Kiss Me in the Dark Anthology - Monica James Page 0,60
she’s too broken to be afraid—I’ve seen her nearly jolt out of her skin at the sound of a car backfiring on the TV, for fuck’s sake. She jumps, flinches and recoils a million times a day, which says a lot about what happened to her in her previous life, before she appeared at the warehouse like a stray cat looking for a new home. She’s been hurt. She’s been beaten. She’s suffered. She knows to be afraid around newcomers and strangers. It took her the longest time to even make fucking eye contact with Michael.
But she has never once flinched away from me.
I stare at the back of her head, feeling the weight of her slight frame leaning against me, and my pulse slows, as if this moment is important. As if I need to grasp hold of it as tight as possible and fucking savor it. Gingerly, not knowing why I do it, I raise my hand and reach out until my palm is mere millimeters away from the crown of her head, like I’m about to bless her or some shit. And then my fingers begin to tremble; the moment’s far too fucking tense. I yank my hand back just as Michael appears in the doorway.
If anyone else managed to sneak into the warehouse and roll up on me like this, I’d be livid. It’s my job to make sure that people don’t get a jump on me, but it’s par for the course with my right-hand man. I pay him extraordinarily well precisely because he can let himself into a building and sneak up on a motherfucker without so much as a whisper of sound. It’s one of his most valuable skills.
His head’s freshly shaved. His jaw is clean-shaven, too. Not even the faintest suggestion of stubble. As always, his tailored suit—dark blue today—is crisp and fresh as hell. With his light coffee and cinnamon skin and his electrifyingly blue eyes, he looks like he’s about to pose for a fucking GQ cover shoot, not babysit the very drunk, kind of mentally unstable, skinny blonde woman sitting on the cold bathroom tile in front of me.
He casually assesses the scene, taking in Lacey’s ruined state, and me, perched on the edge of the toilet lid, unsure what to do with my hands, before he smiles softly at us both. “All right,” he says. That’s all he says, but it’s enough. Lacey whimpers, finally noticing that he’s standing there, and she holds out her hands to him like a child. He helps her up and then lifts her gently her into his arms, cradling her to his chest as he carries her out of the bathroom.
“You’re good to go,” he tells me. “Don’t worry. I’ve got her.”
I watched Michael rip out a guy’s eyeball last week. Like, gouge his fingers into the socket and pull the thing right out of the fucker’s head. He once stomped on another guy’s head so hard that his skull cracked open like a rotten watermelon. Having witnessed such savagery from him, it’s jarring to see him handle his fragile cargo with such reverence. It’s been my experience that men capable of such violence aren’t capable of much else. Michael isn’t your average, run-of-the-mill gun for hire, though. His ability to make people hurt has always been outweighed by need to help when he can.
My phone buzzes in the pocket of my jeans—another unwelcome prod, reminding me that I’m on the clock and I’m running behind schedule. “I won’t be long,” I say grimly.
“Ice cream,” Lacey murmurs. “Chocolate, please.”
I huff out a stiff breath of laughter as I walk away, rushing toward the heavy steel sliding door that provides a barrier between the sanctuary of the warehouse and the Seattle shipping port beyond. No other girl in the world would ask me for fucking ice cream. No other girl in the world would use my knee as a fucking head rest. No other girl would wind my shoelace around her fingers, playing absentmindedly with it like they’ve forgotten what kind of creature I am. Namely, a dangerous one. A fucking lethal one.
The Camaro’s engine snarls as I tear away from the warehouse, heading for the I-5 that will carry me north, toward the coordinates that Charlie sent through at four this morning. The boss had a bad night last night. He must have, or he wouldn’t have sent me murder orders and coordinates when he did. I have no idea what he