Even though Jessica’s beautiful and tempting, I’ll avoid her.
Soon, bright and early, she’ll drive away from this town, from me. Not tomorrow morning, like she thinks. I send a couple inquiries out to his old contacts in Tanglewood to figure out exactly who the hell’s after her and where to find him. If that means fighting the criminal underworld I had once been part of, then that’s what I’ll do.
I’m going to protect her, but then she’ll leave.
There’s a twinge of regret inside me, of wondering what could have been, but it’s for the best. I’ll return to my solitary existence, and she’ll find some place new.
Some place she wouldn’t have to be afraid.
In the cell beside hers, I pull off my uniform shirt and my belt. Wearing only slacks and my sleeveless undershirt, I glare at the cot with distaste. Exactly like the one in her cell, it has a thin pad on metal slats. Worse, it was slim and short, so while Jessica fit perfectly, my feet fall off the end and my shoulder rests on the cold edge of the frame.
I close my eyes, attempting to sleep, but all I can see are Jessica’s lips, full and tempting. They parted, when she fell asleep in the back of his patrol car. Aside from the many things I want to do with that mouth, the pink intrigues me. What other parts of her share that color?
And now I’m hard. Great.
CHAPTER NINE
The young prince began to force his way through the thick wood. The stiff branches gave way for him, then closed again, allowing no one else into the castle.
Jessica
I wake up disoriented.
It’s pitch black, without even the red glow of her alarm clock or the blue stars from Ky’s turtle light. My back aches, my neck is sore. My eyes feel puffy like I’ve been crying. My lids are heavy, threatening to drag me back into slumber.
But something woke me, and I need to know what.
Is Ky awake? I don’t hear him crying.
Shifting slightly, my hands fumble along a rough sheet to a sharp metal edge. It comes back to me, then. Coming home from work at the diner, picking up Ky from his sitter. Then hearing the banging on the door.
Stefano had been drunk and angry. Which is business as usual for him.
I held Ky’s body against my chest, huddled in the closet, praying he would go away. And then he did, but it was too late. I knew that we wouldn’t be safe there. Whether he wanted me in his bed again or whether he was interested in raising Ky to be like him, we had to go.
As soon as Stefano left I packed what I could into the trunk and left.
The carseat sits beside the bed, Ky kicking in his sleep, his little brow wrinkled. I touch my hand to his forehead, and it smooths out beneath my fingers.
Forcing myself out of the cot, I kneel in front of Ky and check his diaper. Not too wet, but I don’t like to leave him there because it gives him a rash. So I lay out the plastic mat onto the cat and pull the sleeping baby from his seat.
He wakes only briefly as I change him, his eyes cloudy with sleep. His small hand captures a lock of my hair, tugging until I gently pry his fingers apart.
“No pulling,” I whisper with a small smile.
He gives me a mystified look, as if he’s trying to understand.
“I love you,” I tell him.
He gives me a toothless grin.
My heart gives a kick. I bend down and press my lips to his soft forehead. When I pull back his eyes flutter closed. Before I even have the new diaper fastened he’s sound asleep.
I could bring him into the cot with me, but the padded carseat is probably more comfortable. And definitely more secure, once I buckle him in.
A muffled sound comes through the wall.
That must have been what woke me. It came again, along with a skip in my heartbeat, that universal recognition of distress, of danger, the intrinsic pull to soothe I didn’t even know I had before I became a mother.
I glance back at Ky, uncertain. Should I leave him?
He sleeps peacefully, with that completely lost expression, as if he’s far away in some baby dreamworld with unlimited milk and rainbows. I pick up the heavy seat by its handle.
The barred door to my cell lay open, just slightly, like a parent might do for a child, in case she called out in her sleep or got scared. But it isn’t me or Ky crying out out for help.
I slip into the hallway, a little unsteady on my feet, following the restless sounds to the cell next door. The barred door is also ajar and I take that as permission to enter. I only want to check on him—whoever it was, though she knew it was Finn.
