Page 78 of Irrevocably

I felt safe as he did it. So safe. His big muscular body was right there, like a wall, providing me with protection and support, and all I wanted to do was to stay there.

I close my eyes, remembering, warmth suffusing me, and I know it’s not the painkillers this time. It’s him. It’s finally realising what matters, and it’s him.

It’s stupid and it’s fucked up, because I barely know anything about him apart from him being involved in the crime world somehow and completely comfortable with killing people. He’s also so far from any man I’d ever thought I’d want – the opposite, even – yet he’s touched a part of my soul, the dark part. The hot, angry part, the part that likes pain and is tired of being everyone’s good, quiet girl. His jagged edges match mine, and I don’t want to let him go. I can’t.

Perhaps that’s why I feel so peaceful. I’m surrendering to that warmth inside me, that powerful, deep hot thing that winds through me. That blazed into being the moment he stepped from the shadows in the factory, and I knew he was here for me. I can’t fight it. I can’t pretend I don’t feel it. All I can do is embrace it, even though I have no idea how it’s going to impact the rest of my life.

I hear footsteps, so I open my eyes and turn to the doorway, expecting to see Luc coming back. But the doorway is empty, and all I can hear is the sound of his fading footsteps.

The warmth inside me begins to dissipate. Where’s he going? What happened with that phone call? Do I sit here and wait for him to come back, or do I go and find him?

I don’t want to wait, so I get up from the couch and follow the sound of his footsteps, going down another hallway, then some stairs to another level of the house. At the far end of one hall, I see him open a door then step through, so I go after him.

He’s left the door open when I get there and inside is a small room dominated by a huge desk, with walls of TV monitors, banks of controls and a few keyboards. The monitors display views of the surrounds, fences and gates and other small buildings, which are obviously part of the property.

It’s a control room, controlling a shit-ton of security, which I suppose if you live in the world Lucien lives in, you’d need.

He’s leaning over the desk, pushing some buttons and on one of the monitors, I see the front gates guarding the driveway open.

“Are we going somewhere?” I ask, leaning against the doorframe.

He must have heard me coming, because he doesn’t startle. Instead, he straightens, staring at the screens. He doesn’t look at me once. His tall figure is very still and he’s radiating tension, and something is very wrong.

My heart clenches tight. I open my mouth to ask him what happened with the phone call, but before I can speak, he says, “The Hound. I need his cell number. Give it to me.” He reaches into his pocket and gets out his phone, but not the one he was using before.

“Luc,” I say quietly. “What’s⁠—”

“The number.” His voice is an icy blade, cutting through mine like a knife through flesh.

My heart clenches tighter. Yes, something is definitely wrong. The chill coming from him is glacier-cold and it almost freezes the breath in my lungs. Still, I manage to rattle off Wolf’s number for him, then ask, “Are you okay?”

He says nothing, not even looking at me as he enters the number into his phone before lifting it to his ear. “She’s here,” he says curtly, and I realise with a jolt that he’s talking to Wolf about me. “I’ve treated her hand and she’s safe. But you need to come and get her. Now.” He disconnects the call immediately.

Foreboding grips me, the happy warmth of the painkillers fading. “Luc,” I say, moving into the room. “What’s happening?”

He finally turns. His face is completely unreadable. He looks like an angel carved from marble, achingly beautiful but so cold, so hard. There’s no fire in his eyes, no heat at all, only dead ashes.

The foreboding squeezes my heart, squeezes my throat, turns my blood to ice. “Luc,” I say hoarsely, taking a step toward him, reaching out as if I can bridge the gap I sense widening between us.

He doesn’t move. He only glances down at my extended hand as if he doesn’t know what it is or what I’m doing with it, then looks at me with those cold, dead eyes. “The Hound is coming for you,” he says, his voice a sheet of ice. “You have to go with him.”

I blink, a hundred questions spinning in my head that I know I’m not going to get answers to, not when he’s like this. I try a smile. “Oh? Are you guys friends now or something?”

He doesn’t smile back. It’s as if he’s forgotten how. “He’ll protect you.”

I swallow. “Protect me? What?”

“You can’t stay here, Astrid,” Lucien says coldly. “People are coming and you shouldn’t be here when they do.”

I’m chilled now, colder than I was when he brought me here, that terrible sense of foreboding getting stronger and stronger. “What about you?” I force out. “Where will you go?”

“Nowhere,” he says, the words harder than steel. “That wasn’t a request.”

He’s like stone now, towering over me, that awful blank nothingness in his eyes, and all I can think of to say is, “No. I want to stay with you.”

“No.” There’s no give in the word, it’s as stony and flat and empty as he is. “You have to leave.”

But I can’t. I don’t want to leave him, not when something horrible has happened and he won’t tell me what it is. So, I take another step toward him, standing in front of the door, blocking his exit. “What was that phone call about?” I ask. “Luc, please tell me what happened.”