Laken shook his head.
Three knocks came again, followed by the door opening.“You didn’t lock it?” I asked, covering my body before some random person saw my goods.
“Laken?” A voice—a woman’s voice—called and repeated.
Mouth open, I waited for his reaction.What fucking woman walked into his house?
Yanking his head up, he paused with a blank face before apparently realizing something. “Rebecca?”
What the fuck did he just say?My head whipped to his, brows raised and growing more and more irritated.
Slumping his head down, panting, Laken mouthed a quick “Fuck” before backing off of me. He jumped for his clothes, leaving me bewildered, astonished, and half-naked on his bed. “Reece, just give me a minute.” He paused, hopping on one foot while sliding his pants on. “I’ll be back,” he added, as if he weren’t two seconds away from ravishing me.
Who the fuck is Rebecca?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Who the fuck is Rebecca?”
Launching myself off his bed, I grabbed his comforter. Laken staggered to the door. “She works with me.”
Why was an assassin knocking on the door? And why didn’t they use code names? I could have asked more, but he reached for the door—and it swung open.
Rebecca, apparently, was a beautiful young woman with rippling blond hair and sea-green eyes. Her shoulders weren’t broad, her muscles weren’t bulging under her tight shirt, but she had a look about her that let me know she could slit my throat. She didn’t need a fun warrior princess costume; it came from her cold, cut eyes.
She saw me; squinting then turning wide at Laken, she realized. “Oh my Gods—”
Nice.I blew out a breath.
“Out.” Laken shoved her back into the hall and… followed behind her. He closed his bedroom door and left me on my own to suffer my mind’s torturous thoughts, something I wasn’t really interested in doing.
Naturally, I ghosted across the floor and pressed my cheek against the door.
By the time I got there, her voice came first. “I need to know your connections in Gorzon, I have to make a trip.” Gorzon was the island he’d told me about, where criminals ran rapid and apparently, their business was good.
“For an assignment?” I heard a pinch of concern in his tone.
“No, for a vacation. Yes, for an assignment.”
“Do you have a ship and someone to sail it? They have a different currency…”
I pulled my ear off, spinning around to face Laken’s room. A room I didn’t recognize, full of things I never would’ve associated with Laken. In a bland house lacking signs of liveliness, different from everything I knew about him. He had new scars, a new body, a new life.
And I wasn’t sure where I belonged in that.
Welp. Time to go.
Refusing to debate too long on what was happening, I bolted for Laken’s bathroom where our clothes were. Not even this could make me put those leather pants back on. Scrambling to hurry, I grabbed the next-closest thing.
I slipped my boots on unlaced and took a deep inhalebefore opening the door. A million warnings flashed in my head of what I was about to interrupt. Not even Axron Laken could take away the aching in my chest.
I know better.
And I knew when to leave.
Tucking my chin down, I didn’t look at either of them standing as I shimmied out. I didn’t listen to their conversation. “Sorry.” I sidestepped between them. “I’m going to go.” My nose scrunched and I might’ve even laughed as if I’d been the one to walk in on them, despite how much I wanted to rip my skin off and crawl inside of it.
We had a forest nearby… if I lay on the ground long enough, perhaps the spirits and nymphs would take my soul as a sacrifice, leaving me to haunt the world as a decayed corpse. I could claim the forest as mine and control the creatures living within it, intertwining the roots and vines to give an eerie vibe.
