Page 55 of Irrevocably

So, I let myself study her, mesmerised by her long lashes and how they flutter every so often as if she’s trying to open her eyes, but doesn’t. She’s so relaxed and so warm, and I realise with a sudden jolt, that she’s fallen asleep in my arms.

My chest tightens. I’m a stone-cold killer that she knows nothing about, yet she’s fallen asleep on me as if I’m safe. As if she trusts me. I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine trusting another person so implicitly that you’d allow yourself to be unconscious in their presence.

I scan her sleeping face. Is this what trust looks like? Her in my arms, fast asleep? She shouldn’t trust me. I’m not safe. I’m still planning on using her to get information out of her friend and I wonder if she’s thought of that. Perhaps she has, considering she’s smart. Perhaps she has and doesn’t care.

She sighs and shifts like a cat getting more comfortable, and I don’t want to move in case I wake her. I like her lying on me, so I sit there, indulging myself by looking at her face and studying its contours in a way I can’t do when she’s awake.

She looks so very young, her skin smooth and clear. Her mouth is full and red from my kisses, especially her bottom lip, and her chin is sharp and determined. She has a tiny white scar near her top lip, a delicate little half-moon. Everything about her is delicate. You’d never know that not ten minutes earlier, she was lying beneath me as I slammed into her, her nails scratching my back like a lioness on heat.

I push a lock of hair from her forehead and allow myself to imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like to actually have someone. Someone to kiss and to hold. Someone I could go to sleep with every night and wake up with every morning. I can’t imagine it, though, because it’s not something I’ve ever had, nor ever will. Normal relationships are for other people, not for me.

The fire burns down and I stare into the flames for far too long. A chill settles over the room, and I know I’m going to have to move to keep things warm. So, I force myself to end the moment, to ease her from my lap and settle her on the couch still wrapped in her blanket, then I pull on my jeans, before crouching before the fire to add some more wood from the stack beside the hearth.

The safe house is stocked with everything we might need. Wood and nonperishable food items in the pantry. Spare ammo and a few guns in a safe in a shed out the back. Batteries and candles. Everything a good safe house or doomsday bunker needs.

I start thinking of practical matters, such as what food to prepare, because she’ll probably be hungry when she wakes up, and God knows I am, especially after our exertions.

I throw one last log into the fire and then rise to my feet, turning in the direction of the kitchen and glancing at Sleeping Beauty on the couch.

She’s no longer sleeping, though. She’s awake, her eyes wide and dark as she watches me, the flames of the fire reflected in her gaze.

Electricity moves over my skin, a hard jolt that knocks loose something inside me. But I don’t know what it is or what it means so I ignore it.

“Disappointing,” I say. “I didn’t even get to kiss you awake.”

She smiles, like the smile she gave me in the bathroom, and the electricity jolts me even harder. Again, I ignore it.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to go to sleep.” Her voice is husky, and I have an insane urge to pull her into my arms and tell her to go back to sleep, that I’ll be her pillow.

But no. The moment for that has passed.

“Don’t apologise,” I say. “You earned the nap.”

Her smile deepens and her cheeks flush at the reminder, and for a second that’s all I can see. Her sitting on the couch, naked and wrapped in a blanket, smiling at me.

The silence lengthens, and along with the electricity, something heavy and portentous hangs in the air. And slowly it comes to me that this isn’t just a fuck. It’s not even two. It’s more than physical. Somehow, she’s gotten under my skin, and now I’m wrapping her in blankets, wanting to make her food, wanting to make her smile…

She’s a liability now. She’s your weakness.

Fuck.

“Are you hungry?” The question is brusque as I rise to my feet. “I was going to check out the pantry and see what there is to eat.”

“Oh, uh … sure,” she says, her smile fading at my curt tone. “That would be great.”

It feels as if the sun has gone behind a cloud, leaving everything darker and colder, and she must feel it, too, because she says, “Lucien? Did I … say something wrong?”

I should tell her that no, of course she didn’t say anything wrong, that the wrongness is me, that I’m the issue, but I don’t.

“I’ll get us some dinner,” I say, then turn and head into the kitchen without a word.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

ASTRID

Lucien vanishes through a doorway down one end of the room, while I sit on the couch feeling suddenly cold.

I can’t believe I went to sleep on him, but after that last orgasm, I was so warm and relaxed and sated, that when he wrapped me up in a blanket and sat me in his lap on the couch, a wave of tiredness crept up on me. His chest was hot and his arms were around me, and I could hear his heartbeat. That steady beat along with the crackle of the flames in the hearth was so soothing and I just…