Smiling to myself, I ended the call and put my phone back in my pocket before turning to Kai. “Home sweet home, for now.”
He was looking around the foyer with a confused look on his face, but when I spoke, his attention shifted back to me with an intense sort of hunger that reminded me I was all alone in this big old mansion with a man determined to fuck me every waking second of the day.
Not that I was complaining… much. But I had a few pressing issues that needed dealing with. Not the least of which would be working out how to not let Leon gut Kai with a hunting knife. As much as I was refusing to admit any strong feelings, I didn’t want him dead. Far from it.
“Show me around?” Kai suggested. “This place is huge.”
I nodded, dropping my bags at the base of the stairs. “It’s only five or six bedrooms from memory, but yeah they have a whole lot of other shit in here.”
Kai gave a soft laugh as I pointed out the full-size gym, complete with a training octagon for MMA fights. Then we continued through to the massive indoor pool, and I indicated the steam room and sauna on the far side.
“Fucking rich people,” he muttered under his breath as he grabbed my bags and we headed upstairs.
I led the way through to the master wing and quirked a brow at him. “Big Man, I’ve seen your fucking private island and jet. You wanna pretend you’re not a rich person? Try spinning that story for someone who hasn’t witnessed your wealth firsthand.”
He had no response for that, just huffed a sound and dropped my bags beside the dresser.
“I’ll show you where the rest of the bedrooms are,” I offered sweetly. “I’m sure you want to get some sleep, and this bed isn’t big enough for both of us.”
He gave the king-size bed a pointed look, then leveled a hard look my way. When I batted my lashes innocently, he barked a laugh, tossing his head back.
“Cute, Siren. Real fucking cute.” He tugged his shirt off in one smooth motion, showing off all those glorious muscles covered in ink. “I’m gonna go for a swim actually. Care to join me?” His jeans hit the floor, and he stepped out of them.
I wet my lips, my attention embarrassingly locked on his tight black boxer briefs. It was such a tempting offer.
“I have some calls to make,” I murmured, playing coward like never before. “You have fun, though.”
Kai shrugged those impressive shoulders and sauntered out. “You know where to find me if you change your mind!”
Biting my lip, I had to stop myself chasing after him. Because as hard as I tried to think badly of him—and there were plenty of reasons to do so—I couldn’t help feeling like he was deliberately giving me space. Like he’d sensed that everything was getting all a bit much inside my head and I needed some breathing room to process.
With a small groan of frustration, I changed into a sleeping T-shirt and flicked the lights off. Fuck processing, I’d rather sleep.
The exhaustion of the day caught up with me quickly, and I crashed hard and fast, not even waking when Kai slid into bed with me when he returned from the pool. All I knew was, one second, having so many conflicting thoughts and emotions crowding my brain that it physically hurt. And the next, I was waking up calm and rested, with Kai’s huge frame draped around me like my favorite blanket.
He was fast asleep, his breathing heavy and even, so I slipped out from his embrace without waking him. Because I knew if I woke him, we’d end up fucking again, and all my common sense seemed to fly out the window when we were fucking.
Silently, I grabbed some clothes and my phone, then padded downstairs to the massive open plan kitchen. I vaguely remembered there being a pretty awesome coffee machine that I wanted to take for a spin.
After switching it on to warm up, I pulled on my clothes and sent a text to Leon to ask how his flight was. Then I got all nervous that I was coming across like a needy girlfriend and he would lose interest if he wasn’t chasing me so hard. So I almost unsent the damn thing before giving myself a mental slap that I was acting like a sixteen-year-old with a crush. Leon wasn’t losing interest anytime soon, he’d as much as told me he was in it for the long haul.
So had Kai.
Fuck, that was going to blow up in my face soon, I just knew it. And Leon didn’t know I was here with Kai… Shit, now I felt like I was cheating even though I’d never promised monogamy to either man. Part of me knew I should steer clear of fucking Kai again until I could discuss it with Leon. But the other part of me knew that telling Leon would force me into a decision I wasn’t remotely ready to make.
I couldn’t even be sufficiently mad at myself for ending up in this situation, because I felt more alive than I’d ever been in my whole fucking life. The emotions that both Kai and Leon stirred up in me, I didn’t know I was even capable of. I thought that part of me had been snuffed out a long, long time ago. Yet here I was, giddy and infatuated with two men who were both polar opposites and dangerously similar at the same time.
Tapping my nails on the marble counter, I watched the coffee beans grinding—praying they weren’t stale—then made myself a double espresso. It was a little bitter, but good enough for a caffeine hit. Just enough to kick start my brain as I made my way through to the gym.
The fact that it’d taken me twenty-two minutes to make that idiot sing was irritating me. I’d let myself slack off under the pressure of multiple hits on my name, and there was no time like the present to get back into shape.
I didn’t have any boxing gloves, so I couldn’t work out my issues on the bag unless I wanted to split my hand open again. But there was plenty of other equipment that I could use, so I got to work. It was a welcome distraction, pushing my muscles and testing my limits in a controlled environment rather than fighting for my life, and I quickly lost track of time.
By the time the gym door opened and Kai strode in, I was dripping with sweat and my limbs were like spaghetti noodles.
“What’s with the face, Big Man?” I asked, panting, as I placed the weight bar back in its cradle. I sat up and mopped my face with my towel. Kai looked mad as hell, his shoulders all bunched up with tension.
“You’ve been in here all morning?” His words were clipped, and I could hear the anger he was struggling to control.
I arched a brow in question. “Yeah. Why?”
His scowl dipped deeper, and he seemed slightly at a loss for words. Then he gave a quick shake of his head. “Never mind,” he muttered. Then he eyed my weights and gave me a sweeping once over with his eyes. “We working out, huh?”
Smiling, I peeled myself up from the bench. “I was. You’ve got a bit of catching up to do if you wanna keep this body.” I jabbed him playfully in the abs, which he tensed before my knuckles connected. Ouch.
A sly look crossed his face, and he took in my sweaty appearance. “Give me twenty minutes to warm up, then I wanna spar with you. Show me what you’re really capable of.”
A loud laugh escaped my mouth before I could stifle it. “Yeah alright, tough guy, you’re on.”
I gave him a condescending slap on the shoulder and headed over to the padded mats to stretch. For twenty minutes, Kai put himself through some impressively punishing sets of weights, and I pretended not to perve on him while limbering up my tight body on the mat.
When he was done, he stalked over and put out a hand to pull me back to my feet. First thing Kai needed to learn about fighting a mercenary, though, was that we never played fair. I threw a hard uppercut before he even released my hand, and he staggered back with a grunt of shock.
“It’s like that, huh?” he gritted out, glaring at me with an inferno of determination and lust.
I smirked. “You asked to spar, Ares. Show me what you’ve got.” But rather than waiting for him to gather his thoughts, I followed up with a couple of quick strikes to his kidney and a kick that would leave a solid bruise on his thigh.
“You don’t even have gloves on,” he snapped, enraged.
“You don’t get to stop and put gloves on in a real fight, Kai baby, toughen up.” A throaty laugh bubbled out of me, and I darted forward to swing a right hook. Kai dodged just in time to deflect the full force, my knuckles just barely kissing his cheekbone, then he shifted into a better fight stance.
“That’s better,” I purred. “Reckon you can get a hit in?”
I was waving a red flag at a bull, but he had no idea who he was messing with. His responding strikes were too slow, too restrained, and I barely even needed to try to avoid them connecting. After a few minutes, I started getting annoyed.
“You’re insulting me now, Big Man,” I snapped. “Either try or we can end this now.”