prepare my makeshift bed and crawl in as exhaustion hits me like a runaway train. The couch is lumpy, but I’ve dealt with worse. Yet as I drift off, I swear I hear muffled cries coming from Z’s room. I lift my head, and this time the cry is unmistakable.
Ice enters my veins.
If someone is hurting her, they are dead. But their dying will take time and I’ll make sure every second is filled with inescapable pain.
I unsheathe a blade and creep soundlessly to her door. I slip inside, my senses on high alert, dagger raised to strike.
That’s when I see her, alone in the bed wearing nothing but a Frasier Academy T-shirt, panties—and her own sheathed dagger at her ankle. I suck in a breath, for a second seeing the young girl I fell in love with. Has she kept the shirt as a memento of us—or is she playing with me, getting me to let my guard down because of a bloody memory? I hesitate, but only for a second as she thrashes right and left, a hectic flush on her cheeks as she sends the covers askew. This is no act.
I put my weapon away as my chest tightens. What horrors has she seen other than this night? If I had to venture a guess based on my own experience, I’d say it was more than any one person should be expected to handle.
I slip my dagger in its hiding spot and crawl cautiously into the bed. Dreaming or no, it is a dangerous thing I do with a woman I don’t fully trust and who has no reason to trust me.
“It’s okay, Lora,” I whisper. “It’s just me.”
Her eyes open wide, and she pulls a handgun from beneath her pillow, aiming it unerringly right between my brows.
“It’s me,” I say again. “Max. I just thought you might need—”
She drops the gun next to the phone on her night table, then burrows into my arms.
“Only for tonight,” she whispers, scooting closer. “Because I don’t want to be alone, even if the alternative is you.”
I huff out a laugh, pulling her to me. “Understood.”
Her lips press to my ear, as gentle as a petal plucked from a rose. “And if you try anything like we did in that club, I’ll castrate you before you can pull a weapon.” Sharp teeth nip my lobe to punctuate her warning.
No matter how soft and supple she is, her body is a deadly weapon. She knows a hundred ways to kill a man with her bare hands. And yet I’m not afraid. Shit. I can’t get close enough.
“Of course,” I say, grinning. “Whatever you need.”
And because I haven’t slept in days, I surrender to it now, Lora nestled in my arms. She hooks an ankle around mine, and we sleep, bodies tangled, chest to chest, and dagger to dagger. The lights of London seep between the curtains. Bad guys are out there. Plotting. Planning. But that’s not my concern right now.
Enemy or liability means nothing, if only for the next few hours.
I breathe in the jasmine scent to her soft hair and for a moment revel in this most unfamiliar of feelings...
Peace.
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