Page 55 of Bitter Desire
“You okay?”
She jerked slightly at my touch and met my eyes. “I-yeah, sorry, I was just-” she stopped and waved her hand at the window. “It’s hard to stay focused.”
“That’s okay, princess. I know you’re stressed.”
She bit her lip. “I hate this, Law.” Her voice was thick. I knew she wanted to cry, could hear the unshed tears in her voice as she spoke.
“Hey, hey, look at me,” I said, moving towards her. “It’s going to be safe at the club, you know that right?”
“But what if it’s Zeus,” she said, giving voice to her earlier fears.
“If it’s him then he’s going to have to make a move in his own club and show his ass to the entire community. You know he won’t do that. And besides, what does he want with either of us?” The question was valid. What would he want with us? The pieces still didn’t fit. Didn’t make sense enough to fit into a picture. If Zeus was making this shit happen his plan was still too murky to figure out.
That meant we’d have to go to him if we wanted to make sense of it all.
“I’m going to keep you safe,” I told Honey. I brushed my thumb along her jaw. “Do you trust me?”
Her brown eyes dropped to my hand before they hit my face. She nodded, just a jerk of her chin, but it was a nod. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Good girl.”
I was going to figure this shit out. I was going to make my girl safe. And if I had to pull The Cairn down brick by brick, then I was going to fucking do it.
Chapter Twenty-One
HONEY
The dress I was wearing was from Law. The kind of sweet and pink my Daddy liked to see on me. The neckline was high, the cut of it covering my collarbones, no cleavage to be seen, which I knew made Law happy. He got twitchy when we were out and I had on one of my more daring choices. Like the red dress I’d worn from Addie. She had great taste, even if Law didn’t agree.
I grinned, glancing over at him, but he was looking down at his phone, eyes fixed on the screen. He was preoccupied and I knew it had something to do where he’d been today. Yes, I knew he’d gone to see Christian, but it went deeper than that. We both knew there was a game going on—a game we were both pawns in. And here we were returning to the place it had all probably begun.
The Cairn.
I didn’t know what we’d find there, but Law had called ahead and made a reservation with Connie. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary, which seemed promising. Though Connie had an exceptional poker face so even if something was wrong, and we were walking right into a fucking trap, she would have never let on.
“He might not be behind all of this,” Law had said earlier in his bedroom as we’d dressed and packed for the trip. The domesticity of it, the utter normalness of us moving around each other in the space, packing clothes and toiletries for the stay, had made me almost beg to stay home. All of this was still so new, and it felt like water flowing through my fingers, present, weighty, substantial but still nothing I could hold on to keep. I’d clench my fingers and come up with nothing, the ghost of it on my fingertips the only evidence it had ever happened.
“But even if he’s not, then you’re still right.”
I looked up from my bag. “Right about what?”
“That Zeus knows. Even if he’s not the one pulling strings, he will know who is. That’s why we have to go tonight.”
My stomach dropped, because he was right. There was no getting out of this. “I know.”
That was when Law had brought out the dress in the matte black box tied pretty with a satin pink bow. The bow was the same color as the dress. The dress had put a smile on my face, my face which I knew had looked scared at the idea of going to the Cairn. It was why Law had given me the present. It was his gesture to make me happy even with what we were walking into. I grabbed onto the gesture with both hands and ran to the bathroom to try it on the second I had it free from the box.
It was stunning. The beautiful dress I’d pulled out of the black box and gold tissue paper had been just the thing to shut off my mind. The understated cut of it the kind of elegance that I could see myself wearing to a special occasion. I wished that was where I was wearing the dress to. A fancy dinner, an anniversary getaway, anything but this…
If I closed my eyes I could still pretend it was a special occasion, couldn’t I? I was used to pretending and wishing and hoping. I could fool myself, if only for a minute or two. I closed my eyes and slid my hands down along my thighs, the cool slide of the material soothing my jangled nerves and took in a deep breath. The dress was long, hitting my ankles and flaring out around me with each step I took. It made me think of a mermaid’s tail or a princess’s gown as she made her grand entrance, all of it fluttering and dancing with each movement. I’d done a little spin, arms out and giggling in the mirror when Law had given it to me that afternoon. The back was gorgeous and low, skimming my lower back, exposing the entire expanse, and all of it held in place by a delicate strap of blush pink satin. The dress molded to my body like water flowing over river stones. There wasn’t a dip or curve of me that wasn’t on display.
The beauty of the dress was enough to hold off the anxiety my almost kidnapping, Law going to see Christian and the half a million dollars sitting in my bank account had settled onto me.
It had been a long day.
