He nods. “Fine. What's he eat?”
I tell him the brands. “Lancelot likes a varied diet.”
He nods. “Anything else he needs?”
“Water bowl, and he prefers the kind with running water. Some toys. A warm bed.”
“Right,” he says, and his eyes drag over me slowly, deliberately, before meeting my gaze again. “Just like you, then.”
Heat floods my cheeks, and I hate myself for it.
He nods to a bottle of water on the nightstand, a few books stacked beside it, and a crossword puzzle book. “Let's get you to bed, then,” he says, his voice dropping even lower, intimate and dark. “Get some rest.”
The command sends another unwanted shiver through me.
As soon as he shuts the door, I reach for the handle and try to turn it, just to check, but it's no use. I'm locked in.
My heart pounds, and I press my forehead against the cool wood, trying to calm my racing pulse. Trying to convince myself it's fear making my body react this way.
I can't escape.
Chapter Nine
Ashland
I closethe door behind me and lean against it, exhaling like I'm trying to talk myself down after a fight at the sound of her little fists banging on it.
Seamus will fucking kill me.
I can't think about that. I won't. I'll find a way…
Christ, she looked at me like I was a monster.
Maybe that's all I've ever been.
I don't care, really, though I'd like to see her look at me with something other than fear. Anything but that.
The way she looked at me six years ago, before everything went to shite. Before she forgot.
I walk back down to the living area, my boots heavy on the floorboards, and stop at the fireplace. The flames aredying down. I want them to. I need to join her after the fire is out.
Six years. Six years I've watched her, keeping her safe from the shadows she doesn't even know exist. Now she's here, locked in my cabin, looking at me like I'm the very thing she needs saving from. It'd be ironic if it didn't make me want to put my fist through a fucking wall.
I grab the bottle of Jameson from the counter, pour myself two fingers, and down it in one go. The burn helps a little. Her fucking cat meows at me from the sofa, all curiosity, like he's figured out I'm the villain in this story.
“Shut it, cat,” I mutter. “You're here because of her, not because I care about you.”
He just stares at me with those yellow eyes, unimpressed. I reach back for the whiskey and take another swig, letting it sit on my tongue. I think about the way her hands shook when I took off the restraints. The way her wrists were red and marked when I removed them, delicate and breakable under my rough fingers. The way she flinched when I rubbed the heat back into them, my thumbs stroking over her pulse point.
I think about the way she still looked at me, as if maybe she was trying to remember that night six years ago—not just the rescue, but something else. I've never forgotten how she'd looked at me then, soft and grateful and so fucking beautiful it hurt.
She's here because Marcus Crowning is a fucking gobshite who'll hurt her. At first, I didn’t understandwhy she would agree to be with a man like him, given his sordid fucking past.
So I did some digging.
Turns out, Crowning’s crimes have been covered up by his arsehole brother, one of Dublin’s finest in law enforcement.
Crowning should be in jail for what he's done.
