Page 42 of King of War

“Okay. I’ll swing by with Luca and pay my respects. I think his girlfriend has been on a shopping spree since he died though. Mourning him terribly, obviously.”

“Yeah, well, given how often he cheated on her, who can blame her?”

Micah hums his agreement. “Rafael is watching the Russians for us, just to see if they make any suspicious moves.”

“Smart move. I’m sorry if I’ve been a little distracted.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Enzo. You have more than enough to do keeping an eye on Rayne.”

I swallow down a knot of guilt. I’ve been doing way more than keeping an eye on her. Memories of my hands on her ass, my fingers and my dick inside her make my head spin and my cock ache.

“Thanks, Micah. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

We say our goodbyes and then I find myself wandering to the den, where she seems to spend most of her time, working her way through my library. She always did love to read, although if I recall, she preferred a romance book with a half-naked man on the cover to anything I have on my bookshelves.

She glances up only briefly from her book when I walk into the room—a well-worn copy of Frankenstein. I pour myself a brandy and offer her one, surprised when she agrees.

I sit opposite her, watching her read until she obviously becomes too curious by my presence and puts her book on the coffee table.

She crosses her legs and takes a sip of the brandy, eyeing me with unguarded suspicion. “So, are you and Vanessa serious?”

“Vanessa?”

She gives me an eye roll. “The blonde who was here last week. You know the one who’s your type now?”

Oh, Vanessa. I’ve barely given her a moment’s thought since. She was blowing up my phone for a few days, so I blocked her and had Micah’s assistant tell her I wasn’t to be contacted. I would usually do that myself; I’m not that much of an asshole. But I have been kind of busy. “No, we’re not serious. If we were, I wouldn’t have fucked you, now would I?”

She shrugs.

“Unlike you, Rayne, I’m not a lying cheat.”

She takes another sip of her drink, her glare trained on me, fierce and defiant. Then she sweeps her tongue over her full bottom lip, and my cock reacts like she just licked his crown. “I half expected you to be married by now, with two or three kids running around.”

“Why would you think that?”

“That was always your dream, wasn’t it?”

No, Rayne. That was our dream. And you fucked it all to hell. “I think that was more you than me,” I say instead.

She hums softly, thinking. “Maybe. Dreams change though, right?”

“So, you don’t want that anymore? The big family?” I remember how desperate she always was to have that sense of family, coming from the fucked-up one she had. Her mom leaving when she was a baby and her father an alcoholic who couldn’t even take care of himself.

Tears fill her hazel eyes and she shakes her head, like she doesn’t trust herself to speak. I know there’s been nobody special for her. At least, nobody special enough to live with or to agree to marry. I kept tabs enough on her to know that, often wondering what I’d do to the poor bastard who ever tried to put a ring on her finger or a baby in her womb. “I think I only wanted that…” She downs the rest of her brandy, and I wait for her to finish the thought.

She doesn’t.

“To make up for your shitty childhood,” I offer.

Her fingers tighten around the glass, knuckles turning white. “You really will take any opportunity to make me feel like trash, won’t you?”

Fuck! I take a swig of the brandy, enjoy the distracting burn in my throat as it slides down. “That actually wasn’t my intention,” I tell her. “But you didn’t finish your sentence.”

She shakes her head, stares out of the window. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to me.”

She stands, places the glass on the table, shoulders rolled back and that suit of armor she wears firmly back in place. “Nothing about me matters to you, Enzo. So you can stop whatever it is you think you’re doing,” she huffs.