Page 62 of Sanctuary of Secrets

Once they’d finished talking, she opened her door.

The sound of breaking glass reached their ears.

“Stay here.” Jax exited the truck. He whirled around when he heard the passenger door click shut. She’d also gotten out. “Stay in the truck.”

Seyla narrowed her eyes. “If you think I’m going to sit in there waiting for some maniac to come out here to kill me, you’re crazy.” She kept moving, leaving Jax with no choice other than to follow along. Once the key unlocked the door, they burst inside.

A black clad figure stopped midway through the broken window facing the alleyway. Their head twisted toward Jax and Seyla. Then they dove out the window.

Jax wanted to pursue them. Too risky, though. What if an accomplice had remained inside, hidden? He couldn’t leave Seyla in the apartment alone. “Wait here while I check the place.”

Seyla nodded, withdrawing into a corner.

Jax searched the entire apartment, room by room. Finding nothing disturbed, he returned to the living room. “We must have caught him on his way in.” Tight rows of nailed-in boards covered the first of the three windows facing the alley already. He searched around, hoping to find some extra pieces to board up the second. No luck.

Seyla stood motionless in the far corner, one hand gripping her necklace.

Jax had seen it a hundred times when training soldiers. If his attraction to her hadn’t distracted him, he would have pinpointed it sooner. She kept using the wrong thing to gain confidence. In his experience, the person focused on their equipment instead of God and their training. Not a necklace. Even so, the concept remained the same.

And it never worked.

Now wasn’t the time to address it, though. Instead, he crossed over to her and guided her to the couch to sit. She dropped the necklace to hold onto his hand, and something shifted in his chest. Hoping to soothe her, he said, “I’ll give Matt a call.”

“No!” Her hand tightened on his. “No.”

“He can help get this window boarded up. I don’t have any supplies. I can’t leave you alone here tonight with the window broken. It’s not safe.”

“No.” Her other hand moved to the necklace.

Why wouldn’t she want Matt to come? Perhaps she thought her family would swoop in and carry her off like they did in the past. She needed someone to lean on, though.

Doubt clung to his arms even as they closed around her. The clawing pain in his shoulder and head drifted away with her nearness.

Seyla sighed and dropped her head onto his chest. Where was the awkwardness, the uneasiness, in comforting a distraught woman? Instead, it felt…right. Jax held her for a while, enjoying the foreign feeling. His heart tightened, in danger of bursting. Her long dark lashes fanned across her high cheekbones. In a moment of weakness, he lowered his head to kiss the top of her coconut-scented hair.

What was he doing?

She stood in the way of Uncle Sam’s safety and a new training facility that would save thousands of lives, properly training those facing military, survival, and self-defense situations. People like her.

Seyla’s soft gaze lifted to connect with his. She stared at him with a question in her eyes. One he didn’t know how to answer right now. Yet he leaned in, cradled her face in his hands, and brought his own face close enough that he felt her breath onhis lips. Jax searched her eyes, not sure what else he hoped to find there—disinterest or some sign of the same compulsion that drew him to her. The earth beneath him seemed to tilt when he was around Seyla, pulling him toward her with a gravitational force as old as the universe. As if, like a magnet, they were predestined to connect. “I don’t want to hurt Matt.”

Seyla ran her thumb across his lower lip and closed the space between them so that their foreheads and noses touched. It felt as intimate as the kiss Jax intended and gave him the answer he needed. After a few minutes, Jax captured her lips with his in a soft kiss. For a moment, he deepened the kiss, then pulled away to gently press his lips to her forehead. Warnings sprayed across his mind from dozens of directions, but he ignored them. Peace settled over him, like coming home from a long deployment or intense training exercise.

Until he felt a nip on his leg, breaking the moment. Two cats, one calico and one gray, peered up at him from the floor. The gray one glowered at him like he’d stolen its favorite toy. Maybe he had.

He let go of Seyla.

She giggled. “Meet Peanut and Ledger. Peanut’s the calico. Ledger’s the gray guy.”

Jax stared at the cats for a minute, a different kind of pain flashing through him. The kind he hadn’t been trained to endure.

Peanut resembled Reesie, his favorite cat at his mother’s house. Except Reesie’s eyes were much greener. Much bigger. Especially when they’d taken her away.

Jax raked a hand through his hair to stave off his reaction. “Get packed. We’re leaving.”

“We?”

“Yeah, ‘we’. Put your cats in a locked room with their supplies. Between the glass and the open window, it’s not safe. We’ll check on them tomorrow.”

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