Chapter 33
FLYNN
Part of me wishes I could walk away. It would make life easier, for sure, but I’d be poorer for the experience. I know this—feel this—on so many levels. I know it intellectually; Chastity is a good person whose experiences led her to believe she couldn’t trust her own judgement. I know it viscerally; just being around her is enough for me to learn how her mind works. She believesinpeople. And she’s a good person with a generous heart. The place she falls short is trusting her own judgement. And that I know inmyheart. We may not have known each other for very long but a litany of small incidences tells me all I need to know. The text check ins with friends, the way she holds an infant. The love and concern she has for her family, both blood and chosen, the way she cares for her own staff. In an industry dominated by men and rife with exploitation, she stands strong. She’s an advocate of the industry in her own right, standing up for the rights of people—to watch porn and be watched, ethically. Then there are the smaller things that endear her to me. Her love of romantic comedies and her abhorrence for anything glorifying horror or death. The way she smiles at me with a dozen variations, my favourite of which is when she’s not buying my bullshit and not calling me out on it, either. A smile that’s cute and exasperated and elevates my joy to ridiculous rates. The way she hums to herself as she works in her home office and the way her body seeks mine in her sleep.
The way she looked at me when I told her I loved her, and the delight in her voice as she’d said it back to me.
The woman has a hard shell and a tender centre, and I can’t help but want it all.
Besides, how could I miss out on a woman whose name includes my favourite part of her anatomy? Chas-tity.Well, almost.
Keir stands at the restaurant doorway, presumably where the food fucker slunk off to. He’s lucky to still have his own teeth after I saw the look on Chastity’s face. I’ve seen her smile a dozen ways, and loved them all, and I’ve watched her face wear a thousand expressions, yet until a few moments ago, I’d never seen her fearful.
‘Do you want me to sort Chas’s car?’ Keir asks, tipping his chin. ‘She’ll get clamped, or worse, left there.’
I nod, though Chastity’s car is the least of my concerns and I act on instinct rather than intellect as I swing on the toes of my oxfords and storm my way back to her. She looks worried, which is near enough to frightened, but I can’t think about that. Not as I take her head in my hands, my gaze fiercely demanding of hers.
I just stare at her because I know if I open my mouth, the words won’t make sense. So instead, I tilt my head and slant my mouth over hers.
She squeaks as I kiss her, kiss her hard, kiss her as though I could press my frustration into her.Or maybe some sense.This woman is going to be both the bane and the joy of my entire life, I can tell. The agony and the ecstasy. The person who drives me crazy, as well as driving me to be a better man. But so long as she wants and needs me like she does right now—her hands hooked under my suit jacket, one fisting my shirt at my back—I reckon I’m okay with that.
As I pull back, her eyes are a little hazy, her fingers finding her lips as though to contain the power of our kiss.
‘Do you trust me?’
‘I do, and I’m sorry,’ she begins, hazy turning to threatening tears. ‘I was wrong, but try to see it from my position—’
I shake my head because that’s not what I meant at all. I have thought. I have tried to see it from her side—the evidence and the weight of her experience balanced against a man she thinks she barely knows. But I’ve been honest with her.Mostly. What you see is what you get.Mostly there, too.
I take her hand in both of mine, looping the ring holding her keys around my fingers only to deposit them in Paisley’s hand, all without letting go of her hand. It looks so small and slender in mine, her fingers widening as I draw one of my own the length of her palm.
‘What are you doing. Why are you giving her my keys?’
When she called from the office, Paisley was in a bit of a state—all broken sentences and emotion as she’d dashed out to her own car to follow. Because Chastity, on learning the truth behind the video, had shot out of the carpark in her little car like a bat escaping hell.
‘Because you’re coming home with me. It’s time to let someone else look after you.’
Her gaze softens and she exhales a soft breath, the tension dropping out of her. For at least a beat, before her eyes widen then flit to the bike parked in front of her car, the wrong way in the road.
‘On the donor cycle?’ she sort of yelps. ‘No. No way. People die on those things!’
‘Do you trust me,’ I repeat, not just talking about our mode of transport. And though I can tell she has a million things to say, provisos and addendums and fuck knows what else, she bites her bottom lip to stem the flow and nods her head.
‘I do trust you. I trust you not to break me. But I’m not sure,’ she says, her gaze sliding fearfully to the bike again, ‘I trust whizzing through the streets on a hunk of metal with wheels not breaking me.’
‘Just think of all that power between your legs.’
Her next look my way borders on contemptuous. ‘Really? At a time like this, you want to talk about sex?’
‘I don’t want totalkabout it,’ I reply with a sly half smile. ‘So why don’t you just get your arse on the bike and we can go do something about it.’
~*~
As I help her pull the helmet from her head, I don’t know if it’s the ride, her brush with Tate, or the subterranean parking garage that has her eyes the size of dinner plates.
‘Where are we?’ she asks as I feed my fingers through hers to pull her to the lift.
‘Home.’ I bite back my grin. ‘Tell the truth, you thought I lived in some grotty flat share in Islington, didn’t you?’
