Page 85 of Tethered Souls
“Yes. He’ll need a reason to visit me that doesn’t make him look weak.”
He sighs. “What happened to you agreeing that getting him to fall for you was a bad idea? Men like him don’t love in sappy poems and mixtapes. And when they hurt, they lash out without thinking. This is a dangerous path, Micha.”
“My whole life has been dangerous, Dayne. Besides, I’d rather die still being me than living until I’m three hundred, having been forced to be someone I’m not. This marriage is my cage,” I say, referencing his childhood, where he spent over a decade chained inside a dark room and beaten like a dog. Worse than a dog. He understands what it means to die fighting.
“I just want you to be safe,” he says softly.
“I know,” I murmur as I turn my head to him. “And I will be. I’m getting him to fall for me, not the other way around.” I tap my head. “I’m keeping it cool.”
He gives me a look that I’m too tired to decipher, then he grabs my arm to stop my forward march. Opening the door we’re beside, he shoves me into the room. “We’ve gone far enough,” he says. “You need rest if you’re going to tease him tonight.”
Grinning, I stride over to the bed as he shuts the door behind us, leaving my father and the other assassins out in the hall. Louise broke off at some point during our walk, perhaps going to find her boss Talon.
“Fuck yeah, I’m exhausted.” I flop onto the mattress, right on top of the neatly tucked in duvet. I close my eyes, and two seconds later, I’m out.
xxx
“I told you not to make me search for you.”
A smile tugs at my lips as I’m pulled from my sleep by a hand on my thigh. Lifting my head up, I’m not surprised to find we are alone. “If I had your phone number,” I mumble as I drop my head back onto the pillow, “I could’ve texted you.”
“You had Mother’s.”
“I’m not running everything past your mother. What if I want to send a topless pic? Or sext you?” I raise a brow as I twist onto my back to look up at him. “You going to reply back through her too?”
His eyes narrow slightly, and I know he knows what I’m doing. He’s too fucking paranoid not to. I expect him to brush me off, to hide behind his walls still, but he surprises me by pulling out his phone as he sits down on the bed beside me. His fingers swipe across his screen. Curious as to what he’s doing, I sit up and peer at his phone. He’s on his messenger app.
Varius:Show me how ready your pussy is for me.
He presses send, and my heart hammers as he turns to me. But there isn’t any heat in his eyes. There’s just sorrow and pain and a need to yell into the void about what his own family has done to him. All hidden behind a solid mask, of course. Only readable to me because I’ve spent years deciphering such looks from kids. After Dayne and I “rescue” our targets, we keep in touch with them, visiting every so often to make sure their new life is better than their old one. A couple times, they haven’t been, and their new parents ended up six feet under.
Swinging my right leg across both of his, I straddle his lap and loop my arms around his neck. I moved slowly, non-threateningly, but even still, he is tense beneath me, ready to fight for his life.
I drop my hands to his chest, pressing my palms flat to him so he can feel every movement of my fingers and know I mean him no harm. His eyes hold mine, and I can see that first wall creak open. I smile at him, a light teasing on my lips. “So I hear you got naked with Khalid.”
“Louise talked?” he asked, that wall slamming shut, that curtain coming down as he paints her as yet another traitor. Someone who broke his trust andtalked.
My pulse jumps, fear for her making me blurt, “No. She said it was business. That’s it. She only mentioned you two got naked because I basically accused her of fucking you, but she’s actually annoyingly tight-lipped.”
There’s a moment where Varius doesn’t move, doesn’t believe me, and my throat closes as I realize just how fine of an edge I’m walking. A single sentence is enough to raise his suspicions, to lose his trust, to turn him from a man seeking comfort into the monster who stalks the dark. If I make one wrong move, say one wrong thing, I could be the one he “has a talk with.” Maybe Dayne was right. Maybe trying to get him to like me is a fucking stupid idea. Having the attention of someone as dangerous as him…
But then he relaxes, accepting my answer, and my brain grows heady. There is something addicting about having the trust of a powerful man.I’ll be careful,I tell myself.I’ll never give him reason to suspect me of anything.
Deciding teasing him about his brother will just make him think I’m trying to get him jealous to drive a wedge between them, I change tactics. “So I’ve been thinking,” I say, “about my dreams.”
My heart pounds inside my skull at the vulnerability I’m opening myself up to. I swallow as I glance away, suddenly feeling like I’m being a fool with foolish dreams.
“What are they?” Varius asks when a moment of silence settles heavily between us. I start, looking back at him.
My cheeks and neck hot, I make a noncommittal noise. But one of us has to break the distance between us, and the gods know it’ll never be him. So I take a deep breath, then squeak, “I want to try karaoke.”
He stares at me without a word, and I want to kick myself for having such a dumb dream. But I wanted to start small. Manage my expectations. And the idea of going out with friends – having friends to go out with, and then being able to just enjoy all the normal things I missed growing up because of my assassin training...it just seems nice.
“Okay,” he finally says.
“Okay?”
“We can go for Valentine’s.”
