Page 23 of Slay Bells Ring

At first, when I realize it’s Kane behind me, that it’s his arm wrapped around me, I tense up. I don’t know what to do. Having him comfort me while I was having a panic attack is one thing, but this? This is on its own level.

It’s intimate. It’s closeness for a whole different reason, and because of that it’s not something I’m used to.

Ignoring who the man is behind me and how he shaped my life, I never let a man hold onto me like this. I’ve hooked up, sure, taken what I wanted from guys when a certain itch overtook me that I just couldn’t scratch myself, but never this.

Never, ever this.

If it wasn’t Kane behind me, it’d be better. Hell, even with it being Kane behind me, it’s still nice. Feeling his warmth, the steadiness of his breathing behind me; it’s almost enough to make me close my eyes and drift back off to sleep.

Almostis the operative word there.

“Kane,” I say the man’s name as I try to shimmy his arm off me—but that thing is locked in place. His arm drapes over my side, curling up toward my chest, where he hugs me closer to him and keeps me there. He doesn’t respond, but I hear him groan a groggy sound behind me, so I say his name again. “Kane.”

He sounds absolutely delirious when he asks, “What?” Alas, as he asks the question, he pulls his arm tighter, which means my back presses even harder against his chest.

“It’s time to wake up.”

“No. Just a few more minutes.” He then does something I’m not expecting: that arm around me moves sohis hand can grab the sheet, and he pulls the sheet up and over both our heads, thereby blocking out the sunlight somewhat.

And then? Then that blasted arm wraps around me again, like it never left.

He’s awake. Awake and talking to me. A part of me immediately wonders if he’s aware of who he’s snuggled up against.

“Do you even know who I am?” I ask him in a whisper. Now that we’re underneath a blanket, it feels wrong to speak at a normal volume, for whatever reason.

Kane makes an affirmative sound, and then he nuzzles against the back of my head as he whispers, “Little killer.” His weird nickname for me, and it tells me he indeed is aware that it’s me he’s spooning fiercely.

Maybe he can shut off his mind and pretend everything is fine, but I can’t. The man who killed my parents thirteen years ago is behind me, cuddling with me, and someone tried to kill me last night. Nothing here is fine.

“Kane, we need to get up,” I say, and as I say it I start squirming. My intention is to worm my way out of his grasp and get up—everything is harder given the fact my feet hurt and I’m pinned between the sofa’s back and Kane’s wide body.

A few seconds pass, and then Kane’s arm moves. The next thing I know, his hand curls around my hip and stops me from squirming. His body shifts behind me. “If you keep wiggling that ass, we’re going to have another problem.”

The moment it dawns on me what he means, I stop squirming. Getting him hard is the last thing I want todo—it’s the last thing I want to feel poking me from behind, too. Out of all the things I imagined doing to this man when I finally got a hold of him, knowing the size of his dick wasn’t ever one of them.

In the end, I don’t say another word. At this point, if Kane wants to keep sleeping, there’s nothing I can do to stop him. He basically has me trapped. The sad thing is, if he was literally anybody else in the world, it wouldn’t be a bad place to be.

I don’t know how long we lay there, beneath the sheet Kane pulled over our heads, but it has to be at least another hour. I’m pretty certain I hear him drift off behind me; his breathing becomes more steady and the hand on my hip lessens in its intensity. That said, he doesn’t let me go. He keeps a good hold on me, even when he’s unconscious.

Laying there for so long with Kane, my hatred takes a back seat as my mind drifts off to last night. Everything that happened, everything that was said. He told me he came here to drink himself to death and then walk out of this cabin and never come back. That’s why he didn’t bring a phone; he was going to kill himself, so why bother bringing it?

And me… what I told him. It’s not something I knew before. It literally hit me right then. All these years I knew I might never come back once I went off on this mission, and I kept telling myself that I wasn’t afraid to die.

A lie. A lie that, regardless of how many times it was whispered, never turned true.

Kane wanted to die and I didn’t. How’s that for a joke?

As I lay there, I try not to think of last night’s realizations, but without filling my mind with those truths,all that’s left to think about is how Kane’s body doesn’t feel horrible behind me. If he didn’t kill my parents, if he wasn’t the villain in my origin story, I wouldn’t mind this. It’s actually kind of nice.

That is not something I will ever admit out loud.

After a long while, Kane eventually stirs once more—and this time he gets up. I don’t move right away. I let him pull his hand off me and roll to his other side, hear him groan as he gets off the sofa bed. I’m pretty sure he mutters something under his breath about how he’s too old to be sleeping on one of those damned things, thedamned thingsbeing the sofa bed.

Hey, I might be twenty-three, but the sofa bed doesn’t help my back out, either.

I’m slow to sit up and stretch while Kane digs through my food and grabs us both a protein bar along with some water. He tosses mine my way and then sits down on the chair to eat and drink his. The room is a little cold, the fire nothing but embers, but the man is more focused on refueling.

I take a sip of water from the bottle first, and as I do so, I watch Kane. He practically stuffs the whole bar into his mouth and then chews, nothing elegant or mannerly about him. Not that there should be; the man is an assassin. To say he’s rough around the edges would be an understatement.

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