Page 50 of Wicked Mafia Beast
"That's not part of the deal." Her voice drops, the words barely above a whisper. The playfulness drains from her face, replaced by a rawness she can't quite hide. Her fingers grip the edge of the mattress, knuckles pressing white against the sheets.
I stop a foot away from her. Close enough that the warmth of her bare legs radiates against mine. Close enough to count the freckles scattered across her nose in the moonlight.
"No." My voice comes out low, rough, the accent thickening around the single syllable. "It's not."
"Then what is it?" She stands, and the t-shirt falls against her thighs, and the distance between us shrinks to something dangerous. Her chin lifts, those blue eyes searching mine with an intensity that strips the air from my lungs. "Because if this is just about sex, you know the terms. One secret per encounter. We don't need midnight visits for that."
"This isn't about the deal. And it's not about sex."
"Then what, Kon?" Her voice cracks on my name, the fracture so small most people would miss it, but I hear it the way I hear everything about this woman. With my whole body. "Why are you standing in my room at midnight looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like I'm the only thing in this building you can't figure out."
The truth presses against my ribs, hot and sharp. Because she is. Because every equation I've solved, every enemy I've decoded, every locked room I've broken into, none of it prepared me for a woman who sleeps in my shirts and argues about encryption and makes me laugh for the first time in decades.
"Because you scare me." The admission scrapes out of my throat raw and unfinished. "And nothing scares me."
She goes still. Completely, utterly still, the way prey freezes when it realizes the predator isn't hunting. Her eyes search my face, that journalist's gaze stripping me layer by layer, looking for the lie, the angle, the hidden motive she's been trained to find in every powerful man who's ever spoken to her.
She doesn't find one. I watch the realization cross her features, the subtle widening of her eyes, the way her lips press together and then release on a shaky breath.
"You mean that." Not a question. A reckoning.
"Da."
"The most dangerous man in Chicago just told me I scare him." A breath of laughter escapes her, fragile and disbelieving. "And he doesn't even have a speech prepared."
"I don't make speeches."
"No. You make breakfasts and give one-word answers and look at me like..." She stops. Swallows. Her fingers twist together at her sides. "Never mind."
"Like what?"
She inhales deeply and then lets it out slow. "Like I matter." The words are barely audible. "Like I'm not just an asset or an obligation or a problem to be solved. Like I actually matter to you."
The confession strips the air from the room. Her jaw tightens the instant the words leave her mouth, her eyes widening slightly, regretting the honesty she just handed me.
"That is because you do." My voice is low. Rough. My accent bleeds through every syllable I utter in a way I can't control. "You matter," I say again because I like the way her lips part in awe. As if she's not used to people telling her the truth or how much she means to them.
"Don't say that." She steps back, putting distance between us, but the backs of her knees hit the mattress and she has nowhere to go. "Don't say things you can't take back, Kon."
Water glitters along the rim of her pretty eyes. Fuck. I've made her cry. I step into her personal space and tilt her head up to where our eyes connect.
"I don't say things I want to take back."
The tears don't fall. She holds them there, glittering on the edge, refusing to let them spill by sheer force of will. My hand is still beneath her chin, my thumb resting against the hinge of her jaw, and I can feel the tremor running through her body, thevibration of a woman fighting the instinct to run from the very thing she needs.
She doesn't run.
Instead, she reaches up. Her fingertips find the scar that bisects my eyebrow and trace its length, feather-light, from the bridge of my nose to my temple. It's the first time she's touched me gently without the sharp edge of a woman using her body as currency.
The tremor in her fingers travels through my skin and settles behind my sternum.
"You scare me," she whispers. Her eyes are wide, the pupils blown dark, swallowing the blue until only a thin ring remains.
"Good."
