Chapter 4

FOUR

"Do you want me to leave?"

I watch his face, looking for any sign that the "Of course not" of his reply isn't a lie.

But it's not.

He wants me here, even if I can't give him what he wants.

And I don't want to go anywhere.

"You know more about me than a normal person should." I laugh as I hear myself say it. The unsteady sound makes my chest hurt. "But you're not a normal person, are you?"

"What gave it away?" He quirks one of his brow ridges in an expression that's so human…

"So you know about Edan, I assume you know he was murdered." He has to know everything.

D stares at me, unmoving.

"When he died…" I've spent so long not saying it, the words are leaden in my mouth. "When the bond breaks, every ounce of emotion in your mate pours through the connection into you. Pain, fear… rage. It's like they're metal stakes, driven through you, and all you can do is stand and take it."

Silence settles between us and I look up to meet his eerie eyes. Eyes that trace over me before he says, "You're cold."

I shiver when he says it. As if his saying it makes it true.

"Can I hold you? Or do you want your space?"

I go to him, curling myself into a ball in his arms. It will be easier to tell him the rest if I can't look him in those eyes that see too much.

Closing mine, I press my cheek to his chest, stealing the warmth from him.

His hand draws soft circles over my back. "I didn't know he'd been murdered."

"They kept it very quiet…" but not quiet enough, apparently. "Maybe that's why your would-be killers picked me. Means and opportunity, all they had to do was supply the motivation."

"What are you talking about?"

I try to keep the sigh quiet, but I know he feels the full movement of it. "I killed him. The man who murdered Edan. They knew."

He's quiet and I don't know what he's thinking. I don't know what I want him to think.

"I didn't do it on purpose. The moment Edan died, I turned into this… this rage monster and… I don't know if the man even knew I was there before he was dead."

"That's a normal response." D brushes his fingers along my cheek and tips my head up, forcing me to meet his eyes. "Just because it's a response that has happened more often when the female of the pair has been killed, doesn't make it an oddity that it happened to you. If you'd done something wrong, the CSS would have penalized you for it."

"I don't even know how I did it. I was consumed by this… feeling of death, and when I finally clawed my way out of the void of despair and rage… there were two dead men in my home."

D nods and says, "And you think that's why they went to you, because you had access to me and you've killed before."

I nod. I can't bring myself to agree with that out loud because it feels like I'm agreeing with them.

"I could have told them they were wrong to pick you," he says. "You're not a killer."

"How can you be so sure?"

"It takes one to know one."

I deflate a little. It's different. "You kill monsters, not people."

"We both know people can be monsters too." Pressing his thumb to my lips, he doesn't quite look at me. "What kind of monster I hunt doesn't change that."

"It does."

He looks away from me for a moment and I hear the words he mutters under his breath as if they're a curse. "I've already said too much, might as well dig my grave deeper."

"D—" I say his name, but I'm not sure if I want to stop him or…

"I would kill anyone who tried to hurt you. I would kill anyone you asked me to. I am a killer and at the end of the day, my reasons don't matter."

"I don't believe you." I don't know if I'm lying or not.

"You don't have to."

When he meets my eyes, it's not the physical manifestation of his mutation that scares me. There's an intensity within them that's terrifying.

It thrills me.

I want him.And I want him to want me.

It's an admission I've spent so much time shoving to the periphery, that even acknowledging it now makes me ache in all the parts of me that have been empty for too long.

When I didn't know what he did to get them, those scars scared me, because I knew what they meant.

The way that losing your bondmate tears out your very soul and then feeds it back to you is an experience I almost didn't survive. I can't imagine going through that again.

It's not simply that his job is dangerous. The fact that someone actually asked me to kill him is just more proof.

But still… I want him. I've wanted him for too long to deny it.

Now that we're here… maybe I can have him.

Just a little bit.

But I need to know…

"Why don't you have an Agency contract yet?"

His brow ridges quirk. "You know why."

"Tell me anyway."

I wait, and my breath feels too loud in my head. I need to know… I hope I'm wrong, even if being wrong will gut me.

"I considered it. Several times," he says. "The Agency sent me plenty of their marketing material but I always ran into the same problem… you'd never be one of the faces that popped up on that screen.

"They could have offered me every woman in the universe and none of them would be right, because they wouldn't be you."

I kiss him as though it's the only way to get my bearings. As though not kissing him would send me spinning off into oblivion.

He's my anchor. I don't know when that became true. All I know is that it is.

D kisses me back and it's so sweet, I want to cry.

It's been years since… but I still remember what it felt like to kiss Edan.

The surety of the emotion coming back across the bond had made everything easy. I knew what he wanted, how he liked it without even asking, and I knew what he was willing to give and how much he could take.

Kissing D has none of that.

Every angle of my mouth is a question, when I open myself to him, it's an offering I don't know if he'll accept.

We are disconnected… but I can feel the physical manifestation of his desire.

And I can feel his restraint.

His hands are firm at my waist, he doesn't move them.

He pulls back from me—just an inch—with a groan that rumbles through me. "I am a patient man, Kimba. We don't need to rush into anything."

That makes me laugh. There's nothing about him and me that could be considered "rushing."

Edan had collected me from the Agency spaceship and whisked me away to a hotel room in the city center. The door had barely closed behind us before our clothes were off. He was inside me before I'd been on the planet for a full hour.

D lifts me off of him, moving me—again—so that his erection doesn't touch me.

His muscles are clenched tight as he lets go of me. I can see the tightness in his shoulders. D has more control than anyone I've ever met.

"You've never let me do any of the things I offered at the club."

"I couldn't… Because I hadn't told you what I wanted."

"And now that I know?"

"I'm yours," he says with a tightness to his jaw that looks painful. "Completely. And I'll be content with as much or as little of yourself as you can share with me."

He looks out the window, but I don't know if he sees any of the landscape. His eyes have taken on that strange green cast from the contact lenses he wears.

"Your car's here."

I don't want to do this right now, but Trench has already come through the door and the last thing I want is for him to come looking for me and find her.

So I get myself back in order and head up the stairs.

The brotherhood have free rein of the top level of my outpost. I would never take that away from them. And I can't imagine Trench invading my private spaces, but I'm also not willing to risk it.

"Find anything?" I ask as he tosses her neural link back to me.

"A neatly packaged little bomb that would have killed her and made it look like a freak accident. Even though we all know there's no way that high-end of a vehicle would ever spontaneously fail like that."

Kimba can afford the best and she didn't settle for anything less with her car. "Nothing else, no trackers?"

"Nothing." He looks toward the stairs behind me. "I know it's not my place, but… this feels like something we should let the CSS handle."

"We both know the CSS has its uses, but I'm not willing to trust them with her." I look back toward the stairs. "I'll let my friend in their offices know what's going on, but at least five of the names on my list of possible suspects wear a CSS clearance badge."

"Which ones?"

"The pro-bomb squad, who else?"

Trench grimaces, but nods. And then he too looks down the stairs. "What about her bondmate? They could take him to hurt her. They'd probably be safer together."

"She's not bonded." I wouldn't have told any of the others. "But let's keep that between us."

Trench is good at keeping secrets.

He blinks at me, looking a little stunned and then shakes it away like he does everything.

"That makes sense. Well, more sense than the alternative, I guess."

"What's the alternative?"

Trench gives me a look. "That her bondmate gave her to you for safe keeping."

"It's not unthinkable."

"Would you hand her over to another man?"

"If she would be safer with him."

He snorts and looks away as he shakes his head. "Well, at least now I know what you look like when you lie."

"It's not a lie… but I know there isn't anyone safer, so it's a non-issue."

"Sure. Let me know when you have more news and whatever you do, don't go anywhere without one of us with you."

"I can take care of myself."

"No one doubts that. But you don't have to do this alone. You have us."

"I'll consider it."

He turns for the door and then stops, turning back to me and pausing. "Do yourself a favor. If you love her, don't let her leave without being certain she knows."

I stare at the closed door between us just a little too long, because that's always been the question… how do I convince Kimba that this is love… not just an obsession, like the other men who drool over her.