Chapter Nineteen
A car door slammed in the distance, nudging Knox awake.
Don’t move.
Don’t think.
Not yet.
He blanked his mind and visualized nothing but pure white light. Willed the blessed quiet of sleep to close over him. He felt too good. Too warm and relaxed to ruin it with the restlessness of reality. Especially with Darya’s winter rose scent all around him, her sleeping body soft against his.
His eyes snapped open, every synapse firing with alacrity. Darya was next to him.
No—scratch that. He was next to her, his body spooned tight against her back and their legs intimately tangled.
What. The. Fuck.
Sheer reflex and panic whipped through him, so powerful he nearly bolted upright. Just as fast, something far more instinctive locked him in place. Hell, cuffs around both his wrists couldn’t have bound him to Darya’s still-sleeping body more effectively.
He let out a slow, measured breath. His heart stomped and kicked with the fury of a sugar-loaded two-year-old, and a cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck, but beneath it all was an unfamiliar calm. As if her presence beside him had somehow muted the pain and disappointment of his past enough to loosen his restraints and draw his first full breath in years.
Relaxing his head against the pillow, her silky hair tickled his nose. Funny. Normally, he hated that sensation. Wanted to bat the offensive strands away the same as he would if he walked into a man-sized spider web. This time he nuzzled closer, inhaling her scent and the peace that went with it.
Faint sunlight seeped from behind the closed blinds, a soft buttery glow reserved for early sunrise. It took a good minute, but his heart settled into a steady rhythm. Too bad his mind couldn’t follow suit. While his body relaxed into hers, his thoughts did their best Indy 500 imitation, lapping round and round until the room spun. Intimacy with a woman outside of sex was a bad idea. A single hollow-point bullet loaded in an otherwise empty revolver just waiting to hit pay dirt. With Darya? Yeah, he might as well load up both barrels on a sawed off shotgun and open fire.
The smart move would be to pull away. To leave a note or do something nice for her so he felt like less of a selfish ass then high-tail it to neutral territory before she woke up.
He splayed his hand against her belly instead and let his eyes slip closed. Only one other time in his life he’d felt this.
Once.
Reflexively, his arms tightened around Darya, spurring a deep inhalation and a peaceful sigh.
No, he couldn’t do this. Couldn’t risk it. No matter how good it felt. No matter how natural. He pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder, savoring the soft skin beneath his lips for dangerous seconds before he untangled himself from her warm and welcoming body and slid from between the sheets. He dressed quickly, the ease and well-practiced silence behind the routine grating mercilessly against his conscience. God, he was so screwed. Just being in the office with her was hard enough to keep his balance, let alone sleeping with her. And calling anyone else? Yeah, that idea wasn’t tracking. His brain and his body wanted the sweet Russian she-wolf curled up in the bed.
Never in his life had he seen anything so beautiful as the sight in front of him. Darya asleep on her bloodred sheets with her blonde hair trailing out behind her beat any landscape or classic masterpiece, hands down. Hell, the seven wonders of the world had nothing on her.
Beckett would call him a coward for leaving without waking her. Without giving her respect.
And Beckett would be right, you dumbass.
He paused long enough to brace himself, prowled to her side of the bed and sat beside her hip. Soft so he didn’t jar her out of her peaceful sleep, he smoothed a wayward chunk of hair away from her face. “Hey.”
Her eyelids fluttered open, disoriented at first then quickly sharpening on him. She took in his clothes, twisted to scan the room behind her and then settled back on her side. “What time is it?”
Hell if he knew. Although, the fact that he’d gone about his early-morning freak-out without so much as a glance at his phone said how close his past’s demons were to taking a chunk out of his ass. “Early.”
He cupped the back of her neck. So many women he’d shared this particular space with, but only one of them made it hard to leave. He traced her jawline with his thumb. “I need to go.”
She nodded. Her lips didn’t move but her eyes said plenty, not one scrap of accusation or hurt behind them. If anything, they shone with understanding. Maybe even sympathy.
Man, this woman deserved so much more than him. And he owed her huge. If not for the sleep, then for the gift just waking up next to her had been. “I don’t want you to think you don’t matter. That what we did—last night or anything else—is just some random hookup. I just... I can’t—”
“I know.” Soft. Simple. No explanation needed.
He leaned in, knowing the second his trajectory registered what a monumentally horrid idea it was, and chucked his rules out the window anyway. His lips melded with hers. Easy. Lingering. More than anything, he wanted to lick between hers and wake her up differently. To take his time and show her the side to himself he kept hidden.
He pulled away instead and stood, locking his focus on her palm pressed against the sheets rather than the hunger in her bright blue gaze. “You don’t have to come in today if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.”
He looked. He couldn’t have stopped it if he tried. No more than he could have stopped the words that slipped past his lips. “I want you to, too.”