“I will come later, though,” he assured me. “And we sunbathe together. Like Europeans.”
Laughing, I pulled out of his embrace, glad to see the smirk was back on his face. What he had dropped in a very short amount of time was heavy and a lot to take in, but I was willing to help him work through it. Nothing he said scared me, and while I should be running for the hills, I wanted to help him.
I wanted him to be free. “I will see you later then.”
Lucas didn’t respond and I walked out, feeling a bit lighter than I had coming down. Lucas was going to work with Nico. He had told me all his secrets, secrets that I would keep close to my heart. I ached for the little boy who had been betrayed by his own mom, the man who had seen no other option but to survive.
He could continue to survive, I thought as I made my way to his room instead of my own. I would make sure that Lucas came out of this alive because if he didn’t, I didn’t know what I would do.
Chapter 32
Lucas
Later
“Where are we going?”
I grinned at Leda’s excitement, hefting the bag on my shoulder. “We are going for a hike.”
Her lips turned down. “A hike?”
I strode to the back door, opening it for her. “Unless you would rather stay inside again? I mean, I can.”
“No, no,” she replied hurriedly as she moved toward the door. “A hike sounds wonderful.”
I followed behind her, checking to make sure that my gun was in reach in case I needed it. After yesterday, there was a lightness about me, the weight that had used to be heavy on my chest no longer there. I had thought I would feel differently about spilling my guts to Leda about my past, and I did.
Just not in the way I thought. There wasn’t any shame there, any concern that she was going to announce to the world that I was the product of a drug deal, a whore as Adrian had put it. Yeah, I had done things I wasn’t proud of. I knew how to please a woman until she was nothing more than putty in my hands.
I knew how to make a grown man shudder with pleasure with just a few tricks of my hands and mouth. After all, I had had no say so in who my partner was back then.
I had used my skills many times over the past few years, and then once Cosimo had pulled me out of the sex industry and moved me on to becoming his enforcer, I had learned a new set of skills.
Where my hands had been used for pleasure, they were turned into weapons of killing and torture, giving me another high that I hadn’t thought existed. I had enjoyed the killing, bringing that measure of control to my life and helping me get over my past.
And now I had Leda.
The sun beat down on us as we walked through the backyard to the tree line, taking a well-worn path to push us deeper into the wood. The radio in my pack would call my guards the moment danger was spotted, but I felt we were just as safe in the woods as we were in the house.
After all, we weren’t going far.
“This is nice,” Leda announced after a few moments, tilting her face up to the sun. “Maybe you are right. I needed out of the house.”
Yeah, I did too. “It’s a damn fine day.”
She looked over at me, the freckles on her face standing out in the sunlight. “I didn’t peg you for a nature-loving guy.”
Breathing in the clean air, I grinned. “I bought this land after I became Don.” It had been an impulse purchase. Suddenly, I had a shitload of money that I didn’t know what to do with, and since I had grown up without a home of my own, I wanted somewhere I could get away, somewhere that I couldn’t be found if needed. “I have one hundred acres back from the house, teeming with wildlife, and a stream that runs parallel to the property.”
“It’s a far cry from the city,” Leda remarked as we walked along the path. “I’m partial to the ocean myself.”
“This isn’t the only house I own,” I told her. “You would love my house in Belize.”
Leda’s hand slipped into mine, and while before I would have pulled away from the close contact, I relished in it now. I had tried and failed to find Leda’s disdain for me after telling her of my past. I had tried to work after she left the study but had only been able to get through Emil’s phone call before I was heading upstairs to find her sunbathing in the nude.
Needless to say, my own ass had seen the sun as I drilled into her, trying to sate both myself and her. Afterward we had napped in each other’s arms, and I couldn’t help it. I felt content. Leda calmed me, her selfless love for the man I was giving me hope for probably the first fucking time in my life. She could be the driver of my future.
That is, if we could get out of this alive.