Page 13 of Dagger’s Shield

And there it was. The whole of it hit me at once. She’d told me in no uncertain terms what she thought of me. I was a womanizer, and by this account, it meant I had the same lack of respect for women that her father had. When she looked at me, she saw him. And God help me, she wasn’t wrong to.

It also explained what had bothered me when she was in hospital. She’d specifically asked that her parents not be contacted. She’d said they’d only worry, and that they couldn’t travel to Lausanne, regardless. I hadn’t questioned it then. I did now.

“Your father has clearly been to Switzerland, yet you said he and your mother couldn’t travel there,” I said.

“My maman doesn’t like to fly.” She answered as though she’d anticipated the question.

She covered a yawn with her hand.

“You’re exhausted,” I said. “Let me walk you over.”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and studied me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Would it be terribly inconvenient if I slept here?” She patted the cushion beside her.

“It would,” I said.

Her eyes widened, and she shifted to get up.

“The only way it wouldn’t is if you take the bed. I’ll have the sofa. I prefer it,” I said.

She laughed. “You wouldn’t fit.”

“I like it when my legs hang off the end.”

I got to my feet, gathered her in my arms before she could argue, and carried her into the bedroom. She made a sound of protest but didn’t fight me when I laid her on the mattress.

“Do you promise to be a good girl and stay on your side of the doorway?” I motioned to it. “Or do I have to lock it from the other side?”

She half laughed, yawned again, and tugged the blanket over her. Her eyes drifted closed.

I was nearly out of the room when I heard her speak.

“Thank you, Killian.”

I stopped in the doorway. In all the weeks I’d known her, she’d called me Dagger and nothing else. The only other time she’d used my given name was when she was half under from the surgery and the drugs and hadn’t known what she was saying. This time, she was awake.

I decided I liked the sound of it on her lips, and I left the door open behind me.

The sofa was a good foot too short for me, and I knew before I’d even lain down that I wouldn’t sleep much. The discomfort was only part of it. The rest of it was the woman in my bed.

I thought about the first time I saw her. It had been at Minerva, more than a year ago. She’d come in out of the cold, pushed her hair off her face, and raised her chin, baring her long and elegant neck. I’d stopped what I was doing to look at her.

She had wide brown eyes that tilted a little at the corners, and full, pouty, kissable lips. They were deep red, darker than the color the cold had put on her high cheekbones. She’d worn something fitted that accentuated her breasts, narrow waist, hips, and her impossibly long legs. Later, when I learned she’d fenced as a girl, it explained the way she carried herself as though she was always a beat ahead of whoever stood across from her.

The first time our eyes met, I got the feeling she’d formed an opinion of me moments after we’d been introduced, and it wasn’t a good one.

She said her code name was Givre and that it meant frost in French. There was obviously a backstory to it, but no matter what it was, to me, it didn’t fit the bright, beautiful, warm woman standing in front of me.

Even then, I wanted her. And every day since.

I reached down and grabbed my already hardening cock and let myself imagine her, like I had so many times before. She’d be underneath me on my bed, with her long legs wrapped around me, holding me close to her. She’d call me by my given name like she had when she thanked me. That was what she’d call out when she begged me to fuck her harder and when she came.

The trouble was that the way I felt about her was no longer simple. A year ago, it would have been easy—get her into my bed and out of my system, the same as I’d done with every other woman before her. Somewhere along the way, it had turned into me wanting her to respect me. The irony of it, given what she’d said about her father, wasn’t lost on me.

Tonight, when she’d rested her head against my chest and let me hold her, it hit me how much my desire for her had changed. It wasn’t all about sex, and that should’ve frightened me. It didn’t. Instead, what worried me more was that she’d always see me as a man like him.