Page 12 of Twisted Enemy
She’s mine.
I don’t know how much time passes before my chest recognizes the weight of her. I don’t know how long we lie there before my fingers realize they’re stroking the soft tangle of her hair. I don’t know whether it’s minutes or hours or days before my lips remember how to form any word butKate.
“I love you,” I finally say once I can string the thought together.
Three words. Simpler than any line of code I’ve ever written. More straightforward than any con I ever ran for Shannon.
But they’re words I’ve never said to anyone before. Not to Shannon, the monster who raised me. Not to Megan, the sister I’ll never trust again. Not to any of the women I’ve hired, the ones I’ve used like tissues.
Kate stiffens for just a heartbeat, a there-and-gone shudder I almost miss. For one shredded second, I think she’ll say it back.
Of course she doesn’t.
She’s an Irish mob princess who’s been treated like currency from the moment she was born. Her father gave her to me so he could command my loyalty. She’s a wild creature, an unbound soul; her devotion is the only power she controls.
I want to believe I’ve earned that devotion. I bought it by giving her superuser status over her own computer network in my home, by agreeing to work for Tarasov so he doesn’t shred her reputation, by giving her four orgasms just now and the promise of hundreds more.
But deep in my heart, I know Kate isn’t mine.
Not that way.
Not yet.
And I don’t know if she ever will be.
5
KATE
Ilove you.
It’s been a full hour since he said it—not when he was pumping away, when his cock would have made him say anything to guarantee a release, but after. He said it when we’d been lying there for long enough that our hearts stopped pounding. Our lungs stopped heaving. His feckin’ brain was back online.
I don’t know what I was supposed to do with that. Every book and movie in the world says I should’ve said it back. But words are important. They have meaning. I wouldn’t say it just because he put a ring on my finger. Just because he’s given me the most satisfying orgasms of my life. Because he’s agreed to Tarasov’s terms to protect me.
I couldn’t.
So I lay across his chest for a few minutes more. I waited to see if he meant to press his point, if he’d force a feckin’conversation.When he didn’t, I collected my clothes and headed upstairs for a shower. As I rinsed the shampoo from my hair, I told myself I did one thing right. I asked my Dom for what I needed.
I didn’t fucking cut.
Now, the sun is warm on my face as I step toward the scanner at the gate. I let the green lasers scan my retina. I swallow hard when I settle my palm on the screen to complete the security scan. For just a moment, my belly twists, and puke paints the back of my throat.
This is how I opened the gate this morning. My wrist is still an angry red from Pyotr Tarasov’s ziptie. An alarm deep in my brain says I should never be trusted with the biometrics again. Tarasov might be waiting outside. The Bad Men could take me back to the dark room again.
But I’m not eight years old anymore. I can’t spend the rest of my life locked behind a twenty-foot brick wall. I step through the gate. No monsters wait on the other side.
It’s only as I look back from the pavement that I see Cole framed by the window in his ground-floor office. He’s watching me, steadily, earnestly. He nods once as the gate starts to whisper closed.
Setting my jaw, I force myself to cross the street and the pavement on the other side. I open the less imposing gate there, the one that’s worked with a simple key. And then I enter the carriage house beside the home Lars Nilsson shares with his wife Anna, calling out, “Hello?”
My knees turn watery when Granny calls from the bedroom: “We’re back here.”
A less observant person would say my grandmother looks well today. She’s sitting in an armchair instead of her mechanized hospital bed. She’s wearing trousers and a deepgreen cashmere jumper. Her snowy hair gleams in the sunshine, bouncy from a recent wash.
But I see the metal cylinder on the table by her right hand, a rescue inhaler she only uses as a last resort. I note the knitting piled on her lap, needles shoved into a ball of yarn betraying the fact that she wasn’t actually working on her shawl. I catch the slight frown on Mrs. Watson's lips as she emerges from the jacks, a faint cast of worry she quickly replaces with a professional smile.
“Good morning, Kate,” the nurse says briskly. “Perfect timing. You can keep your grandmother company while I make her some lunch.”
