"To your place?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Because I need you to be somewhere safe. And because—" I pressed my forehead to hers. "Because I might only have a week left with you before Viktor kills us both, and I'm not wasting it."
Her breath hitched.
"Okay," she whispered.
CHAPTER 13
MILO
The loft felt wrong with her in it.
I'd known it would. The designer furniture, the impersonal art, the surfaces that looked like home but felt like a stage set. It was all hollow at the center.
Now, watching Raven navigate the unfamiliar space with her cane, I saw it through her assessment. She counted steps. Touched surfaces. Cataloged the echoes.
"It doesn't smell like you," she said.
I double checked the locks on the door. "What?"
"Your apartment. It smells like a furniture showroom. New leather and carpet cleaner and nothing else." She turned toward me. "You don't live here. You just exist here."
Three minutes in my space and she'd gutted me.
"I don't need much."
"Or you don't let yourself want much." She set her cane against the wall. Stepped slowly toward me with her hands out in front of her. "There's a difference."
I caught her hips. Pulled her close.
"I want you."
"I know." Her hands slid up my chest. Started unbuttoning my shirt. "What else?"
"That's it."
"Liar."
The word hit the empty air of the loft. Soft and damning.
She pushed my shirt from my shoulders, her movements deliberate. I let it slide down my arms, shrugging it off until it hit the floor. Usually, this was the part where the mask stayed firmly in place, keeping the ugly truths in the shadows. But Raven didn’t need light. She needed tactile proof.
"Let me see you," she whispered.
Her hands flattened against my chest. Cool palms against the fever-heat of my skin.
I stood paralyzed. Muscles locked tight. I wasn't used to being the one inspected. This was new to me. And I fucking hated the vulnerability of it.
She didn't stick to the smooth skin, either. She went hunting for the damage.
Her fingertips traced the hard line of my collarbone, mapping the bone and muscle, before dropping lower. She found theraised, ropey ridge of scar tissue across my left pec first. A knife wound from a job in Chicago that went sideways three years ago.
Most women flinched when they saw it. Raven just pressed harder.
