“How long have you guys been up?” I ask.
“A few hours.”
I come to stand between his legs. “You clean up nice.” Over six feet tall with a swimmer’s body, a beautiful face, and a pair of mesmerizing eyes, Declan Crossbow is by far the most handsome man I’ve ever met. He wears a tailored black suit and a black shirt, a thick silver necklace, and sandalwood cologne. I find remaining calm and collected around him is nearly impossible.
He makes my heart race.
When I remember how he strides into danger instead of running from it, my panties get wet.
Declan rests his hand on my hip and squeezes. “You look at me like you want to take me to the bedroom again.”
“I do.”
He chuckles. It’s a sexy, masculine sound. “Listen, Dina… We need to talk.”
You know what this means, right? RIGHT? Yeah, you do.
The three men come into the apartment. I step away from Declan and lean against the counter, faking happiness again.
The dark-haired, dark-eyed man wearing a holster over a crisp white shirt extends a hand. “Endo Macarley,” he says in a baritone voice. “This is my brother, Cass.” They look alike. Sharp features, dark eyes, and hair. It looks as if Cass recently suffered damage to his eye. I’m sure it’s not from a nine-to-five accounting job, where he stabbed himself with a pen.
He nods in greeting.
I smile.
“Ten twenty-three, huh? Written in your own blood on the wall.” Connor pokes my forehead. “You’re a queen. Thank you.” Connor leaves, and the other two follow him out.
When I look over at Declan, his jaw is set tight. Oh boy. I know better than to stand, so I sit on my living room couch and put my coffee on the table.
Declan sits on the table, facing me. And he stares. When the king of Selnoa’s underworld stares you down intensely, you bow.
I look away. “You’d better get on with what you have to say before I start to cry.”
“I don’t want to make you cry.”
“No?”
“No.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to marry you.”
Right.
Often, we dread those four words:We need to talk. Men dread them more than women since they’re often the ones who did something wrong, and now we (women) need to sit them down and tell them what they did. Not in the case of Declan and me.
In our case, Declan wants to talk about our future, and he knows what I’ll say because I’ve been open and honest with him from the start. He knows, and he’s telling me he wants to marry me anyway. I’ve never respected or loved a man more in all my life.
The man loves me back. I know he does. A man who loves a woman looks at her like she’s his whole life, and Declan looks at me that way. A man who puts his woman before his family loves that woman. I don’t know what I did to deserve such love or if it’s serendipity, but I know this: Declan Crossbow loves me beyond reason.
Tears spill because I’m going to break this man’s heart, but I can’t marry him. I don’t want to get married again. I wipe my face. “I can’t.”
Declan exhales a breath he’s been holding. “Why not?”
“Because you gave me my freedom when you took out Sergei. All the years of hell he’s put me through are now behind me. I want to live. I want to live on my own. Here, in my little apartment, in my little world, and I want to wake up every morning not giving a damn about the bills, or lawyers, or hell, I’m not even going to go to work for a while.”
Declan says nothing.
