“Oh yeah? Because the way you've been obsessing over her photo over the past few minutes suggests otherwise.”
My lips pull together into a tight line. I don't have a comeback for that. Because he's right, and denying it would be futile.
“Don't let her pretty face make you stupid,” Kingston says. “She's manipulative and dangerous…to us, to you, to everything we've built. Make sure you remember that.”
Later on when I’m back in my penthouse, I stand at the window and try to see the place through her eyes. She'll be here soon enough, sleeping down the hall, eating breakfast in my kitchen, looking at me with those fire-blue eyes every single day.
The bachelor minimalism of my place suddenly feels stark. It’s all hard, clean lines, nothing homey or welcoming. Just dark wood, expensive whiskey, and the punching bag I use to work out my frustrations.
She'll hate it. She'll hate me.
Good. Angry and resentful people make mistakes.
I call my housekeeper, arrange for the guest room to be prepared with fresh linens, cleared closet space, and toiletries that cost more than most people's rent. I tell myself it's all strategy. Comfort makes people drop their guard.
I'm lying to myself, and I know it.
The truth is, I want her comfortable enough to drop her guard, but pissed off enough to act withoutthinking. I want to see her dark hair spread across my pillows while she's plotting my destruction.
I want to watch her move through my space like a caged predator, all coiled violence and burning resentment.
Which is fucked up on multiple levels, considering she's here against her will and I'm planning to manipulate her into betraying everyone she's ever loved.
Get your shit together, B.
The file Kingston gave me sits on my desk. I walk over to it, flip it open, and dive deep into the intel, looking for her vulnerabilities, her pressure points, the soft places I can exploit…if there’s any softness to her.
What I find complicates everything.
She's been trained since she was a teen. Combat, enemy infiltration, weapons. Declan turned his own daughter into a living weapon before she was old enough to agree to it. She's completed seventeen confirmed operations, probably more that never made it into any file. And she's killed men. Multiple men.
But buried in the psychological assessment is something that makes my chest tighten.
Struggles with intimacy. Subject compartmentalizes trauma, exhibits hypervigilance, difficulty trusting. Likely suffers from attachment issues stemming from weaponization in adolescence.
Reading it feels like I'm looking at X-rays of her soul without permission.
I read more and find one exception.
Current relationship: Damien O’Rourke, 8 months, civilian. Pub owner. Subject appears emotionally invested. First relationship ofsignificant duration.
Something hot and ugly twists through me when I read about her boyfriend. A fucking pub owner who’s not involved in the Blake business. Some safe civilian who probably thinks her most dangerous skill is mixing a proper Irish coffee.
I bet he has no idea what she's capable of, no idea about the violence living just under her skin, no idea that she's killed men with her bare hands.
And somehow, that gentle ignorance was what she wanted. What she chose.
The jealousy hits me like a fist to the gut. I toss the file aside and stalk toward the kitchen before I do something stupid like put my hand through a window.
Tierney wanted safe and soft. She wanted normal. She wanted someone who would never ask her to be a weapon.
And instead, she's getting just the opposite.
Well, fuck that because she’s mine now.
Whatever she had with this Damien asshole is dead. He’ll be nothing but a distant memory. Declan would have made sure of that before putting her on a plane.
The thought of another man's hands on her, another man seeing her stripped of her battle armor, makes me want to break things. Which is fucking insane because she tried to kill me a week ago and would probably do it again if given the chance.
