower does pathetically little to help with my raging hard-on. It’s only the thought of the danger in our immediate future that distracts my libido for enough time to get myself under control.
By the time I tug on my cargo pants and T-shirt, I’m no longer a hormonal embarrassment, although when I exit my bedroom and catch the faint smell of her shampoo, things get a little jerky again. I grit my teeth and head for the kitchen. She arrives a minute later. And stops at the sight of the man wearing an apron and tossing ingredients in a hot pan.
She looks from him to me, one eyebrow raised. I hold out her coffee. As she moves toward me, I can’t help but stare at her body. She’s changed into a pair of dark jeans and a gray T-shirt with a shiny black heart printed on it. The material hangs on her leaner figure, but all her perfect attributes are still very much visible. And still causing chaos in my body.
When she clears her throat, I drag my gaze upward to her faintly stained cheeks and the pointed look she’s sending me.
“This is Mitch. He works for me.”
Mitch looks over his shoulder. “Morning, ma’am.”
She eyes the six-foot-five giant suspiciously. “Hi. He works as your chef?” she asks skeptically.
“Among other things. He can’t tell you what those other things are though, can you, Mitch?”
Mitch cracks a small smile as he walks over with two plates. “No, sir.”
“Why not?” she asks.
“Because I’ll be forced to kill him, and I like having him around. He makes a mean omelet for starters. Here, try it.” I cut a portion of mine and hold the forkful against her mouth.
She glares at me but is too polite to refuse in front of Mitch. She takes the offering and chews. “It’s very good, Mitch.”
His smile is a little wider. “Thank you, ma’am.”
I grin at her grudgingly surprised tone.
“You’ll see him from time to time. He may even attempt to become your shadow in certain situations. I’m sure you’ll forgive him for his future transgressions.”
That immediately draws a frown. “A bodyguard? No—”
“Hell, yes. Non-fucking-negotiable.”
She inhales sharply at my tone. Maybe she knows she won’t win this fight because she takes a sip of coffee before she speaks. “Can we talk about this?”
By talking she means fight, of course. “No, baby. We can’t. But there is something we can talk about. Once we’re done eating.”
Her breath snags. My grin widens. “Not that. Trust me, I’m done talking about that. It’ll be action from now on.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“There’s been another development. Betty’s popped up with a couple more names.”
She glances at Mitch, who is tidying up at the sink and then back at me. “He’s in the wider loop, but I prefer to discuss this in private. Eat.” I nod at her plate.
She doesn’t protest, probably because she’s hungry or because the omelet is that good. Either way, she finishes everything on her plate in silence.
“Want more?” I ask.
With a shake of her head, she pushes her plate away. “No, thanks. This was really great, Mitch. Thanks.”
Mitch smiles. “You’re wel—”
“Okay, don’t overdo it,” I snap. “It was good, but not that great.” I stalk to the fridge and grab two bottles of water. “We’re staying put this morning so I’ll see you later, Mitch.”
“Yes, boss.” As he walks away to put our plates in the dishwater, she sends me a mocking glance.
“Nothing wrong with complimenting the chef, is there, Mitch?” she asks, avoiding my gaze as she takes one bottle from me.
Mitch opens his mouth to answer, glances at me, and stays silent. A minute later, he hangs up his apron and leaves the apartment.
“You’re trying to bait me,” I say as we leave the kitchen. “That’s going to reap the exact results you claim not to want. I haven’t stopped being jealous when you smile and make nice with other men.”
Her steps slow, and her grip tightens around the bottle. When we enter the study, she stops, and we face each other in front of my desk. “Have you changed at all, Killian?”
I take a moment to answer. I want her to be in no doubt that I mean every word I say in response. “I foolishly thought that we could get through anything. Together. That what we had was strong enough. You leaving showed me I was wrong. You staying gone messed with my head. It took me a while to realize I’d taken us for granted. I’m not a good guy. But you want me and I want you. So this time around, I intend to do whatever it takes to make sure you don’t leave me again.”
“Did it occur to you that I didn’t leave because of you? That I left because of me?” Her voice throbs with the depth of her feelings. Guilt. Remorse.
Some of that powers through me too. But never enough for me to deny wanting her. And therein lies our differences. She allowed her guilt to consume her. I buried it deep until it was nonexistent just so I could hang on tight to her. And I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
I step closer and trail my hand through her hair. I take it as a good sign that she doesn’t push me away. “Of course it did. But you don’t get it, do you? You don’t get to go off and live in your guilt on your own. If you want to face the past, we do it together.”
“If? I can’t just brush it away like—”
“Like I did?” When she refuses to answer or look at me, I slip my thumb under her chin and propel her gaze up. “It’s okay. You can say it.”
Her mouth works for a handful of seconds before she sucks in a breath. “He was your brother.”
“Yes.”
“He was my husband.”
My gut clenches tight every time I’m forced to acknowledge that. “I would change that in a heartbeat if I had the power to. The fact that he had the right to call you his before you were mine drives me insane.”
“Well, you can’t change it! He was my husband, Killian. And we killed him!”