I look down at Beau’s peaceful, sleeping face. “Stop chasing the truth, Beau Hayley.” Because that ends in death.
I gather her up and take her to my bed, settling her down gently, fighting the odd compulsion to crawl in behind her. No. I have shit to deal with. Beau Hayley is a complication. A big fucking complication. She was before I fucked her. Now? “Fuck,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand down my face and backing out of the room. I head downstairs, coming to a gradual stop when Otto steps off the elevator. He holds up a file. The man works fast.
“The judge’s schedule. He’s a busy man.” He drops it on the table and backs up into the elevator. “Can I ask you something?”
“No,” I answer, knowing that won’t stop him.
“Are you going to tell her who you are? What you do? What you did?”
“Do you think she’ll handle it?”
He recoils and reaches for his beard, stroking it thoughtfully. There’s no denying the worry emblazoned across his pierced face. It’s the same as the worry I’m feeling. I’m inviting disaster. “You might not have to even tell her,” he says quietly, glancing up the stairs where she’s sleeping. In my bed. Cozy. Warm. Safe. “Are you forgetting something here, Kel?”
I don’t know, am I? Probably. My head’s completely bent.
“She’s an ex copper, boy. And a talented one at that. Just because she’s quit, doesn’t mean her instinct has. Once a cop, always a cop.”
“You think she’ll hand my arse to me on a plate?”
“You’ll have to kill her before that.”
I swallow and retreat before Otto can bend my head further, going up to my dressing room and dragging out a case ready for Goldie. I check the contents, pull out a few parts, and polish them until they sparkle before slowly piecing the rifle together. I admire my work, slowly turning the gun in my grasp. Beau Hayley is searching for an answer.
And she’s sleeping with it.
I’m breaking the fucked-up scale.
24
BEAU
The stretch of my muscles is something dreams are made of; the delicious pull lengthening every one of my limbs blissful. The warm, soft sheets radiate James’s heady scent, creeping into my nose, waking up my senses. I open my eyes to a soft, hazy, apricot glow in his room. It’s quiet. The room and my mind. Both quiet.
I sit up and tug the loose hair tie from my waves and pull the sheets around my naked body. He’s not here. Shuffling to the side of the bed, I get up and go in search of him. I start in his office. No James. At least, not in the flesh. But the screens are frozen on our sleeping forms in his bed. I reach up to my lips. They don’t feel sore or bruised. My body doesn’t feel tender and damaged. This time was a very different experience, but the result was the same.
Blitz my mind clear.
I pull the door closed and make up way down the stairs. I hear him before I see him on the couch, tapping away at the keys of his laptop. He’s pulled on some lounge pants but left his chest bare. It’s quite a welcome. How can something so dark be so beautiful?
He looks up when I reach the bottom step, and his laptop is forgotten. He blindly reaches for the screen and pulls it down, placing it on the footstool by his feet. Then he sets an elbow on the arm of the couch and props his chin on his hand, his finger brushing thoughtfully over his Cupid’s bow as he watches me pull the sheet in tighter around my body.
My move seems to amuse him, and the hint of a smile moves the corner of his mouth. As a result, I risk a smile too. “I was going to eat,” he says, rising from the couch. “Are you hungry?”
I don’t know if I’m hungry, to be honest. I can’t feel anything past the peace. “And then will you bathe me?” I ask, making his eyebrows rise a fraction. He doesn’t answer but, instead, collects me from the bottom of the stairs, walking me to the island and lifting me onto a stool. He bends and leans into me, and I find myself reclining back, if only so I can keep his entire striking face in my sights. His lips purse. He leans in more. So I recline farther, and his head tilts, his expression curious. And he comes closer, prompting me to lean back even more, to the point my stomach muscles are screaming and I’m parallel to the floor.
He’s looming over me now. “Do you want to be on your back for me again, Beau?” he asks, reaching for the front of the sheet and pulling it open, exposing my front. “Just say the words.” His palm splays my chest and drags down to the apex of my thighs. My breath undeniably hitches, meaning refusing him would be laughable.
“Who are you?” I ask out of the blue, the question surprising us both. He recoils a fraction, but quickly gathers himself.
Taking my hands, he pulls me back up to sitting. “Those aren’t the words I was expecting.”
“I’m sleeping with a man who’s an enigma.”
His eyes dart to mine, cautious for a fleeting moment, before he corrects it, rearranging the sheet around me, his focus set on his task. “You didn’t google me?” he asks, his eyes fixed on mine, reading my reaction. He knows I have, and it makes me wonder if he tried the same with me. He won’t have found much—the FBI will have made sure of that. “Does it matter who I am?” he asks, stepping back. “Does it matter who you are?”
That soon wins him back my attention. His questions are loaded. Could the answers be an explosion? But at the same time, I’m wondering if it really does matter. Do I need to know who he really is? Do I want him to know the dirty details of why I am who I am, because I’m sure as shit he knows what I am. Because he’s told me.
Broken.
“Why did you come back to me tonight, Beau?” he asks, sounding harsh. Judgmental.
“Because I love where you take me.” I’m honest. That much he can know. “How did you know I’d come back?”
“Because I know you love where I take you.” He steps into me and lifts my chin, making sure he has my full attention. He has. From the moment I set eyes on him, he has. But what he doesn’t know is what he’s taking me away from. That shall remain undisclosed. “We seem to have a mutual connection in that area,” he whispers.
“Then we’re both safe,” I murmur, repeating his words.
“Safety is an illusion, Beau.” He kisses my forehead, lingering for a long time. “I’m happy to provide that illusion.”
I swallow and let the warmth of his mouth sink into my skin. “See?” I whisper. “An enigma.” He speaks words I don’t understand. Looks at me in a way that baffles me. Like I’m his redeemer. And at the same time, his ruin. “You make no sense to me.”
“I don’t need to make sense to you.” Feeling my nape, he massages gently, and despite my whirling mind, I loosen under his touch. “Accept this for what it is.”
“What is it?”
He lifts me from the stool and places me on the countertop, pulling the sheet apart and muscling his way in between my thighs. My body responds in a nanosecond, tingling back to life, ready to take him on again. My ass is seized, and I’m pulled in close. His condition behind his pants presses into my naked pussy. “This is beauty amid endless pain, Beau.” A palm pushes into my chest, forcing me gently down to the counter. He pulls his arousal free and starts torturously rubbing the swollen head around my flesh.