Page 78 of The Enemy Protector
She nods but doesn’t move. Just stands there in that black dress, looking like she wants to bolt.
This is already asking more of my self-control than I anticipated.
I don’t crowd her. I don’t tell her to get into bed or offer to help her take off the dress.
I strip off my jacket and take my time to fold it over the back of the chair. I kick off my shoes in the general direction of the closet. I loosen my tie. I drape it over my jacket.
I keep my movements slow. Deliberate. Non-threatening.
I start to unbutton my shirt. One. By. One.
I get it undone and shrug it off my shoulders.
I hear a soft gasp.
Her eyes are locked on my chest. On the tattoos that cover my torso, my arms, my shoulders.
On the green snake that winds around my neck.
Her face has gone pale. She’s staring at that snake like she’s seen a ghost.
“You,” she whispers. “It was you.”
19
Sofia
Green eyes.
The air leaves my lungs in one violent punch.
Green eyes. Impossible green. The kind that never belonged to a real man in the first place.
Snake eyes.
I’ve seen them in nightmares. In memory. In the dark corners of myself I don’t visit unless I have to.
Those emerald eyes, always watching me from the darkness.
And now they’re here.
Curled around my husband’s throat.
My legs feel weak. I stumble backward. The wall is at my back.
“You.” The word scrapes out of me. “It was you.”
That horrible night. The cologne.Him.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t cover the tattoo or look away. He just stands there, shirtless, watching me put it together.
“Yes,” he says simply.
My emotions knot so fast I can’t separate them. Anger. Confusion. Relief.
But not fear.
I came into this room afraid of him.
