He held his hands up in surrender. “Wouldn't want you to have to get your hands bloody, Mason. It's just that she's good at this. She has good instincts, a good eye, a sharp mind, and…” this part he was clearly hesitant to say, “I think she likes it. I think she's got a lot of darkness inside her, and this whole lifestyle attracts her. You–all of it, call to her on some level even she doesn't understand.”
“Shut the fuck up, James.” Staring at her sleeping face and the angelic pout of her full lips, my gut instinct was to disagree with him. But I knew it wasn't that simple.
“You know I'm right.”
I did, but I wasn't about to admit that. “And what's it going to take to make things right for you and Emma? Since you're suddenly so insightful and skilled in understanding women…” I couldn't help but lash out when he was poking at such a sensitive topic.
He raised his brow as he answered like he saw the words for exactly what they were, “Emma doesn't like this side of me. She only wants the clean version she met in a lecture hall. But, unfortunately, I don't know what will fix that.”
I grunted at him, too pissed off to comfort him, even though I knew the truth. Emma might have been scared of what he did, but she loved him. The ride was quiet the rest of the way.
We pulled up outside the front door, and I flipped him off before reaching into the car to carry a sleeping Claire inside. Pulling her out, I wrapped her thighs around my waist. Her body hung heavily around my shoulders as she sleepily held on. Her brown curls smelled like coconuts, and I gratuitously buried my nose in them.
I kissed her thoroughly as I walked down the hall to our bedroom. My hands held each of her ass cheeks tightly, holding her up and kneading them with lazy indulgence.
She was half or more asleep, but she still moaned for me as I plucked the pretty nipples topping her full breasts. My lips traced the hollow beneath her throat as I laid her in bed. I continued my path to her pussy. I ate her, her eyes never fully opening until her pretty pink lips were hot and swollen and her cum poured out of her.
I told her I had some work to deal with, but she was too far gone to notice, soundly asleep and wrapped in fluffy down before I closed the door.
I didn't deserve the easy happiness bubbling in my chest. But I couldn't help it: Claire was mine. I could be with her and share my life with her. I deserved to feel heavy for all the fucked-up shit I'd done in my life. I deserved to be lonely.
I hated the danger she was in because of me, and I had since I first realized how much I cared for her. Still, the feeling of honesty between the two of us was a greater freedom than I could have ever imagined.
I thought back to the man I was when I decided to lie to her. I knew how cliché it was to feel that a polarizing event made me a different person, but nearly losing Claire—both times—changed me.
I made a lot of excuses about how Claire was handling her trauma, but I was doing a piss-poor job of managing my own. I still worried for her safety every fucking second. I still wanted to lie to protect her. I couldn't shake the feeling that a touch offinessecould drastically improve our situation.
I wasn't the type to make excuses for my conduct, and blaming my parents wasn't my style, but they were both liars. I needed to accept that to accept the behavior in myself. I was never in a situation where people dealt with their problems head-on. It was always through duplicitous means. Even my mother. Although she never lied out of cruelty, she kept what my father did to us a secret. She taught me to lie and hide and told me it was for the best, but she was doing her own damage. It fucking ached to think of her like that.
Claire made it clear that she would not tolerate being lied to, whereas my mother depended on it. In an otherwise horrible childhood, I saw my mother as a pinnacle of virtue and goodness. Because of that, my expectations for Claire and what a woman should be were flawed. I would always adore my mother, but she stayed even though it prematurely killed her. Would I have a more healthy understanding of my mother had she lived longer? I wished I had known her as an adult. Would I have had a chance to understand her motivations better?
I wasn't interested in a woman like my mother, even though it hurt to think about it, and I had no interest in being the man my father wanted me to be.
Loving Claire came naturally. Every weird thing about her. Her intelligence constantly impressed me, her vision. I smiled softly. Her perception of others was so surprisingly on point, yet her perception of herself was so blurred. I'd never met someone who saw themselves less clearly than she did. Guilt pooled in my stomach as I considered that I may have had a hand in diminishing her self-worth in the last couple of months.
The door to my office opened beneath my thumbprint, and the smell of leather and cigars enveloped me. I rarely smoked them, but the box I left open on my desk was enough to leave the air perfumed and aromatic. It reminded me of our groundskeeper when I was a boy and his gruff-but-kind nature. I sat behind my desk, barely having a moment to settle before the door pushed open and a flurry of blonde hair tumbled in.
“Mila? To what do I owe the pleasure?” I would have preferred she knock, but her eyes were red and puffy like she'd had an awful day of crying, and I didn't feel the need to add to that.
“I don't have anything else between Delano Agrest and David Sharp, but there are several other names Casey's system turned up. We should go over what I've found and discuss what type of activity you'd like to focus on, maybe cast a wider net on certain criteria and scale back on others.”
“Okay, show me.” I gestured toward the computer and her face puckered at the lack of fight. Mila was a pretty girl at nineteen. However, she still had a gangly bit of girlishness, and I wondered if she was naturally a late bloomer or malnourished. Sadly, I was reasonably sure it was the latter.
She walked around the desk, and I slid my chair over, gesturing for her to grab a chair. Instead, she ignored me and kneeled in front of the computer, opening a code window and typing away. “You should let me build you a better system. Your security is shit. I'm surprised Casey let you get away with this,” her accent thickened with her annoyance.
“Casey was much more nervous about how he spoke to me than you are, but I'm surprised to hear you say that since I paid a lot of money for my security.” My eyes flashed over to her, wondering what she might have seen on that system already.
She stared at the computer, her eyebrows pushing together. “Did a criminal build it for you?”
“No.”
“That was your first mistake, and as for Casey, he was too fucking sweet for this world. He let that cloud his judgment, and it killed him. This system is a nightmare waiting to happen. I'd be surprised if you haven't had someone snooping around here already. It would be easy enough to hide their tracks.” I stared at her, wondering if it was that bad or if she felt the need to arm her truths with extra barbs.
James was tech-savvy enough to know what I didn't, and he'd never warned me. I couldn't imagine Casey actually would have left things in that condition. The first actual seed of mistrust for her planted itself inside me.
“You know, Mila, Casey never told me you were gifted with this stuff.” Either she was better than Casey and James combined, or she was making trouble.
She flinched. “I'm not gifted with anything but knowing how best to keep myself alive. Casey was talented and brilliant, and he taught me what he could. I'm smart enough to learn things I know can help me, but he, he was a genius.” One of the tears I feared slipped down her cheeks, and she scrubbed it away with the back of her hand.