Page 62 of The Brutal Arrangement

DAMON

Itold Lucy the truth when I told her that I wanted to learn more about her. I’d meant it, not only in a way to get answers that could inform us about what the Kozlovs were up to, but also because I wondered if I could ever get to a compatible level of trusting her almost like Maxim and Sloane got along.

Early in the morning, I lay in bed and realized how unthreatening it was to stay here with Lucy like this.

Usually, I left after we had sex. She’d pass out or shower, and I’d go tend to more business. The few times I’d slept in the bed with her, she maintained a buffer of distance between us. She’d take up space on the opposite side of the bed while I’d stick with my side.

Since that night I told her that I wanted to learn to like her, to learn to let her into my life as more than just a pussy to fuck and a person to question, I’d stayed in bed with her either pressed against me or draped over me. While I was still slow to initiate more conversations with her, I was taking small steps of acclimating to being present with her.

And she seemed to like it.

I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but I wasn’t complaining, either. Holding her soft, warm body was comforting, and I wasn’t eager to reinstate that distance I’d wanted from the beginning.

After being lazy to lounge, then doze, even falling back asleep—something very uncharacteristic of me—I woke up with a start.

She wasn’t there.

I blinked, the sleep erased instantly from my eyes as I took inventory of the fact that Lucy had gotten up.

Where is she?

Instead of freaking out that she could’ve disappeared, which was impossible because she couldn’t breeze out of the building on her own and evade the many guards, I lay still and waited for her to return.

The likeliest reason for her to have gotten up without me was to go to the bathroom or something simple like that. It wasn’t so late that she’d be hungry for breakfast and not wake me first.

But the longer I lay there and she didn’t return, I struggled not to worry or assume the worst of her.

She’s probably in the bathroom. She’ll be back.

Telling myself to chill about her absence irked me. I couldn’t be… clinginess. Right? I was slowly opening up to letting her be in my life more than just my wife to fuck, but I refused to consider the possibility that I was anxious to be close to her too much.

She still didn’t come back.

I sat up, figuring I’d been waiting long enough. Upright, I focused all my senses for any clue of where she could be. No sounds came from the bedroom. No running water faintly vibrated through the pipes in the walls. No scent of soap if she were showering. Nothing.

What the fuck?

It was still possible she was in another part of the apartment and didn’t want to bother me. As I got up and threw on sweatpants, I sought her out and tried not to let my imagination get the best of me.

Stepping carefully so she wouldn’t know that I was coming out of the bedroom, I snuck out into the open floorplan of my apartment. Again, I stopped still and waited. Listening and smelling, I tried to be patient and detect a clue of where she could be.

Maybe she went downstairs?

I never saw the point in giving her strict rules to adhere to. Because I didn’t want to bother myself with thinking about what she was doing when she wasn’t in bed with me, I didn’t take the time to give her instructions for what she could or couldn’t do here. I knew she wouldn’t leave—the guards would keep her in the building until I said otherwise. In the same way, I didn’t have to worry about her accessing any floors she wasn’t allowed to reach via the central elevator we residents used.

She couldn’t get to the floors my family members lived on. Each of us brothers had a floor, same with Grandmother and Father. Lucy couldn’t let herself into any of those areas. The dungeon in the basement was off-limits, too.

I hadn’t ever tried to limit her being in the more open areas of the building, though, the first three floors that resembled a home.

Before I gave up my crouched spot against the wall where I waited, a faint sound reached me. It wasn’t loud, but I couldn’t tell if the low tone was because she hadn’t realized she was too loud or because she wanted to hide from me.

Thathmm-mmmintrigued me.

Who the fuck is she talking to?

If a maid or guard had come in here, that was fine. But something in me was automatically convinced this was something else.

I was sick of standing back and wondering. If Lucy was having a secret conversation with someone, it wouldn’t bode well for her. I’d been as upfront as I could from the beginning. I’d told her, I’d warned her not to mess with me. No lies. No tricks.

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