Page 61 of The Shadows We Keep

TWENTY-FIVE

HARKIN

NFWMB - Hoizer

Ifeel it the moment the word leaves my lips against her sensitive flesh.

Home.

She took to it like a moth to a dancing flame. The fight in her enraptured eyes dissolves between us, her frame going slack beneath me. It’s no surprise she’d have a deep-seated need for a place to call home after being bounced around most of her life. As the quiet moment passes, I promise myself to make my place just that. A home for us.

When the small smile creeps upon my lips she follows the tilt with her eyes, her brows pinching tight with a fake pout. “Fine, you win,” she huffs, “but first, coffee.”

Strollingdown the street hand-in-hand feels foreign. I’d resigned myself to a life of solitude. To the loneliness that filled my veins after what’d happened to Alina. But the ice-cold sludge that kept me from caring for anyone else has to turned to magma around my little dark one.

Keira’s gate slows as we make it back toourapartment.

“I put all your stuff in the guest room. We didn’t bring over any of the furniture, but if you want it, I can add it to my storage unit.”

“None of it is important, let him have it for my missing rent.” Her eyes roll at that.

It doesn’t matter now that she’s under my roof. Marco tried to play big man with some fucked up mind game. He probably thought he could use it to manipulate her into finally giving him an ounce of attention. Well, his plan turned to shit and backfired right in his face.

I still had to make it right for my girl. There was no way, I was going to let him keep the cash. With a few clicks of my keys that money, plus a slight bit of interest for the shit he put her through went right back into her account.

She heads straight for her room. If I didn’t know it’d cause another fight between us, I would have moved her straight into my room. But I’d rather have her across the hall, than across the city. It won’t take long to draw her in closer. If history has a habit of repeating itself, it only took me a couple weeks to move her from across the street into my place. I give it a couple days before her body warms my sheets at night.

“You good?” I ask as she shuffles around, cataloging her things. We did a thorough sweep of her place. I didn’t want her to have any reason to go back. It was a nice little insight into my girl’s inner workings. I didn’t expect to find a collection of blades to rival mine in count, but no comparison in artisanship. I wonder where her fascination lies with them.

Her knees hit the ground softly before she leans forward to dig through an open box. Her round ass is on full display in those black skinny jeans that cling tightly to her fit frame.

“Yeah, I’ll unpack a bit, then probably shower and nap. Since an inconsiderate jerk woke me up way too early.” Her head whips in my direction over her shoulder with a saucy smile, but I’m already behind her. Her eyes flick up to mine and I tamper down the groan that rises in the back of my throat at the sight of her on her knees before me.

“Watch it, little one.” My fingers tangle in the short hairs at the nape of her neck, turning her chin further to me. “You ran out of here yesterday, leaving me no way to reach you or find you. But when I did as I always will,” I say through gritted teeth, my fingers tightening in her hair, her chest rises in quick succession as her breathing picks up, “you call me the inconsiderate one.”

Stepping around her shrinking form, I drop to a squat in front of her, meeting her blackened gaze. “You shouldn’t be able to sit for a week.” Her eyes drop to the floor, in shame or surrender, I’m not sure. I grip her chin and bring it back to me, “But I promised myself after our last scene together, we’d talk out everything before I doled out another punishment. Regardless, of how much you might deserve it.”

Standing abruptly, I stride for the door pausing as I step into the hall. “You’re the only thing I take into consideration these days,” I throw over my shoulder before escaping to my office and away from the maddening woman.

Leaving the office door open to keep an ear out, I stride to my desk and pull up short. A white envelope with no markings lies across my keyboard. Whipping out my phone, I hit two and send. It rings twice before James’s raspy voice cracks through the speaker.

“Yeah, boss?”

“Did you leave this envelope on my desk?”

“No, sir, I haven’t been in the apartment since we finished moving things over.”

I don’t respond, picking up a pencil and pushing the heavy envelope off the keys, the contents shift and peek from the opening.

“Harkin?” James calls over the phone. “Need me to come up and check it out?”

Tilting the envelope, the rest of the way, photos spill out onto the desktop and my heart stills.

“No, I’ve got it. Thanks, James,” I tell him, before hanging up.

Black and white photos of Keira litter my desk. One of her working at the airport counter, another of her at the cemetery, a grainy pixilated rare moment through her apartment window when she left the curtains open. My fists clench as the realization hits that I’m not the only one who’s had my eyes on her.

Signing into my computer, I pull up the security system for the apartment. Access shouldn’t have been possible without a notification directly to my phone. There was only a brief window of time from when I left to Keira and I getting back that someone could have been in here. I scroll back to the beginning of that time frame and start the recordings. Nothing on the internal camera, so I switch to the hidden external ones I have positioned at the building’s entrance and facing the sidewalk in front of the building.

---