His laughter is dark, and he has all the time in the world to get what he wants and that’s not only information anymore.
My hair is a mused mess. The damp locks stick to my cheeks and mouth. I shake my head in irritation, trying to clear it, but the cuffs limit my movement and the strands fall right back into my eyes.
I huff, annoyed. “I hate when it does that.”
His brow furrows. “What?”
“My hair,” I snap. “I can’t see.”
Something shifts in his expression. He glances around the room, then stands and crosses to the small dresser against the wall. He opens a drawer, rummages, and comes back holding a brush.
I stare at it like he’s lost his mind.
“You’re kidding,” I say. “You broke into my cabin to fuck me and then brush my hair?”
“Hold still,” he replies, already moving closer.
“I swear to God, Cipher, if you?—”
He sits beside me and gently gathers my hair back from my face, his fingers careful, almost reverent. The brush slides through the strands slowly, smoothing them back, and the sensation sends a shiver down my spine I can’t control.
My breath catches.
He brushes it again. And again.
The tension in my chest tightens, something dangerously close to tears pressing against the back of my eyes and threatening to clog my throat. No one has done this for me in years. No one has touched me like this without wanting something in return.
Cipher does it like it’s instinct.
“There,” he murmurs. “Better?”
I nod, unable to trust my voice.
His knuckles brush my cheek as he sets the brush aside, and the contact is so gentle it wrecks me more than the roughness did. My body reacts anyway, heat pooling low between my thighs, muscles along my back and in my core tighten like they know what comes next even if my heart is still at war with itself.
He notices.
Of course he does.
His gaze drops between my thighs, darkening as he takes in the way my body responds despite my anger, my fear, my pride. His jaw tightens.
“You don’t make this easy,” he says quietly.
I swallow. “You never did either.”
Silence stretches between us, thick and charged.
Then he leans in, bracing his forearms on either side of my head, caging me without touching. His breath is warm against my skin.
“I didn’t come here to hurt you,” he says. “I didn’t come here to take anything from you.”
“Then why am I cuffed to my bed?” I ask, my voice barely steady.
“Because your name is at the top of a hit list,” he replies, and for the first time since he walked into my cabin, I hear the fear he’s been holding back. “And because I don’t trust anyone else to keep you alive.”
My chest tightens.
“What list?” I ask, but I have a feeling I already know the answer to this. There’s only one case I’ve been working on in the last year so I can’t imagine anything other than this being about Euphoria.
