Page 67 of Reaper's Desire

"I'm just trying to protect you. But yes. It's hard enough keeping you alive until I can untangle this mess, if I even can… I can't deal with the fear that they'll do to you what they did to Katya."

I blink at him. "Who's Katya?"

Julian's jaw clenches, and he looks as if he wishes he hadn't said it, but he blows out a sharp breath and explains anyway. "Someone I used to know. Someone who I had a fling with, once." He shakes his head. "They sent me a video of her being tortured and killed. To prove a point. To show me what happens to people I care about. And I didn't even really care that much about her. She was a hook-up. A way to pass some time while I was on a business trip, and it was the same for her. We weren't… anything to each other. But we fucked, and shared a bed for a little while, and that was enough to damn her." He looks at me."What we did on that balcony… someone could have seen. Do you understand that?"

For a moment, all I feel is a stupid, hot jealousy at the thought of him tangled up in some other woman's arms. The nameKatyamakes me think of some gorgeous Russian blonde, willowy and graceful, probably great in bed if he stuck around longer than one night. But I feel almost instant guilt for that, because she'sdead. Tortured to death, according to Julian, and the horror of it crashes over me. I think about the video he must have watched, the woman he knew being hurt, being killed, all to send him a message. And I understand, suddenly, why he's been so desperate to push me away.

"Julian—" I take another step toward him, but he moves back.

"Don't." His voice is rough and tight. "Don't try to make this into something it's not. I'm keeping you alive because it's the right thing to do. That's all."

"That's bullshit, and you know it." The anger is back now, mixing with the hurt and the fear. "You care about me. You just said so. And I—" I stop myself, the words catching in my throat.

"You what?" His eyes lock on mine. I see the muscle in his jaw leap, see his hands flex. He wants to know what I'm going to say. He can lie and deflect and fight this all he wants, but he cares about me, he wants me, and he wants to know, deep down, that I feel the same way.

And I could say it. I could tell him that I care about him too, that somewhere between Ibiza and here, I started falling for him. I could say that his rejection hurts so much because he matters to me in a way no one else ever has, and it would be the absolute truth.

But the words won't come. There's a body on the floor, blood soaking into the carpet, and the reality of what just almost happened is smothering me. I almost died tonight. I walked intoa bar and picked up a man who was sent to kill me, and if Julian hadn't burst through that door when he did, I would be dead right now.

My legs give out, and I sink back down onto the bed, my hands shaking, my breath coming in short gasps. "I almost—" I can't finish the sentence. I could have died. I almost died.

And it would have been my own fault.

17

JULIAN

This is too fucking much.

The terror that hit me when I woke up and found her gone, when I realized she'd slipped out while I was sleeping and she was out there alone and unprotected, is still coursing through my veins like poison.

And I was sleeping too fucking hard. I woke up because I heard a sound outside—the slip of a foot on a fire escape. The asshole wouldn't have gotten that far if I'd been as alert as I normally am. I sleep like a soldier usually, but tonight I'm so fucking worn down that death got as close as the window before I woke up and saw him see me, sitting up on the couch.

He didn't get far. I caught him down the alley and kept him alive just long enough to find out that he was after me, and not Isabelle. “There's plenty more,” he'd choked out, just before he died. “You're a dead man, Reaper.”

That's almost certainly true. But I've barely thought about it since then. Instead, all I could think about was that when I got back inside and went to check on Isabelle, she wasn't in her room.

Instead, she was out nearly getting herself fucking killed.

I caught up to them just in time to see her going into the hotel with him. The goddamn old elevator was so slow I had time to look him up while I was following her to put a stop to whatever bullshit she'd gotten herself into, whether it was actually her going back to a hotel with a guy from a bar, or something worse.

It was something worse. Tomáš Novak. A Czech freelancer, mid-tier skill level, known for making hits look like accidents or overdoses. He would have taken her back to his room, fucked her, and then strangled her. Probably would have made it look like autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong. The police would have written it off as a tragic accident involving a young woman who liked rough sex.

She would have been dead within the hour.

I want to blame it all on her recklessness, but I know part of it was my cruelty in pushing her away too. I tried to make things better, scared out of my mind after the video of Katya, and instead, it made it worse.

I'm not cut out for this. For feelings, for navigating whatever this is between us, hell, for trying to keep her alive. I'm furious at her for leaving, furious at her for touching another man. I'm glad he's dead after he put his hands on her, saw her naked. I wish I'd had time to cut out his eyeballs before I fucking killed him.

The anger and fear, and frustration are vibrating through me, on the verge of exploding.

"Julian." Her voice is small behind me. "Are you?—"

"Don't." I bite out the word. "Don't ask me if I'm okay."

Her voice tightens instantly. "Fine."

I turn around to face her. She looks terrified, her hair a messy halo around her head, still naked on the bed with her arms wrapped around herself. I want to hold her, and I want to fuck her, and I want to shake her until her teeth clack together for what she did tonight. There are too many conflicting feelings rattling around inside my chest, and I don't know what to dowith any of them. "Do you have any idea what almost happened? Do you have any fucking idea?"