Chapter Five

Safiya

I shifted to glance at the tall hedge to my left but otherwise did not move.

Recalling everything he had taught me, what I had learned before him, I listened and waited for everything I should immediately hear.

Waves, wind, birds, cicadas, palm fronds clacking, the grass blades whispering.

Then I listened to what was beyond.

A distant vehicle, a delivery or garbage truck reversing, the world waking up.

Thinking about what I did not hear, I looked at the nine-foot-tall hedge that was thick enough to conceal a number of predators and mentally cataloged what was missing.

No snapping twigs, no unnatural rustling of leaves, no footsteps, no geckos scurrying away from the area where the hedge had moved.

Standing closer to the hedge than to the sliders leading into the house, my options were limited. Even if I were next to the sliders, the distance between the concealing bushes and the glass doors was not so great that I would have time to close and lock them before someone could run at me.

And a gun would negate running.

A shiver of fear chased the thought, but then I sank into resignation and did the only thing I could do.

I dropped to a squat and looked under the hedge.

No boots. No feet.

Rising, I exhaled.

Then, just as I had dismissed the earlier movement as a small animal getting a late start on breakfast, my stomach somersaulted, the back of my neck prickled with awareness, and my heart rate whipped into a frenzy.

I knew he was here like you knew when your first breath of consciousness after a sound slumber plummeted you into the shocking reality of life, but I did not turn. Staring at the clear, aqua waves rolling in with deceptive calmness, I braced myself.

His reprimand measured, he delivered it with quiet reservation. "You can't ignore me forever."

Like the breeze, his voice coated my skin in a balm. The soothing comfort of it was an addiction, but he was wrong. I may not have the power to mollify myself, not how his mere presence could ease my anxieties, but I had more experience in evasion than any other practice in my life.

Standing on a lanai I never would have dreamed of as a young girl, my gaze held the ocean as I held my words.

The man who had saved me and my life exhaled with a show of frustration that I knew was just that—a show. This man did nothing that was not premeditated. "I could put my hands on you, Safiya."

Only using my given name when it was just the two of us, the three syllables wrapped around me with complexity—familiarity, false warmth, my childhood. I both hated him for it and loved the softness it brought out in his already quiet voice.

Never sure if he would follow through on his threats, my body a convert to his religion of dominance, my mind a deserter, I swayed in the hold I had on my tongue.

As if knowing I was already leaning into whatever his command would be today, this hour, this minute, he used my weakness against me and repeated those syllables. "Safiya." Quieter, darker, with more feeling this time, my name whispered past my ears softer than the breeze. "Look at me."

I closed my eyes.

Air shifted, the scent of cool rain, vetiver and musk floated around me, and a palm covered my throat.

Heat crawled up my body, and every cell in my flesh and blood infused with want.

His breath touched my cheek. "Do I need to remind you of who we are?"

I did not need him to tell me that I was no one and he was a lethal phantom you never saw coming.

"I'm not giving you more until you acknowledge me," he warned.

I broke my silence. "You never give more."

He did not reply.

I knew this game too.

It was his turn to bridge the silence, but he would not. He would continue to remain still, both in stance and voice.

To distract myself, I concentrated on my surroundings that were outside the immediate bubble of his fresh, crisp scent that was uniquely him. Beyond his intoxicating natural musk, the air was too thick for this time of year, and the water was too warm. I wondered if there would be a hurricane this season.

With an unusual break in his dominance, he spoke first. "I know what you're doing."

"If you did, you would not have spoken first." We both knew I had been testing his patience, but now I allowed myself to look at his eyes. The lightest of blue, outlined by a darker navy, they stared back at me with the impenetrable gaze of a Navy SEAL, mercenary, and a man who was so cunning, his steps were quieter than a ghost.

"We're more than this. We always have been. You can attempt to try my patience, ignore me, but there will never be a test of wills between us."

My traitorous heart leapt at his first two proclamations and grasped at them with everything it had while my mind pushed against what I knew was an immoveable object. "Maybe your powers of perception are slipping." They were not.

His thumb stroked the side of my neck. "You think so?" It was the closest to a caress I would ever get from him—physical or verbal.

"I do." I did not. But I hoped so. Because maybe then—only then—would he leave this madness behind, and I would be able to trust those words he had just thrown at my defenseless heart.

But that was wishful thinking, and I had never dared to ask what he actually did between his infrequent visits or texts because he had made it clear from the beginning what this was. Which was nothing more than him providing a house and means for me to be kept hidden away. It was immeasurably more than I had ever had, but it had not taken me long to figure out I was not the only one.

His protocols, how we had come to meet, his rescue of me, the times he had shown up here smelling of other women, the darkness he carried in his eyes. I could see the weight of it, and I had seen what he was capable of when he had saved me. I was sure he was still doing now what he had done eight years ago when he had found me. And until his last visit, I had still been telling myself that I was okay with it. That I had a life I never would have had otherwise. That I should be content.

But on his last visit—visits that were always more of a check-in or an inspection than a social call—there had been something different about him. He had been distracted when he never had been before. Every time he had come to this oceanfront estate, whether it was for a few minutes or a few hours, he would focus all of his attention on me.

Undivided, soul-changing, addictive attention.

I had lived for it.

But that last visit, it had been missing, and something inside of me had broken. It was the reason I had ignored his protocols, and had not been responding to his texts. It was the reason he was standing here now, putting his hand on me when he rarely touched me.

For the first time, I dared to speak of it. "Would you like to know what else I think?"

His gaze penetrating, his hold on me unwavering, he did not speak. He waited.

I said it. "You cannot save everyone."

The two fine lines between his brows that I dreamed of, the ones that made his expression hardened and aloof but also emanated strength, they held as his soft blond-brown hair danced in the wind without his permission. It was the only rogue part of his hard, muscular body, and I ached to run my fingers through the thick, wavy strands that were longer on top and shorter on the sides and back. But before I could finish the thought, his jaw flexed, and I already knew he would not acknowledge what I had said.

"Anything else you need to say right now?"

Since he had quantified his response, I did the same. "No, thank you."

He barely gave a slight lift of his chin, then the heart of his visit came with a command. "When I text, you acknowledge receipt."

"I am aware of your protocols." His rules were to keep me safe, but from what exactly, I no longer knew. I was a world away and almost a decade past the reason he had to save me in the first place. I had grown to resent the protocols. I maybe even resented him in that moment—holding me, chastising me, touching me without the promise of more.

"You seem to have selectively forgotten some."

There was nothing I forgot about him. "You are touching me when you said you would not. Is that selective?" It was not fair to use it against him. He had made me that promise a lifetime ago, when all I had breathed was fear as I had walked into this house grief-stricken, traumatized, malnourished, filthy and barefoot. Terrified, stunned, so exhausted and weak, I could barely stand, I had stared at the ocean while a man who had referred to himself as a ghost stood silently behind me. When I had looked back at him, a new kind of fear took root, and as if he had seen it, he vowed then and there that he would not touch me. His promise lasted one week.

"I do many things I shouldn't with you."

Oh, how I wished that were true. "You do nothing you do not plan."

"Contingency is the second most common noun in my vernacular for a reason. Protocol is the first." His grip tightened with warning. "Remember that."

"As you wish."

He searched my eyes. Then his exhale of feigned frustration was as deliberate as his presence here. "The protocols are to protect you."

They were to protect him and his anonymity. "So you have said."

"When have I ever not spoken the truth to you?"

It was not a matter of truths or falsehoods. It was him. What he did, who he was. I could not change it any more than I could bring back to life the men he had killed on my behalf. Erasure would negate the very thing I craved most about him, which was also the single most jarring reason why we would never be more than this—savior and rescuee.

I focused back on the ocean. "Why are you really here?"

"You're moving out."