Page 45 of Savage Heart

He plays along, nodding his head like he’s genuinely considering my theory. Knitting his eyebrows, he hums and then says, “Sounds like a demotion to me, so no more cute. I’ll have to come up with another way to describe you smiling in your sleep.”

With a shrug, I tease, “Well, charming is always nice. I think I’d like to be thought of as charming. I can’t say I ever have been that, but I could live with charming.”

Alaric leans forward to kiss me sweetly on the lips while his hand tugs at the sheet I’m holding just below my collarbone. “Charming it is then.”

His dark eyes gaze into mine when he pulls away from our kiss, and I can’t believe how beautiful he is first thing in the morning. I likely look like someone took a hand mixer to my hair, but he’s perfect, as always.

“You know, you have to tell me the secret of how you wake up looking pretty much the same as when you went to bed.”

Sitting back against the headboard, he runs his hand over the top of his head. “No idea. It’s not like I have a lot of hair to do much while I sleep, though, so that’s probably it.”

Instinctively, I pat my hair against my head, sure it’s a disaster. “As opposed to me, who has this mess.”

He reaches out to gently touch the ends of my hair hanging down over my breasts and smiles. “I think your hair looks like this more because of the sex we had last night than from sleeping, Sienna. You barely move all night once you close your eyes.”

“How would you know since you were asleep?” I ask with a chuckle.

“I sleep very lightly. I wake up a bunch of times during the night, so I see you sleeping. Trust me. You sleep like a rock.”

“You must be exhausted all the time then. I know I would be if I woke up during the night.”

“Not usually,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m used to it. I think I’ve always been that way. Some people barely fall asleep, while others sleep like the dead.”

His smile lights up his face as he says that, and I know he’s teasing me. “Like the dead? Well, I guess you’d be the one to know about that.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I regret them. Never before have I ever said anything against what Alaric does for a living. I know what he is, and I accept that.

At least I thought I did.

He doesn’t react immediately to my offhand comment, but slowly I see a look of understanding fill his eyes. I want to apologize, to say I didn’t mean anything by that and I have no idea why those words even entered my head.

But I don’t get the chance to before he silently slips out of bed, leaving me sitting alone and missing him.

He disappears into the bathroom while I beat myself up over being so insensitive. Alaric is a killer. He’s never pretended to be anything but what he is. The idea that I should be making value judgments about what he does after he rescued me from my brother and Lucius Angeloni is offensive, to say the least.

I owe Alaric my life more than once. I have no right to judge him.

When he returns to the hotel room, he’s still naked, so I lift the sheet up to welcome him back to bed. He shakes his head, though, and grabs his pants off the chair near the balcony doors.

“We need to make some decisions today, Sienna. We need to get some breakfast and then deal with the problems at hand.”

Unsure what he means, I stare across the room at him as I wait for him to explain. When he doesn’t, as he slips his shoes on, I ask, “What do you mean? What problems?”

Seated on the dark blue chair that matches the navy-blue curtains keeping the sun out, he lifts his head and answers, “The problem of your brother. That has to be handled. In fact, I’d say they all need to be dealt with. Nip any issues in the bud before they get to be something.”

My brother? I have no love for Matteo, or any of my other brothers for that matter, but is he talking about what I think he is?

“What are you saying?” I ask as my hands begin to tremble.

Alaric stands up and walks over toward the closet. Grabbing a white dress shirt, he slides into it, leaving it hanging open as he moves across the room toward me again. “I’m saying you’ll never be safe as long as your brother’s alive.”

Guilt over my father’s death courses through me, making what Alaric’s saying difficult to hear. I know why he did it, but now that I’ve found out the truth about who ordered the hit on me that day, I can’t help but wonder if I should have found some way to keep Alaric from doing his job when it came to my father.

I know it’s silly to think that since I didn’t know then and neither did Alaric, but I can’t help but feel I’m to blame for my father’s untimely death. I shouldn’t give a damn what happens to Matteo or any of my brothers. It was him who sent that man to kill me, that son of a bitch. And then he compounded his crimes against me by kidnapping me from my home and dragging me back here to marry that fuck Lucius.

Still, the idea of simply killing the rest of my family feels wrong.

When I don’t say anything, Alaric walks over to me and stands next to the bed, staring down into my eyes like he doesn’t understand my silence or lack of enthusiasm for what he’s implying. “What’s wrong?”

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