I had to hear him say it.
I opened the door and closed it softly, but I was seething with rage on the inside. I was ready to kill. I needed a job to do. There had to be something lined up for us to take off this edge. I was in the mood to go to Africa and steal some weapons from the soldiers there that liked to hurt their women. It wasn’t a job that would make a lot of money, but it would be satisfying.
Something to get me out of here.
But I couldn’t leave Quinn. I trusted only a few men, and they went where I went. They would have to go without me on heists, as much as I hated it, Quinn was already on the edge, and I didn’t feel right leaving her in this place alone. It was a maze, and she could get lost.
Or escape.
“Feel better?” Owen asked as he rummaged through the medical cabinet. He was the only one here that knew about medicine. He wasn’t a doctor, but he had read hundreds of books on medicine, if he could, I knew he’d be a great doctor, but that just wasn’t an option for men like us.
“Not really,” I said, tugging on my suit sleeves.
“It won’t get better, you know,” he said absentmindedly as he pulled a large syringe out of the medical cart. “Either buck up or kill. You need to figure out what you want. It can’t go on forever.”
“You don’t think I know that?”
He turned his cold eyes onto me and shook his head, no expression on his face. “No, I don’t think you do. I think your mind is clouded with emotions. Hate for him and love for her.”
“Her,” I spat. “I don’t love her.”
“Right, that’s why you’re keeping her for ten years? Get real, man,” Owen said and pushed by me. “Now, I’m going to give him a paralyzer, but his mind and eyes will be awake. Want to watch?”
“You go ahead with your fun. I’m going to go get a drink.” And I wanted to see Quinn. It had been another twenty-four hours since I brought her here, and it was time I showed my face. I glanced down at my watch and saw that it was just passed one in the morning. I winced; I wasn’t sure if she’d be awake. I had been sleeping in the guest room next to my suite, the one she was staying in, but there was a two-way mirror that brought the rooms together.
I could see her.
She just couldn’t see me.
I felt that it was the only way to be near her, to marvel at her, to watch her graceful steps and angry expressions. There were so many times where she looked at the mirror, staring at her own reflection, but there were times where I felt like she knew I was on the other side. It was best if she didn’t know.
It was best if no one knew about the mirror. It was my secret. My guilty pleasure. I never watched as she undressed, no matter how much I wanted to. Sure, I had seen her body before, and some would argue that it was nothing new, but that was where they were wrong.
Quinn’s body was sinful, curves and mounds to keep a man like me busy for the rest of his life, but it was her personality that changed every time her clothes fell. Quinn, sweet and timid? Quinn, who wanted to be in control? Quinn, who wanted her ass smacked? Quinn’s fiery temper ready to rip me to shreds.
Quinn was like a set of dice and with every roll, I never knew what I’d get, I just hoped I got lucky.
It had to be luck. It would be the only reason why a man like me, one who wasn’t afraid to get blood on his hands, touched a woman of her caliber.
She was a force to be reckoned with. An unpredictable tornado waiting to tear me apart.
She’d be happy to know she had already.
Chapter Seven
Quinn
I woke up with a start. The room was dark, minus the glow of the moon coming through the floor to ceiling windows behind me. It was so silent I could hear the waves crashing beneath us, a light static in the background that made my eyes heavy, but I couldn’t sleep. I felt someone in the room with me.
A strong presence. One that was undeniable. One I had felt a hundred times.
I didn’t turn over. I didn’t move. I barely blinked. I didn’t want him to know I was awake; maybe then he would leave. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to him. Jaxon made the space feel so much smaller, suffocating me slowly with the air he exhaled from his lungs.
His shouts, when he got arrested and dragged out of the house as they covered his sister’s dead body, screamed at me. He cried out for me.
“Quinn! Quinn! You must believe me. I didn’t do this. I didn’t! I’d never! Quinn!”
But as they lowered him into the cop car and I saw Brian crying and devastated, I didn’t know what to believe. All the evidence pointed to Jaxon, my heart and my mind told me two different things, and I listened to the rational part of my brain instead of the emotion that controlled my heart.
Did I make a mistake? Was he truly calling out for me because he needed me, and I wasn’t there? No, that couldn’t be it. Jaxon was selfish. He only ever thought of himself. He never needed me.
“I know you’re awake,” he said from the darkness.
I considered pretending I was asleep, but what was the point? I stayed on my side and tucked my hands under my head and stared at the wall. I had nothing to say to him. What he was doing was unforgivable.
“We have a lot to discuss, Quinn.”
Ugh, the way he said my name, all deep and raspy, made my skin tremor in response. I didn’t know it was possible to hate someone even more, but here I was, hating him with a vengeance.
“Silent treatment? You were always good at that.”
I knew what he meant. I never spoke a word to him again when he went to prison. It was wrong of me, but I was young and afraid. The truth scared the hell out of me. I had so many unsent letters stuffed in a shoebox that not even Brian knew about. A part of me was locked behind those prison bars with Jaxon, but I could never gather the courage to mail the letters, asking a hundred times what happened.
I was a prisoner of fear from the truth.
“I want to talk.”
I stayed silent, not giving him the satisfaction.
He exhaled, clearly getting impatient with me.
“Is that the game you want to play? I’m better at this than you, Quinn.”
That I knew. He was better at a long of things that made a person lesser.
A warm hand squeezed the back of my neck, like he did at the church, and forced me to turn over and look at him. I didn’t even hear him move, didn’t hear his feet on the floor as he walked toward the bed. He was silent, stealthy, a true killer waiting in the shadows. I could only see half of his face in the dark. One half-covered by darkness, the other illuminated by the moon shining through the windows.
His brown eyes were large, with a hint of a golden ring around the irises. He was too close since I could see the different flecks of amber in his eyes. The dark tendril of his hair fell against his cheek, and his jawline flexed as he held me down against the bed, the warmth of his palm sinking into my throat. My pulse jumped wildly, not from the threat of Jaxon but from the want that sparked inside me with him so close.
I thought I had forgotten what it was like to feel his strength against me, but Jaxon had embedded himself in my muscle memory, and stopping my body’s reaction to him was impossible. He was a bad habit, an instinct, a vice I’d never be able to break.