Two Weeks Ago

 

I WOKE UP disoriented and sore in places I’ve never been sore before. One glance through the parted curtains and moonlit
windowpanes told me it was still night. My body and weary mind begged me to drift back to sleep, but then Aaron, the senator, the money, and the touching… it all came rushing back vividly. I wasn’t sure if it was the threat of death or the memory of what Angel did to me afterward that caused my heart to race.

Batting away the cobwebs of sleep, I moved to get out of a bed I should have never been in. I had one foot on the carpet when fingers grabbed my hair, and I was pulled back across the mattress until I collided with a hot wall of muscle.

Gasping from surprise, I felt his heat blanketing me. “Where are you going?” His voice sounded like he’d been eating gravel.

“I need to check on Caylen.”

“He’s fine.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not for you to decide.” I tried to leave his bed, but he simply locked his arm around my waist. I could feel his dick pushing against my spine and every other hard part of him molding against my own body.

“I checked on him an hour ago and brought back his baby monitor. He’s fine,” he insisted a little more forcefully.

“How long have I been asleep?”

“A few hours,” he grumbled before having the audacity to snuggle into me. I wanted to kick my own ass for almost leaning back into his chest. It would be exactly what he wanted—me, dependent and helpless against him. “How were you planning to get to him, anyway?”

Because Angel still kept him behind a locked door.

I didn’t hesitate to answer truthfully. “Whatever it took.”

He grunted his agreement because we both knew it wasn’t an empty threat.

Sleeping was no longer an option, so I did a slow sweep of his room. The space took me back in time to when life honestly wasn’t much simpler than it was now. I didn’t find peace or a weapon I could use to knock him out. The lamp on the nightstand would do the trick, but I knew I wouldn’t get to it in time. The monster would probably break my fingers before I could even wrap them around the black base with a silver skull painted on it. My gaze fell to the baby monitor lying next to the lamp. I could hear the faint sound of my baby’s breaths as he slept and felt myself relax.

“If this is going to work, you’re going to have to trust me.” Angel’s sleepy voice drowned the only sound I cared to hear.

“Well, maybe I don’t want this to work.” I sounded like a brat to my own ears. I had to make this work. For Caylen’s sake.

“Then you’ll both end up dead. Is that what you want?” It wasn’t a threat.

“Of course not,” I whispered defeated. He didn’t respond as his arm released my body, and I listened as he heaved his powerful body from the bed. It was hard not to stare at the muscles in his ass bunch and release as he stepped into his pants. When he turned and held out his hand, it was all I could do not to retreat.

“Come with me.”

I didn’t move. “Why?”

“The window on my mercy is closing,” he warned. I didn’t know what his idea of mercy was, but I knew I would be sorry if I didn’t accept it. His hand quickly closed over mine when I placed my palm in his as if he were afraid I’d change my mind and bolt. It was frightening sometimes how well he could read me.

It made it impossible to hide from him.

We started for the door when he suddenly stopped and bent to pick up his discarded shirt. “Put this on.” It was then I remembered my nakedness.

I took the shirt with hesitant fingers and slipped my arms through the dark gray sleeves. He barely gave me time to button more than two buttons before he took my hand again and pulled me into the dimly lit hallway. I wanted to ask again where he was taking me, but the stiff set of his shoulders told me he wasn’t in the mood to indulge me.

My heart rate picked up as we ventured through the west wing. He was locking me back up. I tugged against his fingers and berated myself for trusting him for even a moment. He didn’t break his pace or acknowledge my resistance other than a hard squeeze of my fingers. When he stopped in front of the doors to his father’s office, confusion replaced anger. My feet were like lead, so he all but dragged me inside and closed the door before letting me go and making his way across the room. His long strides ended in front of the painting of him.

“My father had this painting made weeks before Theo killed him,” he said with his back facing me. “I didn’t care much for the tradition, but he told me duty is something we rarely understand or agree with but something we must do all the same.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I wasn’t exactly in the mood for a family history lesson.

“Because the first duty he ever gave me was to protect you,” he answered. “I never stopped.”

“If I hadn’t broken in here to rob a dead man, you and I would still be pretending we don’t exist. I haven’t been yours to protect for a long time, Angel.”

He turned around then. His eyes were a storm, but his voice was composed as he said, “Do you think your life would have been any better if I hadn’t stayed away? I claimed you when you were sixteen fucking years old. Your father would be in a grave instead of chains if he had tried to say otherwise.” He took slow, careful steps toward me, but I refused to back down. “My ring would be on your finger, you’d be in my bed, and Caylen would be mine.” There was a deep ache low in my belly that I shouldn’t feel. I couldn’t deny his words because I knew those words were true. He would have claimed me, and for a while, I would have believed it was what I wanted. “You wouldn’t have wanted for anything except me. You would have been miserable. Stuck in a big castle in a faraway land with only your dreams to keep you company.”

“Because that’s what your father did to your mother?”

His eyes narrowed. “You know the tale.”

“Maybe it’s just the ending I don’t quite get.”

“As it turned out, it wasn’t a fairy tale after all. Happily ever after isn’t real.” He turned and stalked back to the painting. This time, he lifted it from the wall with little effort and set it aside, revealing the safe that started this war when I broke into it. He keyed in the combination before pressing a few more buttons.

“Come here,” he ordered with his back still turned. I approached with wary steps as I considered what he intended to show me.

What if it was the book? The perfect twist to a bad dream?

I closed my eyes and pinched myself.

When I opened them again, Angel was still there brimming with deadliness, and I was still his captive. He stepped around me, placing me between him and the safe.

In the safe wasn’t a leather bound book inscribed with two-hundred years of deadly secrets. Inside were piles of neatly arranged stacks of money.

This definitely wasn’t a dream.

The book was gone, the senator wanted me dead, and my son and I would never be safe.

“What is this?”

“It’s the money the senator paid me to kill you. All accounted for and yours. All it needs is a code to protect it.”

I turned away from the money to look into Angel’s eyes. There was no deception in the mahogany depths, but still, I wavered. “What do you want?”

“Trust.”

Instead of feeling free, I felt the walls closing in and my shackles tightening. To bestow trust is welcome deception. What if Angel’s offer of control was nothing more than an illusion to gain my trust? He was willing to risk losing so I wouldn’t fight him.

What would he be willing to risk so I wouldn’t win?

I turned away so he couldn’t see my doubt. I closed the safe door and keyed in a new code that only my eyes could see.

Angel wasn’t the only one who could create illusions.