“Because this is my life. This is who I am—”
“When forced.”
“I don’t hesitate to do what is necessary.”
“To save lives.”
“I ordered the murder of five people,” he repeats. “Why are you okay with this, Ella?”
“Because some people are built for this kind of life—like you are. Because I’m my father’s daughter, and you’re your father’s son.”
“Your father could not have wanted this life for you.”
“My father wanted me to be fearless.”
“I told you on the porch that proposing to you was selfish. I wanted you with me. That’s all that was on my mind.”
“Wanted? As in past tense? I didn’t decline.”
“This is where I should tell you that proposal is void, past tense.” His fingers flex at my waist. “This is where I told myself that loving you means getting you the hell out of here. This is where I promised myself I wouldn’t be selfish.”
“Kayden—”
“But I’m still the same selfish bastard who proposed this afternoon, Ella. I don’t want to let you go. I want you. I need you. I didn’t want to, and I still don’t, because it would destroy me to lose you. I want to convince you that you belong here.”
“I was convinced the moment I met you, Kayden. We were strangers, yet you were familiar and right.”
He repeats what he’d said to me on the phone in Italian.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“You belong with me, and I’m not going to let go of you.”
There’s something odd about the way he says that. “Why would you have to let go of me?”
“You’re CIA. Covert—even more than your father was. As in, part of an elite group most of the agency doesn’t even know exists. My contact wouldn’t tell me the name of the group, if he even knew it. They recruited you right out of high school and paid for your college. Apparently your father had used every CIA exam in existence to train you, and they located those when he died.”
I inhale, memories of my father timing me while I took quizzes filling my mind. “How do you know this?”
“I have a contact here in Italy. A guy named Trigger. He’s hard to reach, which he says is because he’s retired, though I’m doubtful that’s true. He didn’t know your father, but he knew of him. And he knew how to get information on you that no one else could.”
I search his face, and suddenly, his intensity, his edgy dark mood, has me worried. “I know you, Kayden, and there’s more to this. Tell me. Just say it and get it over with.”
twelve
What I know,” he says, tangling his fingers in my hair, “is that your instant worry over being CIA is why I wanted it confirmed. And it is now, but the last damn thing I want to talk about is the CIA. What I want is to be clear: this changes nothing. We are not divided or in danger. We’re okay.”
“Tell me you know that as certainly as you know that I’m CIA.”
“Yes, sweetheart,” he says. “We are absolutely okay. In fact, we’re perfect.”
“I want to embrace those words,” I say, “but the CIA reminds me of my father, and my father reminds me of blood and death—and those thi
ngs are far from perfect.”
“But we are perfect, Ella,” he repeats. “And I won’t let you forget that.” His mouth slants over mine, his lips warm, his tongue warmer, his body hot against mine: passionate, deep, a demand and a caress in every stroke. “You’re mine,” he declares, his voice soft yet fierce. “You’re marrying me, and yes, I’m telling you that. This time, fear and worry don’t win. They don’t get to wake up with you every day. I do.”
Emotion charges though me with that declaration, jolting me with the realization that I was reverting back to this afternoon, and for someone who doesn’t let fear win, I was then. I am now. But before I can say this, he’s kissing me again, and the taste of him is all dark torment and a deep, ravishing hunger for some unnamed thing I still manage to know and understand so very well. It’s about pain, loss, the need for control those things create in him, and perhaps in me. But there’s more. There is need. There is decisiveness. There is a certainty that I’m right for him, and him for me, things that I made him doubt today and never want him to doubt again. But he doesn’t. With each swipe of his tongue, he tells me that he rejects a life without me and wants the same from me.