Page 154 of Cruel Lies

Maybe eventually, he’d learn that not everything needed a plan.

"Well, Harper, that leaves just you and me," I pointed out, grinning like I was the snake that swallowed the mouse. "And I have something I wanna show you."

I stood so fast she didn’t have a chance to run away from me. Her middle folded in half over my shoulder as I carried her off like a fucking caveman, throwing her legs over the other side like I was posing for a Jesus and the Lost Lamb painting or something, Red Light District Style.

"Angel, put me down; I can walk, dammit!"

She squirmed on my shoulder, and I tried not to wince as she kneed me in the jaw on accident. "Can you hold still for five seconds, woman?"

"One," she started counting, going completely still on me. "Two," she said after a long, drawn-out second, and I rushed for my bedroom door, rolling my eyes despite the smile on my lips.

I hadn’t felt this alive in a long time.

"Threeeee," she mumbled as I threw her atop my huge, comfortable bed, glad I hadn’t bothered to redo all the buttons on my shirt after Surgeon visited. "Four," she said with a pout, rolling onto her back in the center of the one piece of furniture I wasn’t about to let her move off of for the foreseeable future.

An eternity with her wouldn’t be enough time to show her everything I wanted her to see. Tell her everything in my soul that I needed her to know.

But it would have to do.

"Five," she whispered as I crawled up the bed from the bottom, stalking her like a panther in the night. "Angel, what?—"

"Can you make me a promise, Harper?" I asked quietly, laying on the bed next to her, our eyes level with each other, though that left me hanging off the bed a bit since I was taller. "I need you to listen to me and not talk for, like, the rest of the night. And I know that’s a huge ask, but if you agree and you keep up your end of the deal, I’ll give you something I know you’ve wanted for a long time."

"A tiger?" she teased, twirling a stray strand of my hair around one of her fingers. "I’ve always wanted a tiger."

"No tigers, unfortunately. Lilly would kick us all to the curb in a heartbeat if we tried to smuggle a tiger into the Guild."

"Not me. She likes me," Harper retorted, jutting out those pretty lips in a pout I wanted to kiss off her face.

It was true. St. Clair had taken a strange interest in our girl after the whole ordeal with our father. It was uncanny how often I found the two together, likely up to no good, knowing them. But sometimes, they’d meet with her ex-husband, the cop, and it made me wonder what was really going on between the three of them.

She’d tell me when she was ready for me to know.

"Promise me, Harper?" I asked again. "Don’t make me beg."

"I might like it if you begged, Angel."

She had no idea the appeal that idea had. "I won’t."

"Shame." She rolled onto her back again, closing her eyes like she expected me to believe she planned to go to sleep.

I hadn’t let her in my bed since I came home. That didn’t stop her from sneaking in after I’d gone to sleep, pillow and blanket in hand, so she could post up on the floor in case I needed something.

What I needed right now, though, was her. And I didn’t know how to tell her. Not with words.

For the first time in my life, I was at a loss for the right words to convey a simple request.

Let me love you.

How fucking hard was it? Yet every time I opened my mouth, the words got stuck in the back of my throat.

How could I expect her to see me as a man if I couldn’t even talk to her?

"Angel," she started, a smile on her lips, eyes still closed. "What do I get if I keep my mouth shut for the rest of the night?"

Just fucking do it. Just say what you need to say and fucking do it. Do it do it doit doitdoitdoit?—

"Me."

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