“Good. Now that we’ve got all that covered, let’s share this steak, then go back to bed. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.”
When he doesn’t budge an inch, I start to lose patience. “Don’t just stand there staring at me like I’m speaking Latin. Come over here and get some food in your stomach.”
When he still doesn’t move, I stab a piece of filet and bring it over to him, holding it up near his mouth.
Brows knitted, he stares at me.
“Please don’t make me do the choo-choo train noise to get you to open your mouth. It would be humiliating for us both.”
He takes the fork from my hand, sets it aside on the countertop, and cups my face in his hands.
“This isn’t a fight you’re going to win. We can’t be together.”
“I didn’t say anything about us being together. I said eat the steak.”
When he doesn’t respond, I close my eyes and sigh. “Look. Nothing’s changed. The whole thing is impossible. I realize that. You’ll take me home in the morning, and we’ll go back to living our separate lives and pretend there’s nothing between us when we see each other at work. But for right now, just eat the fucking steak.”
I open my eyes and meet his burning gaze. “Okay?”
His expression is indescribable. Sometimes there aren’t words for things, and this is one of them.
I know he’s not angry with me. It’s more like he met someone from an alien world who he’s desperate to understand but can’t because he doesn’t speak their language.
“I know it doesn’t make sense. I don’t get it either. It’s just how I feel. You could ask me to be the driver of your getaway car, and I’d say yes. You could ask me to lie to the FBI, and I’d say yes. Just please don’t ask me to help you bury a body because digging a big hole sounds really hard, and my arm strength isn’t what it should be.”
He swallows. He shakes his head. It’s obvious he’s struggling.
So I turn to the counter and pick up the fork. I slip the piece of steak off the end and hold it to his lips. “Eat, honey. It will make me happy.”
He opens his mouth and accepts the meat, then stands there looking electrocuted as he chews.
“I like it when you’re obedient.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“I won’t. Want another piece?”
Staring at my lips, he nods.
I grab the container from the island, then go back and stand in front of him, holding another bite of filet. I lift it to his lips. He opens his mouth and takes it.
We stare at each other in blistering silence until he’s swallowed.
“More?”
He nods.
When I lift the meat to his mouth this time, he puts his hands around my waist and pulls me against him. I give him the steak, watching the pulse throb in the side of his neck. His cock is growing hard against my hip.
I whisper, “You like me feeding you.”
“Yes.”
His voice is husky. His breathing is erratic. His pupils are dilating fast.
He’s a man who does bad things in the dark as if it’s another day at the office, returning home a little tired but composed. But show him some tenderness, and he crumbles like a sandcastle under a crashing wave.
Like my heart is doing, watching him fall apart for me.
I set the container on the counter, turn back to him, slide my hands up his chest, and look into his eyes.
“I think you’re beautiful. All your parts. All your broken pieces. They’re beautiful to me, and so are you. So if I never get the chance to tell you again, I’m telling you now that if you and your monsters ever decide you need a home, you have one in me.”
He doesn’t answer. I didn’t expect him to.
He’s too busy fighting his demons.
I hand feed him the rest of the meat in the container, then we go back upstairs to bed.
Cole
Near morning, it starts to rain.
I lie awake as I have been for hours. Shay slumbers peacefully beside me. I’m on my back. She’s on her side, holding me, one leg flung over mine, an arm across my chest, her head resting on my shoulder.
She knows what I am yet still she sleeps like a baby. Sleeps and holds me like I’m the one who needs protection, not the other way around.
How is it possible?
What does it mean?
She’s not mentally impaired. She’s not in denial. She’s not anything but completely accepting, and it makes not one bit of fucking sense.
Emiliano calls me the wolf.
My employees call me the Grinch.
Axel calls me the Evaporator. Bruv, British jargon for brother, when he’s feeling generous.
Other people call me by other names, none of them flattering, but Shay calls me honey and beautiful and feeds me steak from her fingertips as if I’m an injured animal she brought home to nurse back to health.
It can’t be this easy.
Things like this don’t exist between people like us.
Do they?
I turn my head and look at her, sleeping so soundly. Trusting me. Me, the man who walked in from the night with another man’s screams still echoing in his ears. She looked at me, and she knew, and she did the impossible.
She accepted me.
Again.
With rain pattering against the windows, I rise from bed, careful not to disturb her. Then I go into the closet, pull the burner from the inside pocket of my suit jacket, and call Axel.
As always, he answers after one ring. He might be the only man on earth who sleeps less than I do.
“Hullo, bruv. Everything’s green on my end. You solid?”
“No.”
I exhale and drag a hand through my hair. The most patient man I’ve ever met, he waits in tolerant silence for me to get my shit together.
“I need you to talk some sense into me.”
“About what?”
“Shay.”
This time, his silence is surprised. We’ve known each other long enough that I can tell the difference. But still he waits for me to speak first.
“I…I’m…fuck.” I blow out a hard breath and admit the truth. “I’m done for.”
His voice low, Axel says, “You can’t be serious.”
“That’s the thing. I am.”
“She’s a civ.”
“No shit. Doesn’t change anything.”
“And she works for you.”
“Still doesn’t change anything.”
“Bollocks. If you really care about her, you walk away. We don’t get the white picket fence. Not us.”
I already know, but I’m desperate enough to argue.
“Why does it have to be a white picket fence? Why can’t it be something else? Why can’t it be like some Wes Craven version of Pride and Prejudice where Mr. Darcy murders people instead of sneering at them and Elizabeth Bennett grinds up the bones and uses them to fertilize her roses?”
“Listen to yourself. I’d be laughing hysterically if I knew this wasn’t a joke.”
“You’re British. You don’t do anything hysterically. The best you can manage is a scathing comeback.”
“You say that like a good scathing comeback isn’t art.”
“Help me, Axel. I need help, and I need it now, because I’m ten seconds away from going into the other room, shaking her awake, and asking her to marry me.”
“Bloody hell. How long have you known this girl, four minutes?”
“Four minutes can be a lifetime with the right person.”
“You’re daft.”
“No, I’m in love.”
“Same thing.”
I think of Florentino from that wretched book Love in the Time of Cholera, how he spent fifty years pining over Fermina before they finally got together, and wish I’d never learned to read.
“Killian Black has a wife. Why can’t I?”
Axel’s voice turns sour. “You’re not Killian Black.”
“Nobody is. That’s my point. If the most dangerous man on the planet can put down roots, there’s hope for the rest of us.”
“You and I can’t put down roots because we’d poison the soil.”
I grimace at the phone. “We’re not that bad.”
“I disagree, lover boy, but let’s play this out. You put a ring on her finger, you move her in, you play house. What happens when she wakes up in the middle of the night and you’re gone, then you stroll through the door with blood on your hands? You think she won’t run as fast as she can? Because that’s exactly what will happen. You’re only setting everyone up for heartbreak. And prison time for you when she goes to the police.”
“She won’t run or go to the police.”
He scoffs. “That’s hope talking, not logic.”