“Why?” I demand. “Why a kiss?”
“Because it’s the smallest thing you can give me that still means something. It’s a beginning.”
Shit. I look at his mouth before I mean to. It’s a mistake—one I immediately regret—because I see the renewed restraint there. The decision not to move first. The strength it’s taking for him to stay put, allowing me to go to him.
Because he knows my history. He knows my past. He’ll demand, but he won’t take—and that’s what gives me the push to walk over to him and take his damn hand.
“Fine,” I mutter under my breath. “Let’s get it over with.”
My free hand comes up on its own, curling into the fabric of his cable-knit sweater. I tilt my face up and pressmy mouth to his.
I mean for it to be a quick kiss, just enough to satisfy my stalker’s crazed demands. His lips are warm and firm beneath mine. They’re also unmoving at first, but then he responds, just enough to make the contactreal. He doesn’t deepen the kiss. Doesn’t shove his tongue down my throat. He just lets me take the lead as though determined to prove thatI’m kissinghim.
When I finally pull back, my heart is pounding so hard it hurts.
Letting go of my hand, Patrick touches his bottom lip with his thumb. “Fuck, you taste even better than I thought.”
So did he, but I absolutely refuse to admit that out loud. “I did what you wanted. Now I’m going upstairs and, in case you’re wondering, I’m locking my door.”
Probably moving the dresser in front of the door since he’s already proved he has no qualms sneaking into my room to steal my shit, but he doesn’t need to know that part.
Patrick doesn’t say anything to that. At least, not until I’m halfway to the stairs, leaving him behind in the living room.
“Enjoy sleeping in bed alone, Noelle,” he calls after me. “I assure you, it’s the last time you ever will.”
EIGHT
SAINT
PATRICK
Iwake up on Christmas Eve alone and not entirely unhappy about that.
I couldn’t spring everything on Noelle, then expect that she’d be thrilled to hop right into bed with me. As delusional as I can be, I’m notthatdelusional. If I pushed her that far so fast, I would lose. Since I’m playing for forever? That was a gamble I couldn’t risk.
Besides, I’ve never been a gambling man. I leave that to the Sinners Syndicate and their casino, the Devil’s Playground. The Libellula Family’s former rivals, current allies, the Sinners run the gambling racket in Springfield. They do the three g’s: gambling, guns, and girls. Us Dragonflies? We deal in drugs and counterfeiting mainly, though ever since Damiensettled down with Savannah, we’ve entered the protection racket.
When I think of my Starling, I almost want to return to the life. There isn’t anything I won’t do to protect her, from tracking her car and putting cameras up in her apartment after I bribed—then blackmailed—her super into letting me into the place. I had to kill the sick bastard a few weeks after, not because he was threatening to tell Noelle that I paid to get let into her private space, but because he didn’t know about the cameras and I caught him whacking off inside her panties while she was at work.
I won’t tell her that, though. When Reggie disappeared, she barely noticed, as wrapped up in her own troubles as she was. Marvin, another retired Dragonfly that I go way back with, took the job after I told him there would be an opening, and I know damn well that, once I told him the busty redhead in 4C was mine, she’d been as safe as if I was sleeping onsite instead of just obsessively watching her on the cameras from my place.
I can’t tell her. She took the news that I was responsible for the deaths of the five names on her wish list well enough. Of course, that’s because shewantedthem to die. Sure, she said she didn’t want them hurt, but I know my Starling. She wanted them dead, and I was happy to oblige.
Now that she knows, though, I’m willing to moveon to the next stage of my plan. Like I said, I know Noelle. If I tell her she owes me for their lives, she won’t be able to function with that over her head. Proud and defiant, she’ll find a way to repay me.
Luckily for her, I already gave her all the information she needs to do so.
It began with a kiss. It was a test, a way for me to gauge how she was doing mentally after my big reveal, and part of me was braced for her to lose her shit entirely. Most people do when they come face to face with Saint, and while I doubt she knows my reputation, it was enough that she saw the dragonfly tattoo on my forearm and recognized it.
The leaves, too. Both the ivy and the poinsettia, she knewexactlywhat each of those leaves represent.
Shame she didn’t let me show her my last tattoo, but after how easy it was to claim that kiss last night, I have no doubt that she’ll be willing to let me before long. In fact, there’s plenty that I plan on seducing her into… and that begins with this morning.
Last night, I didn’t have to force her to open her mouth so that I could take her lips. Shit, I didn’t have to force her into anything. She stepped into that kiss all on her own, fingers clutching my sweater like it was an anchor instead of a warning.
That tells me everything I need to know. She’s not repulsed by me. There’s some attraction there, and Iplan on nurturing it, shaping it, and using it until I have Starling all to myself.
Forever.
