It’s late when I enter the house. Nearly three. I expect to find Sloane asleep in bed, but instead, she’s in the media room, curled up on the sofa with a glass of red wine. Two wine bottles sit on the coffee table, one of them empty, the other a quarter full.
The television is tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station.
She doesn’t notice me. I stand watching her from the door as she gulps from the wine glass and gnaws at her thumbnail. She looks exhausted. Strung out. Frantic with worry.
I feel a twinge of guilt, but am still glad I didn’t call.
Not that it was easy.
She hasn’t been off my mind for a second since I left. If I didn’t already know I was obsessed, three days apart drove the point home with the subtlety of a hatchet.
Grabbing the remote, she starts clicking through channels, jumping from station to station, pausing mere seconds between each. Looking for something.
I know what.
“Try CNN. They love the bloody stuff.”
Sloane jumps to her feet, dropping the glass of Cabernet to the floor. It spills all over the cream-colored carpet, leaving a pattern like the spray of a slit jugular vein.
Curling her hands to fists, she stares at me with wide, unblinking eyes.
“You’re alive.”
“Ah, those astonishing powers of observation.”
Her eyes flash. “Don’t you dare be nonchalant with me. Don’t you dare be glib.” She points a shaking finger at the sofa. “I’ve been sitting here for three fucking days, listening to reports about murdered gangsters. Three. Days. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? Why didn’t you call? Where the hell have you been?”
With every question, her voice rises. She’s mad as hell.
That shouldn’t make me happy, but it does. It makes me so happy, I could float.
“Working.” I glance at the television, then back at her.
I know she understands when her face drains of color.
“You…you…”
I say softly, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
Closing her eyes, she shakes her head. “And now you’re quoting Sun Tzu,” she says bitterly. “Like that makes any sense at all.”
“Just testing that superior IQ of yours. You passed. This time.”
Her lids fly open. She impales me with a look of such fury, I almost smile.
“What the fuck, Declan?”
I lean against the wall and fold my arms over my chest. “You’re cursing an unusual amount, lass, even for you. What’s that about?” I let my smile unfurl, like a snake’s coils. “Don’t tell me you missed me.”
The air around her head shimmers with a rage bordering on insanity. I expect her eyes to pop from her head. She looks like she’s channeling the ghost of Charles Manson.
She walks to where I’m standing and slaps me across the face.
When my head stops spinning, I look at her and grin.
“How dare you smile at me, you son of a bitch.”
“Is that a rhetorical question? I thought you didn’t like those.”
“I’ve been sitting here thinking you were dead!”
“No, not me. Just the heads of all the other syndicates. Except Kazimir. I kept him alive because you asked me to.”
She sucks in a breath so hard it’s like she’s trying not to drown. Her face screws up and turns red.
I think because she doesn’t know what else to do, she slaps me again.
I grab her and kiss her, hard.
She bursts into tears. “You asshole! I hate you! I hate you!”
“I know, baby,” I say, chuckling and holding her tight. “You hate my bloody guts. Except you don’t. You’re crazy about me. You’re so in love with me, you cried because I’m alive.”
Sobbing into my shoulder, she pounds a fist on my chest.
I whisper into her ear, “Sweet girl. My fierce little lion queen. Give me your mouth.”
She sniffles and whimpers as I kiss her, clinging to me like she’ll never let go.
I’ve never been happier in my entire life than right now, in this moment.
Until she pushes me away, that is.
She turns and walks away with her hands on her head, growling in aggravation.
I watch her walk slow circles around the room, inhaling deep breaths, then blowing them out slowly. She wipes her cheeks with shaking hands and walks more circles. When she’s regained self-control, she stops and looks at me.
“Thank you for Kazimir. And fuck you for leaving me hanging. Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Jesus Christ, I think I’m having a stroke. What happens now?”
“Now I wait until your girlfriend’s man calls me for a sit-down to discuss a cease-fire.”
“How do you know he’ll call?”
“That’s the only way he’ll be able to get me in a room so he can try to kill me.”
After a beat, she says, “It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it?”
“Aye. That’s the life. War. Death. Kill or be killed. Now you see why I’m in such a good mood most of the time.”
She stares at me beseechingly. “Don’t be sarcastic. I can’t handle sarcastic right now. Just give it to me straight. Is he going to kill you?”
I cluck my tongue. “O ye of little faith.”
“Quote the Bible to me again and see what happens to your two front teeth.”
“He’s not going to kill me.”
She peers at me, unconvinced.
“I’m going to give him a good reason not to.”
“Such as?”
“That Natalie would never forgive him if he murdered the love of your life.”
She closes one eye and wrinkles her nose, trying to work it out. “Why would Natalie think you’re the love of my life?”
“You’re going to tell her I am.”
Her face smooths out. She arches her eyebrows. “I’m sorry. I must’ve heard you incorrectly. Did you just suggest I tell my best friend that you”—she looks me up and down—“are the love of my life?”
“You heard me.”
“So you want me to lie to her.”
I tilt my head and gaze at her through half-lidded eyes.
“Sorry, gangster. Smolder all you want, but she’s the love of my life.”
I’m gone for three days, and she forgets who she’s dealing with. “I see. So you’d like Kazimir to cut off my balls and choke me to death with them?”
When she blanches, I smile. “That’s his specialty. Russians are so dramatic.”
“You’re blackmailing me. This is emotional blackmail!”
“It is. I’m not a good person. Whoops.”
She props her hands on her hips and looks at me down her nose, like I’m a peasant with oozing sores. “Well, too bad. I won’t do it. If you can’t survive on your own without my help, you’re not the gangster I thought you were.”
Oh, how I’d like to spank that fine arse of hers until she’s squealing.
She’d love it, though, so I don’t.
I shrug and leave the room.
She follows on my heels. “What does that shrug mean? Where are you going?”
“To bed.”
I head to the bedroom, her anger at my back like a toxic cloud. In the master bathroom, I kick off my boots, strip out of my clothes, and step into the shower.
I stand under the hot spray with my eyes closed for several moments, letting hot water slide over my skin. Sloane stands outside the door, seething at me through the glass.
“I won’t tell her you’re the love of my life.”
“I heard you.”
“And I know you don’t need me to, either. You just want me to. This is only you trying to get me to say how I feel about you again.”
“If that’s what you think.”
“It is what I think.”
“Right. That’s it, then.”
“It is.”
Ignoring her, I pick up the bar of soap and lather my chest. I take my time washing myself, soaping my arms, chest, and abs. Then I rinse, turn around, and tip my head back into the spray.
I can feel her greedy gaze on my body.
She mutters, “Show-off.”
“Get your arse in here, woman.”
“Pfft.”
“Now.”
“Pardon me, but I’m not a terrier. You don’t get to bark orders—”
Her snippy tirade ends as I open the door and drag her, fully clothed, into the shower.
I press her against the wall, pin her wrists above her head, and take her mouth. The kiss is hard and hungry.
She’s just as starving as I am. She kisses me back like it’s her last two minutes on earth.
Then it’s a frantic race to get her out of her clothes. They’re half wet and stick to her skin, but it doesn’t slow us down.
“Tampon?”
“No. Period’s done.”
I lift her up and press her back against the wall. She wraps her legs around my waist and reaches down between us to guide me in.
“Fuck, baby. Hurry.”
“Yes—oh—there—”
I shove inside with a chest-deep grunt that echoes off the tile walls. She arches back with a soft moan. Her fingernails dig into my shoulders.
I fuck her, holding her up against the shower wall, water spraying everywhere, until she cries out.
“God, I’m there. I’m there already, Declan—oh—”
Her pussy clenches convulsively around my cock. It feels like being milked by a fist.
I kiss her as I come, my tongue down her throat and my hands under her arse, my thighs burning and my heart on fire.
It doesn’t matter if she won’t say I’m the love of her life. It doesn’t matter if she never tells me how she feels at all.
No words can compete with this.
When we’re both breathing hard and twitching, coming down from the high, she drops her head and hides her face in my shoulder.
She whispers, “You might be a distant second to Nat. Very distant. Jerk.”
My chest expands. I start to laugh, just to have somewhere for the all the emotion to go.
Withdrawing from her body, I set her on her feet and take her face in my hands. My voice husky with pleasure, I say, “Good enough.”
Then I kiss her, holding her close, filled with joy when I feel how hard her heart beats against my chest.
It’s beating at the same pace as mine.
