I get back to the motel, Killian is already there, waiting for me.
24
Killian
I meant to head back to Boston straight from the restaurant, but as soon as I got into the car, I realized I couldn’t.
I still have one night left.
I’m taking it.
Juliet unlocks the door to her motel room, pausing when she sees me standing beside the bed. She exhales a quiet breath, then shuts the door behind her. She doesn’t bother to ask how I got in.
When she turns back to me, her eyes are shining with emotion. “You can’t expect me to throw away my whole life for you.”
“Yet you expect it of me,” I say gruffly.
Biting her lip, she looks down at her shoes. She’s wearing another one of those gauzy sleeveless summer dresses that look so good on her. That look so goddamn good as I tear them off.
“I…” She stops, takes a breath, and starts again, still looking at her feet. “I’m not trying to be argumentative. Or mean. Or unfair.” She glances up at me, her brows drawn together. “But there’s so much about you that doesn’t make sense.”
I take a step toward her, because I can’t stand not to touch her for one second more. My hands are itching to feel her skin. “I said I’d tell you everything.”
That makes her eyes flash. “But I have to trust you first.”
“Aye.”
She’s getting angrier. I can see her trying not to, but she can’t help it. The blood is already rising in her cheeks.
“Why do I have to go first? Why can’t you trust me and tell me everything?”
“Because there are too many lives at stake to take that risk.”
That stops her short. But not for long. She steps toward me, insisting, “What does that mean?”
I shake my head sharply. It pisses her off.
She steps closer. “Your delivery boy, Diego. He said something that’s been bothering me.”
Damn Diego and his big mouth.
“He said what you were doing was important work,” she goes on when I don’t say anything. “I thought it was ridiculous at the time, that he was just misguided, looking up to the biggest bad guy he knows like some kind of father figure. Like something to aspire to be. The worst of the worst. King of criminals.
“But then on the walk back here I remembered how you said you erased my FBI file. That you erased it, not someone else. Which means you have access to the FBI’s database. Which—taken with your ability to manipulate government satellites, and find people like they’re needles in a haystack, and run the kind of background checks that can tell you how I like my fucking eggs, is very, very interesting, to say the least.”
She walks closer and closer until she stops in front of me and stares up into my face. Her voice drops. Her eyes burn like she’s on fire.
“And then you said you were helping people, too. ‘Me fucking, too,’ you said, all angry and proud, like I’d insulted you. Which, of course, makes no sense. How can the head of the Irish mafia possibly be helping people when it’s in the job description to lie, cheat, and kill?”
She waits for an answer. I have to curl my hands to fists at my side not to reach for her. Not to crush my mouth to hers and rip off her dress and bury myself inside her.
Not to force her to be mine.
She has to offer that willingly.
“And then there’s the matter of your name,” she whispers, staring into my eyes. “Killian. A name, as far as I can tell, that no one else knows you by but me. To the whole world, you’re Liam Black, ruthless gangster extraordinaire, but you asked me to call you Killian. You said it was your real name. Strangely enough, I believe you.”
She’s so close I can smell her skin. Feel her body heat. See the pulse pounding in the hollow of her throat.
We stare at each other in superheated silence, only inches apart, until she demands, “Tell me what the big mystery is, gangster.”
I fire back, “Tell me you’re in love with me.”
Her cheeks turn scarlet. She grinds her back teeth together. “Tell me how you found out who my father is. Who I am.”
“Tell me you’re mine and mean it.”
She’s looking at me like she wants so badly to smash in my skull with a blunt object. “Tell me what you meant by there are too many lives at stake for you to trust me