Chapter Sixty-Seven

Ghost

D isabling the security system and unlocking the front door from my burner, I walked into the house, then froze.

Her bare back to me, sitting partially submerged on the edge of the sun shelf at the shallow end of the pool, she was fucking stunning as she stared out at the ocean.

She was also on her phone.

Quickly using my burner to trace her call, I mentally shook my head. The fucker didn't even bother to mask AES's main number beyond his blocked caller ID.

Shucking my boots and pulling my shirt over my head, I took my two 9mms from the back waistband of my jeans and set them next to my cell on the kitchen island. It was a risk leaving my pieces out of reach, but it wasn't uncalculated.

I needed to send this woman a message.

And a lack of firepower never stopped me from killing anyone.

Tracking her body language, scanning the property, I opened the glass slider with a purposeful slowness to mitigate noise, but then I was a man on a mission.

Striding across the lanai, stepping into the pool, coming up behind her on the sun shelf, I caged her in with my legs as I lowered into the shallow water with SEAL trained stealth.

Seemingly unsurprised by my approach, she glanced at my thighs but otherwise didn't react.

"November?" I brushed her hair over one shoulder.

A tremor racked up her spine, and she dumped her cell on the side of the pool. "Yes."

Wrapping an arm around her waist, pulling her in, I inhaled her scent. "What did he offer you?"

"Escape." She leaned back into me, and her voice dipped. "From you."

Fucking hacker. "You going to take it?"

Staring past the pool to the ocean, she didn't immediately reply, but she subconsciously settled against my chest and rested her head on my shoulder. "Do I need to?"

I told her what she needed to hear. "I can't answer that for you, Safiya."

Glancing down at my legs, she changed the subject. "Why are you wearing your jeans in the pool?"

"Commando." It was a more palatable answer than admitting I didn't trust myself to sit naked behind her while she wore a bikini, but the truth was more damning. I didn't want to scare her.

"What?"

I wanted to remember how to smile. "You have a degree in literature and never heard the term ‘commando'?"

"If you are here to make fun, you may leave."

I touched my lips to her shoulder. "I'd never do that." I loved the fact that she didn't know. It meant some of her innocence had been left intact. "I'm proud of you, beautiful."

"Safiya," she corrected.

"I can't tell you that you're beautiful?"

"I do not need compliments or terms of endearment from you."

"All right. Then what do you need?" It was a cheap shot, even for me. I knew exactly what she needed, but the question wasn't without purpose.

Glancing up, she threw me a look that reminded me of the young woman I'd had to restrain from going after an armed insurgent eight years ago.

Selfishly tightening my arm around her waist, wondering if I'd been lying to myself about my motivations back then, I ran the palm of my other hand down her thigh. "Do we need to talk about the nicknames?" I knew why she'd brought them up.

"They were not nicknames." Her body stiffened. "They were terms of endearment."

I didn't insult her by denying her differentiation, but I also didn't explain that no matter what I'd called the other women, it didn't matter. None of them stole my fucking sanity, and not one had ever heard me say their real name. "I used the terms for three reasons."

She pushed my hand off her thigh. "I am not asking for an explanation or your reasons. I never expected anything from you. You have already given me considerably more than anything I ever could have imagined. For that, I am grateful to you." She shifted, and her back straightened.

The grateful comment, the inch of distance she'd just put between us—I knew I wasn't going to like what she fucking said next.

"As soon as I find employment, I will vacate the house and be out of your way."

Eight years kicked me in the chest. "This isn't a house."

"Mansion, estate, villa—call it what you like. You know what I mean," she snapped.

"It's your home." But I wanted it to be ours. "And you've never spoken to me in anger, which is my fault. I owe you an apology."

I owed her a hell of lot more than that. She deserved to be able to live her life without fear or her past breathing down her neck, which was exactly what I was doing. I owed it to her to walk. Clean break, fresh start. But I wasn't going to do that. Not unless she outright told me to leave her alone after she heard what I had to say.

"I do not want an apology." She pushed against my hold on her.

"Safiya, stop." Pulling her back to my chest, using a fucking fraction of the dominance I'd never shown her, I locked her in my grip. The soft brush of my lips against her temple deliberate, I countered with an abraded force behind my authoritative tone. "This isn't a conversation about what you want. This is about my actions." Objectively, I'd already lost control of the narrative. I wasn't letting it sink deeper. "Three reasons for the pet names. One, it dehumanizes a person to not use their given name. It was a necessary and purposeful form of disrespect and denial of acknowledgment of their victimization. Two, it was a reminder to each of them that there would never be any familiarity between us past our transactional circumstances. Three, their names didn't matter to me. The mission did."

"The mission," she repeated with quiet distress.

"Yes, Safiya. The mission. The details of which I will never share with you except to say that every woman, bar one, was a tactical choice."

"You are saying I am that one."

Grasping her jaw, tilting her face up, I forced her gaze to meet mine. Then I corrected her demonstrative adjective to a possessive. "You're my one."

Her pulse thrumming, her breathing shallow, she stared at me like she'd forgiven every damn transgression, past and present, that I'd ever committed.

Refraining from taking her mouth and sinking my tongue past her full lips, holding back every depraved thing I wanted to do to her, I stroked across her cheek with a hard press of my thumb. Instead of telling this woman she was mine, I closed the loop on owning my actions. "I apologize if I made you feel less than."

Her voice became dangerously quiet. "Less than."

"That night," I clarified. "After the extraction." The pet names, I wouldn't apologize for. Not in the context she'd seen me use them in.

"You did not make me feel less than ." The absolution behind her gaze disappeared. "You humiliated me."