Page 75 of Little Blue

If I didn’t adore the woman as I do, I think right now, I could kill her.

What had she been thinking, telling Irelynn of my Bratva heritage? I’d been making progress. Good fucking progress. Now?

Fuck, now I’m back to square one.

The way she’d looked at me in the kitchen—the fear—it had been raw and ugly. The acrid taste of it still lingers on my tongue. And when she closed her eyes, shutting me out, I’d felt something snap inside her.

I’d felt it snap between us.

All the land I’d covered in my trek to claim her heart and soul for my own fell out from under my feet, the earth scorched by a dark and ugly truth. I am more than the monster she thought I was.

I am more than the demon that haunts and hunts her.

I am the devil who controls all the demons. I’m the darkness that spreads and consumes, and I will consume her.

But I will never harm her. I may be a devil, born of sin and shadow, but for her I want to be more. For her, and her alone, I will be more.

She’s stopped trembling again, but I’m not sure how long that will last. I’ve seen men far bigger than her collapse in panic. Sometimes it’s a quick overtaking. Sometimes it can last days. Sometimes, a truly bad attack, can linger for years.

I’ll love her no matter.

Her soul calls to mine, a siren song I am powerless to ignore. One day, she might understand the depths I feel for her. One day she might look beyond the impossibility of it and recognize that I’m a rare breed. A man who simply knows that he’s found his woman. The one crafted for him, and him alone.

Like father, like son.

Until then, I’ll just have to keep showing her.

Rising, I set her on the seat in the shower under the spray of hot water. With her wary eyes on me, I set to stripping from my own sopping clothing. She worries her bottom lip and even though she’s still in her underwear, she does her best to curl into herself. To hide herself from me.

I feel my jaw harden even as I remind myself that sometimes scorched earth yields better, more lush regrowth.

We can move on from this. The beating of my heart depends on it.

Stripped bare, her lovely blue eyes on me, I step from the shower. Even as I close her inside the glass and stone, she watches me as though she believes that at any moment, I’ll decide to end her life.

It—it hurts.

I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone with the power to wound me with just a look. Until her.

“I’ll be back,” I tell her as gently as I can. Then I walk from the bathroom.

I slide into a pair of black pyjama pants before I set to starting the fire in the fireplace. With a blanket folded over my arm, I re-enter the bathroom to find her as I left her.

Her black cat sits on the toilet seat where he planted his nosey self when I first brought her in here. Judgement flares in his yellow eyes, and I’m confident, even though he’s a cat and it’s impossible, he’s telling me to fix this. To fix her.

Even crazier, I want to vow to him that I will.

I nearly laugh. As it is, I do smirk.

My Little Blue is right when she says I’m crazy. The levels of insanity I would fall to for her is damn near shameful.

I shut off the water and hold my hand to her, feeling a quick lash of hope when she takes it. She lets me remove her sopping underwear and towel her down without protest, but she begins to shiver again. Still, when she does it, there is a clarity to her eyes that tells me it’s not from panic, but because she’s cold.

Wrapping her in the blanket, I lift her into my arms again. Then I take her to the chair by the fireplace. I settle into it with her in my lap, holding her close. She is tense for long minutes before she settles against me.

My heart swells when she does.

Finally, after very long minutes where nothing but the crackle of wood in the fireplace sounds, she speaks, “Bratva is like—another word for mafia, right?” Her voice is so small, dripping with fear.

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