“He’s not good, Mia.”
“Yeah, you don’t have to mansplain Harvey Blagas to me,” I said, instantly irritated. “I know he’s not good. That’s exactly why I have to get back to him.”
Armin propped himself back up on his elbow so he could lord over me. Here we go.
“I could take care of him, for you. If you’d let me.”
“What do you mean, take care of him? You’re an assassin now? My bodyguard?”
Armin’s face smiled in my peripheral vision, and it disarmed me. “That’s a damn good idea,” he drawled. He tweaked the tip of my nose, softly.
I sighed and turned to him, traced my fingertips down the stubble on his cheek. I didn’t have any fight in me at this very moment, for once. Armin lifted my other hand up gingerly to check on the cut across my palm. He raised it to his mouth to kiss the backs of my knuckles.
Then he lay his head down on the pillow, his long arm slung over me. I listened to his breaths draw out, slow and measured.
This week I was Armin’s.
Next week, I couldn’t say the same.
I edged out from under him, got up and paced the cabin, made my way to the front door and peered outside into the darkness. The floodlight flicked on, aggravated by a deer or a raccoon or some other creature of the night. Its spotlight illuminated a shiny new SUV. Rose gold in the light, sleek and beautiful. And with a big red bow carefully positioned on its hood. I’d only seen this kind of thing in Christmas car commercials. Fucking unreal.
I had to remind myself that giving me a brand new car, for Armin, was like anybody else giving me a piece of gum. It cost him nothing, meant literally nothing to him. In the scale of his billion dollars, this was only pocket change.
I tamped down my heart. I forced it small and guarded, to keep it from swelling at this most recent kind gesture in a whole sea of them.
I couldn’t afford to fall in love. Not now. It was too dangerous, for the both of us. There was so much about my life that couldn’t be spoken out loud.
I crept back into the darkened bedroom. Armin slept peacefully, hands clasped atop his chest. I watched the rise and the fall of it, mesmerized by him. I studied the relaxed lines of his face, his brow uncreased for the first time since our whole mess of a rendezvous started.
I decided to ruin it, his peace.
I picked up the foot end of the blanket slowly, carefully, and slipped under. I inched myself up until I lay between his legs and sucked the tip of his shaft into my mouth.
I knew one thing for sure: Armin couldn’t kill Harvey Blagas. I wouldn’t let him.
Harvey Blagas wasmine, mine and nobody else’s. I’d been working on this case for too long, undercover for two long years now.
I hadn’t sacrificed everything for this investigation only to let a well-placed bullet send him off.
I’d be damned if I’d let Blagas get away with a sentence as easy as death.
And I’d never let that sick son of a bitch take another person I loved.
