Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
She swallows. “Why didn’t you?”
Because I’ve never been allowed to.
Because hesitation gets people killed.
Because I didn’t know I was stepping into something already decided.
I don’t say any of that.
Instead—
“Because I don’t walk into places I don’t understand.”
She narrows her eyes, glancing at the doorway. “You understood this place.”
“Yes.” I shift my thumb slightly against her soft flesh. How easily I could snap her neck. Nothing I haven’t done before. “They know you’re vulnerable. That you’ve been moved. That I took you out of the open.”
“Who?”
“People who set traps and let other men take the blame.”
Her eyes widen. “You’re talking about the marina.”
I don’t answer.
I don’t have to.
Her throat moves beneath my hand. “They’re trying to do it again,” she says.
“Yes.”
“What, exactly?”
“Put you in danger. Make me react. Turn my violence into their solution.”
Her breath catches.
The inner lock stays silent in the back of my mind. It should have clicked when I opened the door. It didn’t, which means one of two things.
Someone found a way in.
Or someone wants me to believe they did.
Either way, I won’t give them what they want. I won’t drag her back into the street. I won’t move blind because someone touched a lock and expected me to become predictable.
Not again.
Delaney glances toward the door. “Then we should leave.”
“No.”
Her gaze snaps back to mine. “No?”
“No.”
“If they know where I am—”
“They don’t know enough.”
“That isn’t comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Her pulse beats harder beneath my fingers.
“This place is mine,” I say. “Every entrance. Every camera. Every room. Every way out.”
“And if they come here?”
“Then they come somewhere I understand.”
Her lips part, but no sound emerges.
The memory settles deeper.
The dock access.
The loose chain.
The wrong man.
The moment that wasn’t mine until it was already over.
No.
Not this time.
This time I see the door.
This time I feel the trap.
This time, I won’t make the same mistake.
“Will it work?” she asks. “For them, I mean.”
I lean in just enough that she feels it.
“No.”
34
DELANEY
He doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
The space between us is barely there now. I feel the heat of him, the shift in his breathing, the way something in him is holding on only by a thread.
My pulse is still racing under his fingers.
He hasn’t taken his hand away.
I don’t ask him to.
I don’t step back.
“What happens if they’re right?” I whisper.
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “They are.”
“That you’ll react?”
“Yes.”
“That you’ll hurt someone?”
“If they touch you.”
A shiver moves through me. “Then what changes?”
Something moves behind his eyes. “I do.”
His words land in my gut and stay there.
I believe him.
That might be the problem.
I look at his mouth. He notices. Electricity flares between us. The same current from last night.
I don’t fight it.
I lean in.
Enough that if he moves only slightly there’s no space left for anything else.
He tightens his hand on my neck.
My breath catches. “Samson…please…”
“Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t what?” I ask, clearing my throat.
“You know what.”
I don’t.
Or maybe I do and I’m choosing not to admit it.
“That didn’t seem to be a problem before,” I say.
He shifts his thumb. “That was before I understood what I was dealing with.”
“And now you do?”
“No.” A pause. “And that’s the problem.”
I should step back. I don’t.
Neither does he.
For a second—just one—I think he’s going to close the distance. That he’s going to take the decision out of my hands the way he did before.
Part of me wants that way more than I should.
Until—
He lets go.
Just like that.
The absence of his hand hits harder than the contact.
I inhale sharply.
He steps back. “Not again,” he says.
“Why not?”
“Because this time,” he says, “you’re going to know exactly what you’re stepping into.”
I let out a huff. “And you think I don’t already?”
“No,” he says quietly. “I don’t think you do.”
I open my mouth to respond but nothing comes out.
“I have some business to attend to,” he says. “Look around. Your bedroom is upstairs. It’s the one with the linens on the bed. I’ve had supplies brought in for you.”
“Samson…”
“I’ll be back soon. You’re safe here. Feel free to look around.”
I look around. “Is anyone else here?”
He shakes his head. “That’s what makes it safe.”
Then he’s gone. He leaves me here. Alone.
I brush the chill from my arms. Time to explore my new home.
I move slowly down the hallway, brushing the surface with my fingers as I pass. There isn’t anything on the walls, not like the oil portrait of Arthur Vexley in the foyer of Vexley House. Here the décor is minimal. Just lighting and a few pieces of furniture scattered here and there.
Nothing that suggests anyone stays here longer than necessary.
A place to disappear.
Or to be hidden.
That’s what this is. Not a home. A holding place. A safe house.
A castle without warmth.
Fit for a beast.
I pass through the first room on the left. It’s a kitchen—a huge kitchen. Stainless steel, dark stone, nothing left out, nothing mid-use. No glass in the sink. No trace of a meal ever started and abandoned.