Page 13 of The Rook’s Obsession

Obviously, I didn’t. But I don’t think I fought harder on the floor than I fought myself to keep my hands off her in bed.

Morning light is pushing through the curtains now. It doesn’t seem like Prague believes in sunshine, but that’s fine. I’m not in the mood for it, anyway. I have her with me, but I don’t have her back. Not yet.

Will I ever?

I have to sit up. Lying here, thinking about that question isn’t helping anything. When I look over at her, I find her watching me. She was awake, but then I knew that. How? Because she quieted down, went still. She doesn’t know what a restless sleeper she is, I guess.

It means there’s no trace of sleepiness as she tracks me with those sharp eyes of hers. She’s watching me the way a cat watches a bird. Patient. Ready to move the second an opportunity shows itself.

“Morning,” I murmur, running a hand through my hair.

No response. She settles for watching.

“We need to get moving. The jet will be ready for us soon.” I stand and test my weight on my left leg. The bleeding stopped overnight, though it’s stiff and sore. “First things first. We need to shower.” I’ll have to tape over the stitches to keep them dry, but this isn’t my first rodeo.

It’s unnerving, the way she stares at me almost without blinking when I pull the handcuff key from my pocket and round the bed. Her only reaction comes when I reach for her wrist, and she tenses. Like a spring being compressed. She doesn’t fight me when I unlock the cuff, because why would she stop me? The red mark on her wrist is darker now, a thin band of irritated skin. I’ll have to find some kind of cream or balm for it. Granted, she’d probably hurl it at my head, but the thought is there.

She watches me with those clear green eyes as she rubs her wrist. Once again, she says nothing, sitting up smoothly, fluidly. I can’t shake the feeling of being studied. What’s going on in that head of hers? I’m sure I’ll find out before long.

“Come on,” I urge, nodding toward the bathroom. “We both need to wash up.”

“I’ll take a shower by myself,” she murmurs from the edge of the bed.

“You forfeited your privacy last night.” My vision is still slightly blurry, though I wouldn’t admit it for anything. She doesn’t need to know she’s got an advantage.

“Then wait for me to get in and stand in the bathroom for all I care.”

“This isn’t a negotiation.” When she only stares at me, I decide to hit below the belt. “It’s not like I’ve never seen you naked before.”

Her jaw tightens. Something brief and brutal flickers behind her eyes before she can smother it. She wasn’t expecting to hear that, which means part of her is still adjusting to the idea that I might actually know her. That this isn’t a con. Some stubborn part of me is determined to make her understand, which is why I add, “You have a birthmark on your hip. Shaped like a crescent moon. You used to hate it, but I always thought it was—” I stop, because this isn’t the time. “The point is, I’ve seen it.”

The surprise sharpens now. She covers it fast, the way she covers everything, but she isn’t fast enough. A birthmark isn’t something available in a file. It’s not something the Russos would’ve told me about. It’s the kind of detail that only comes from intimacy, and she understands that.

She never confirms or denies the birthmark. She stands from the bed without another word, rolls her head from one side to the other, and walks to the bathroom without looking at me.

I follow.

There’s barely enough room for one person in this bathroom, let alone two. She stands by the sink and looks at me in the mirror, wearing an unreadable expression. Then, without a word, she pulls her black sweater over her head.

She’s not shy or hesitant. She strips the way someone strips when they don’t attach any meaning to nudity: efficiently, like removing a layer of equipment. Sweater first, then the tank top underneath. She reaches for the button on her pants.

And I see the scars.

They start on her upper arm, just below her shoulder. Mottled, textured skin. It stretches down to her elbow—an old scar, healed but permanent. The explosion. I wondered about that without letting myself push too close to the question, because it would mean having to consider just how badly she was injured. How close she came to truly being killed. Landing in the water was probably the best thing that could have happened to her, but the damage was done.

Damage that’s further revealed when she pushes her black pants down to her ankles. Scarring down her hip, along her outer thigh, almost reaching her knee. Not disfiguring, but there. The skin is tighter, slightly discolored. Like a map of trauma, her body has carried for more than a decade.

She catches me looking, and something flickers across her face. The closest thing to self-consciousness I’ve seen from her yet. She angles her body slightly, turning the scarred side away from me. A subtle move, almost unconscious. The kind that comes from years of doing it without thinking.

She doesn’t want me to see.

My chest aches at that. Not because the scars bother me. They don’t. They’re evidence that she survived something that should’ve killed her. If anything, they make me want to put my hands on every inch of damaged skin to show her none of it changes a single goddamn thing.

What aches is knowing they bother her. Because this is a woman who stares down the barrel of a gun without flinching, and kills with the same ease most people use to order coffee, and she has a wound that isn’t physical. Somewhere underneath the training and the cold professionalism, the scars make her feel something she doesn’t want to feel.

I don’t comment or stare. I pull my own shirt off and step out of my pants, then turn on the water for her to step into the tub while I apply more tape over the gauze covering my stitches.

When I look up, I notice something has changed.