CHAPTER EIGHT
Marcus was surprised and a little mystified to find that he was actually a little nervous to see her the next morning. He sat with his steaming cup of coffee as he looked out over the ocean, still navy blue in the early morning light, and wondered when she was going to come downstairs.
He didn’t have to wait long until he heard her soft padding feet come through the kitchen door. His stomach flipped when he realized that she was still wearing his hoodie. At some point she’d changed into pajama shorts and she’d slid big white socks on her feet. He’d never seen her in pajamas before and it was doing something to him.
His eyes followed her as she poured herself a cup of coffee and then leaned against the kitchen counter, facing him. Her cheeks were blushy and her eyes shy as she looked up at him through her lashes.
All they’d done was cuddle a little bit, but he’d be damned if it didn’t feel like the morning after. Marcus wanted to rise up and kiss the breath out of her. He wanted grab her hand and drag her onto his lap where he could nuzzle her neck, maybe slide a hand up under that sweatshirt. He wanted to box her in against that counter and bite her bottom lip.
Instead, he took another sip of his coffee and watched the color rise even higher in her cheeks.
“Sleep well?” he asked.
“Very.” She nodded her head and looked like she was about to say something more. But she didn’t. Before he could say anything more himself, she was slipping out of the kitchen and toward the music room.
Marcus smiled to himself as he heard the faint strains of the piano coming down the hall toward him. A new song, he realized. He bet he knew just what it was about.
***
They watched another movie that night. Her choice this time. She chose an old comedy. Doc Hollywood.
“Ah, I had such a crush on Michael J. Fox,” she sighed as she flicked out another t-shirt and folded it neatly, setting it with the rest of them on the coffee table. She’d forgotten about the laundry until a few minutes ago, and luckily, the dryer had continued tumbling it to keep it from wrinkling.
Marcus didn’t give a shit about wrinkled clothes but he thought he’d lose his mind if he had to keep watching her touch all his clothes. Smoothing out each edge of his shirts, shit, even watching her pair his socks was making him shift on the couch. He hadn’t let himself watch when she’d deftly and neatly folded his boxer briefs, set them to the side.
The second she was done, the very second, he reached forward and tugged her back against him. “Finally,” he couldn’t help but murmur.
Apparently, they were done pretending that it was incidental or circumstantial cuddling. They were both definitely on the same page that the movies were an excuse to touch a little bit at the end of each night.
Iris raised an eyebrow at him as she turned her head. “If you were so anxious, you could have leant a hand.”
“Thank you for doing my laundry,” he grinned down at her, and was quite pleased when a blush bloomed over her cheeks. She must really have a thing for his smile. “But I’m terrible at folding. I would have only made the process even longer.”
He expected her to reply, but she only continued to stare up at him, her face a breath away from his. Danger zone. He was prepared for cuddling. For touching. For small affections. He was not prepared for making out. In his experience, making out led to much darker pursuits. Ones he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t do with her.
He cleared his throat. “You really had a crush on Michael J. Fox?”
She blinked her eyes. “Still do.”
“You’re kidding.” Marcus squinted at the tiny, squirrelly, jumpy actor on the screen and tried to see what she might see. “I don’t get it.”
“Really?” Iris asked, leaning away from him to rest her head on the armrest next to her. Marcus was disappointed for half a second before he just reached down and grabbed her feet, dragging them over his lap.
She wore shorts, as usual, that damn near stopped his heart, as usual, and his hoodie. He kind of couldn’t believe that he got to be up close and personal with these perfect, golden legs of hers. But here they were. Her sweet little feet with those pink, pink nails nestled in his lap. He let one of his big palms rest over her ankle bone for a second before he started tracing a pattern over the top of her foot with his fingertips.
Her breath hitched, unmistakably, before she swallowed hard and kept talking. “He’s just so charming.”
Marcus raised a skeptical eyebrow at the screen where Michael J. Fox had just delivered a pretty smarmy line. “You like this? This smooth talking kind of guy?”
“Mmmm,” Iris weighed her hand back and forth in the air before pillowing it under her head again. “Maybe not so much in practice. But in a movie, sure.”
“Is this what Jet was like?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking. He had a morbid curiosity about the man who’d inspired the entire last album she’d written.
Iris laughed. “God no. Jet’s… not smooth. He’s all bumbling and clumsy and off-kilter. But it’s an act, you know? It took me a long time to realize that he uses it to get women.”
Marcus nodded. “I know that kind of guy. Let me guess, he probably doesn’t have a ton of male friends.”
“How’d you know?” she lifted her head to look at him.
“Other dudes see right through that shit. They’d take one look at that act and know exactly what he was doing. Eli and Jay, my best friends, they’d never let me get away with shit like that.”
Suddenly, Iris sat right up, she slid her feet off Marcus’s lap, but to his delight, she wedged them underneath his thigh, like she wanted to keep touching him. “You miss them. Your best friends.”
Marcus shrugged. “Sure. A little. But we’re all used to me being gone for work for weeks at a time. When I’m home, though, I see them every day pretty much.”
Suddenly a thought occurred to her. Something that pretty much tightened all her blood vessels down to nothing. Iris sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. She didn’t want to ask. But she knew she had to ask. It could change everything and she didn’t want everything to change.
Her eyes dropping to the hands that twisted in her lap, she cleared her throat. “Is there, um, anybody else that you see every day back home?”
It was a roundabout way to ask what they both knew she was asking. He considered giving her a hard time about it, and some part of him wanted to keep his answer vague, evasive, out of self-protection, maybe. But he could see how much courage it had required for her to outright ask him. He could see that his answer was important to her. And as she was someone who’d been cheated on, he could understand her need to be very clear on his status before he continued feeling on her feet and smelling her hair.
“Nah. No girlfriend, if that’s what you mean.” He tried to hold her eyes, but the blue just flicked right away as she blushed even further. “No wife either. For the record.” He smiled and so did she.
“Actually,” he said, completely surprising himself, “There’s not been anybody for over a year.”
He slid down on the couch just a little bit. Her feet were wedged pretty much under his ass now and she wiggled her toes just a little.
“No way,” she frowned, disbelieving as her eyes skated over him. “A guy like you? Not possible.”
He frowned right back, but he was more than a little flattered by her reply. “A guy like me?”
“Yeah,” she waved her hand over him. “A guy that, you know, doesn’t strike out.”
He grinned then and cocked a hand behind his head. The other flashed out and pulled the hair band from the bun on top of her head. Her hair went tumbling down to her shoulders. “I didn’t say I was striking out. It’s been a choice actually.”
She plucked the hair band from his hand and slid it onto her wrist absently. And he liked it. Really liked it that she’d just let him take her hair down without commenting or protesting. she made it feel like he was welcome to do it. Like it was his right and privilege to get to comb his hand through her beautiful blonde strands. The way he was doing right then.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth again. “A choice?”
“Yeah,” he nodded, sighing a little as he came back down to earth. Why the hell had he opened this can of worms with her? Maybe he’d done it intentionally. As a way of reminding himself that she was off limits. For more reasons than just the professional ones. “Things kept getting messed up with women. So I took a step back for a while.”
He frowned at his use of the past tense. He was taking a step back. It hadn’t ended yet.
“Oh,” she said as she messed around with the strings of the hoodie she wore. He thought she wasn’t going to say more for a little while. The movie played on in front of them. “I haven’t been with anybody in over a year either. But it wasn’t really a choice. It’s just that I haven’t met anybody I really liked. My life can be kind of lonely.”
And why the hell had she just told him that? Iris wanted to kick herself for being so candid. The words had just kind of fallen right out.
“Aren’t you living a lot of Owen’s life too? Tours and sold out arenas? Champagne? Maybach to the red carpet and all that?”
Iris laughed at his description. “Hardly. I’ve worked really hard to avoid all that. I work with Owen in the studio. But no. Most of my life is in my little house in Pennsylvania. Three blocks from where I was born. I don’t do much besides write music and stuff around the house.” She frowned when her words hit her. It all sounded so boring. So pedestrian. Especially to an FBI agent. “I have a garden that I really like taking care of. And Owen comes to visit me a lot. He’s my best friend, really. And I have a few friends around town that I’ll go out to dinner or the movies with. Sometimes I’ll go to the bar with them. But really, that’s about it.”
“Did you meet Jet at a bar?”
Iris laughed again. “No way! No. I’m so awkward in bars; I could never meet anybody there. No. I met Jet in the studio. A long time ago. He’s Owen’s producer.”
Marcus stiffened. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. “Still?”
Iris nodded. “Yeah. I haven’t seen him since we finished production on the last album. Which was pretty awkward considering how much of that music is about our break-up.”
“Jesus.” Marcus dragged a hand down over his beard. “And you’re gonna see him again? Whenever you go to record the next album?”
“Yeah,” Iris sunk her face into her hands. “And that’s gonna be even more awkward.” Considering her next album was going to be completely about another man.
“Why?”
Oh. Iris lifted up her face and made herself shrug casually. There was no way she was telling Marcus that every song she’d written in the past two weeks had been about him. “It just will be.”
“Hmm.” He eyed her like he wanted to ask more. But instead he turned his eyes back to the screen. A second later he reached underneath him and pulled her feet back onto his lap. This time, when his hands stroked over her skin, he didn’t stop at her ankle. His hands, firm and sinful, stroked over her entire calf up to the knee, both massaging and stroking.
Iris moaned in appreciation as she sunk back onto the armrest, watching the movie. His hands didn’t stop for the rest of the movie. He thoroughly massaged each of her feet and her lower legs for the next hour. And by the end of it, Iris was a quivering, relaxed mess. A puddle of emotions and humming blood. She had to admit. This crush wasn’t going anywhere. And the attraction was only growing.
When the movie ended, they unfolded themselves reluctantly from one another. Neither of them said anything as they climbed the stairs side by side. And still, they said nothing as they disappeared into their respective rooms. To speak would have broken the spell. It would have required naming something that neither of them was ready to name.
***
That became their new normal. They did their own thing during the day. With the exception of an occasional walk together or a swim. Iris spent her days in the music room for the most part. And Marcus spent his days on his computer, in the files he’d brought, or on the phone with his handler.
He’d heard from her that they’d narrowed down the FBI snitch to two of the men who’d been in the car with Iris. It wasn’t going to be long until they found the mole. At that point, they’d be able to leave hiding. Iris would be offered more comprehensive FBI surveillance, and they’d have a little more freedom. Her safety and protection wouldn’t be entirely in Marcus’s hands. For better or worse.
But every evening, work was the last thing from either of their minds. Movie night was every night. They traded off who chose the movie and honestly, both of them had quit caring what they watched, as long as it had a run time of over two hours, they were happy. They’d both come to need that time every night.
The touches were still walking some sort of line that was hard to define, but still very real. They never spooned or laced fingers. He never ran the tip of his nose up her neck or took her by the chin, no matter how much he might have wanted to.
But there wasn’t much else they didn’t do. Some nights he found himself tracing just the hem of her shirt where it had ridden up at her stomach. His hands were almost always in her hair or around her shoulders. She’d taken to tucking one of her big toes into the upper edge of his sock when his legs were extended in front of them. She fell asleep against him as often as she didn’t and when she did, she always woke up the next morning tucked into bed.
They never fully laid down on the couch and she never sat directly on his lap, but her legs were often draped over his, one of his hands clamped firmly around them. One night, leaning against him, she’d discovered a thin, white scar up the outside of his elbow. Iris had traced it over and over for nearly an hour. He’d been clenching his teeth by the end.
They weren’t denying what was there between them. But they weren’t acknowledging it either. Though things were slowly escalating, Iris had no expectation for where things were going.
He made her nervous in a good way, and panicky in a good way, and hot in a good way. She often woke up bothered and warm from dreams of him. She found herself staring off in the middle of the day, wondering and wondering what his lips would taste like.
She knew he was into her. Teasing himself as much as he was teasing her when they touched and petted. But somehow, she also knew that he was holding himself back. Besides the moment in the kitchen, she’d never wondered again if he was about to kiss her. She just knew that he wasn’t.
She also knew, perhaps instinctually, that it was because of what he’d said, just the once, about taking a step back from women. She knew there was more to the story. Sure, he had a job to do as the FBI agent who was assigned to her. But Iris was positive that the little distance they held between them was due to his past, not their present.
She had a hundred questions that she wanted so badly to ask him. But she was terrified of breaking the spell. If she asked the question, it might take him out of the present and make him think about the past. Or worse, about their future. If there was one thing that Iris had come to dread it was what waited for them on the other side of this.
When the FBI figured out who had leaked information, when she was in better safety, what would happen between her and Marcus? She had no idea, but she was willing to bet that movie nights weren’t in the cards.
So she didn’t push. And neither did he. They just… were. The days slid past.
***
Marcus stared out the window of the beach house at a view that he’d once thought he’d never get tired of. But he had to admit. He was pretty sick of it. Gorgeous ocean and all. They’d been cooped up in the house for damn near three weeks. February had given way to March. Half of him never wanted to leave the house, their haven. And the other half of him was going insane. He was a man who needed movement, action.
It drove him insane that because he was the person assigned to protect her, he, by nature, couldn’t be the one out there solving the mysteries behind the men who were after her. He’d never before been a sitting duck and he really didn’t care for it.
It had its advantages, though, Marcus reflected as he pushed the file in front of him to one side and absently ran a fingertip over his lips. Iris was the only advantage he’d needed. She was the one thing that had kept him from going crazy. And the reason behind that?
She was perfect.
And desirable, and so sweet she gave him a damn toothache. All he wanted was more and more forever. Every night he took just a little more. Enough to keep the beast inside of him at bay, but never enough to quench the thirst she was stoking within him. She made him want to take long, slow sips of her. She made him want to drown in her.
There was just something about her, the way she was, the way she looked and smelled and laughed. It called to him. There was something inside her that made Marcus look at her and think that is exactly what I want.
He wanted her so badly, in fact, that he’d started thinking about being asked to be reassigned. If he was reassigned then it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest to start something up with her. But then he’d just have to trust that some other agent would keep her safe while he sat by and did nothing and that would drive him insane.
He ran his finger over his lip again and wondered if he could live with that. Knowing someone else protected her while he got to love her. A strange balance, but maybe a good one.
He scoffed at himself and dropped his brow to his closed fist, giving it a few good bangs for good measure. Who was he kidding? Was he willing to love her? Yes, of course, even if it meant stepping back and trusting another agent with her case.
But was he willing to destroy her? No. Absolutely not. And that was the only answer there was. Because there was no way for him to love her without destroying her. His missteps and failures with every woman before her only proved that to him. He’d never once had a relationship end well. And even the ones that he’d enjoyed, the woman had eventually bowed out. He was too intense in bed. They all said the same thing. Every single one of them. He was too much.
A destroyer of worlds, his last girlfriend had called him, immediately following it up with, but not in a bad way.
How could being a destroyer not be a bad thing?
He knew that he could tone it down with Iris for a while. He’d done it before. He’d had “normal” sex for a few months with a few different girlfriends, but eventually, his nature kicked back in, he got intense, and it became an issue. Most women didn’t leave him over it, but Marcus left them. They were willing to work through the issue, but it always just seemed hopeless to him. Not worth the effort.
Was it worth the effort with Iris? He could ease her into it, into him, little by little. And then he would work his ass off to stay under control. He’d need to. She was so perfect and delicate and everything light and yummy and soft.
Who was he kidding? There was no way to do this half way. He’d decimate her, terrify her, leave her worse off than when he found her. And he was absolutely unwilling to—
“MARCUS!” her voice echoed through the house and Marcus was up the stairs like a shot, his gun drawn and following the sound of her voice. “Marcus! Come here!”
He bolted through her bedroom like a bear through the forest. He vaulted over her bed and shouldered through the adjoining bathroom door. His gun was drawn, his eyes were wild and focused as he scanned the room, caught sight of her leaning over the sink toward her own reflection.
“What are you—” she started to ask but cut herself off on a gasp when her eyes landed on his gun. “Oh my god.”
She shrank away from, still looking at him through the reflection of the mirror.
“Are you alright?” he demanded, still looking everywhere for anything out of place, any sort of danger that would have made her call to him so loud.
“Y-yes,” she whispered, her voice shaking, like it used to, as her eyes stayed glued to his gun. “I’m fine. I just wanted to sh-show you something.”
Marcus took a deep breath and went to holster his gun. When he watched her eyes follow the gun to his side, he sighed and stepped out of the bathroom, setting the gun on top of her dresser for now. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate if she knew she was in the same room as a gun. Most civilians couldn’t. It didn’t matter that she’d been in the same room with one pretty much the entire time they’d been at the beach house.
When he returned to the bathroom, her eyes were huge and avoiding his. He didn’t hesitate as he strode toward her. Marcus spun her, grabbing her by the hips and setting her up on the countertop. He wasn’t satisfied. She’d scared the crap out of him. He instinctually ran his hands over her shoulders down to her wrists. Then over her legs.
“You’re sure you’re alright?” His hands went back up her sides. Stepping between her legs, both of his hands trailed up her neck, her head tipped back of its own accord. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her eyes cast down.
“It’s okay, baby,” he responded, one of his hands trailing around to tangle in her hair. The fury and fear of thinking she was in harm’s way was draining out of him and in its wake was a roaring, energized tenderness, one that was fighting its way out of him. “What did you want to tell me?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head, her eyes still somewhere around his chest. Their faces were less than a foot apart as he held her like that, and he couldn’t help but step just a bit closer, to feel her heat on him. “It’s dumb,” she whispered.
Marcus licked his lips and fought with himself. All he’d have to do is dip his head and could finally, finally taste that little honey pot she called a mouth. “Iris,” he said, his voice deep and rumbling. “Give me your eyes.”
She stopped breathing for a second. And then, slowly, so slowly, she tracked her eyes up to his. They were so blue they nearly took the breath from his chest. They were all he could see. And she was looking at him, so trembly and trusting, that he closed the distance between them by half. There were only inches between them now.
“Now tell me what you wanted to tell me.”
Iris pursed her lips again, like she was going to resist. But then she let out a sweet breath all at once and it washed over Marcus. “I was just excited because I realized that my black eye is completely gone. See, I told you it was dumb.”
Marcus looked and sure enough, it had been faded for a while now, but there weren’t any traces of it anymore. He smiled and tracked one of his thumbs over her cheek to trace where the bruise had once been. “That’s not dumb, baby.” He couldn’t stop with the endearment now that he’d started. It was just exactly right for her. “That’s something to celebrate. Just, next time, don’t scream for me like you’re being held at knifepoint, okay?”
They both smiled, just a scant inch from the other’s lips and Marcus watched in awed pride as her eyes dropped to his lips and she blushed a deep pink. It made him smile more, to know how much a flash of his pearly whites affected her.
It also made him smile that he was about to kiss her. All his questions and reservations fell away in a moment of supreme clarity. It wasn’t going to be the end of all of this. It was going to be the beginning. He dropped his own eyes to Iris’s perfect, pink, plump little lips. This was only going to make things better. He was sure of it.
Her lids fluttered closed and he knew, knew in his heart, that this was the moment.
He ducked his head and cursed a blue streak when his phone rang loudly from his pocket. It was the ringtone for his handler at the bureau. She wouldn’t be calling unless it was deadly important.
He couldn’t ignore the call.
He stepped away from Iris so fast that she wobbled on the countertop. He distractedly reached a hand out to steady her as he looked away and tersely answered the phone. “Marinos.”
He disappeared into the other room, leaving Iris feeling as if she were a hot coal that had just had ice water tossed over it. All that build-up leading to just…nothing. Brutal.
But what had been worse than the lack of a kiss had been the way his eyes had hardened as he’d heard the ringtone. Something in them had looked so final. It wasn’t until he’d stepped back from her that Iris had recognized the set of his shoulders, the look on his face. It was how he looked when he was in agent mode. It was how he’d looked when he’d stormed the basement, dragged her out. It was how he’d looked when he’d driven her through several states, it was how he’d looked when he’d introduced her to the beach house. And how he’d looked when he’d just burst into the bathroom, gun drawn and ready to fight for her.
It suddenly hit her just how different he’d looked every moment in-between then and now. How it was almost like they were two different people. Marcus and Agent Marinos. She realized, with a little trill in her chest, just how much he’d softened over the weeks. He’d gone from rigid, hardened agent to affectionate, warm Marcus. Who traced circles over her back while they watched movies.
Baby, he’d called her. Twice. Iris slid down off the countertop in a daze. He’d called her baby and then almost kissed her. He would have, she was sure of it, if not for that dang phone call.
She stepped out of the bedroom, wondering which version of the man she’d find there. The one whose lips had been about to introduce her to paradise, or the one who’d knocked out at least three men to spring her from a freezing cold basement.
When she saw him, sitting on her bed, staring into nothing as he slipped the phone back in his pocket, Iris realized that there weren’t two men. They were one and the same. It just so happened they were at war with one another. When he looked up at her, she couldn’t begin to interpret the expression he wore.
“That was my handler at the bureau,” he spoke, his eyes burning her. “They found the agent who’d been informing Kutros.”
“Oh! That’s great.” Iris went to sit next to him on the bed and he instantly stood up, paced to the doorway to lean against it and turned to face her.
“Yeah. It is. It means that the bureau will be able to keep a better eye on things now. Including any moves that the Kutros family makes. We don’t have to be dark anymore.”
Her stomach dropped to her toes. “We don’t need to stay here anymore?”
“We’re leaving,” he confirmed and then checked his watch. “In two hours. I’ll need to bring you to a safehouse and check in with the bureau.”
“And after that. W-will we still be together?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes were dark and devoid of any emotion. Iris searched them desperately. She needed a spark of hope, anything to cling to. “We’ll see what they decide at the bureau.”
And then he was gone.
Iris stared at the empty doorway. She pressed a hand first to her lips and then to her heart. The doorway wasn’t the only thing that was empty.