Page 28 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)

Valentina

B reathing slow and even, I begin to wake up. Warm light nuzzles my face. I can see morning brightness through the thin skin of my closed eyelids. Inhaling deeply through my nose, I catch scents of Darragh.

His bed.

Without opening my eyes, I stretch, skimming my hand across cool sheets, expecting to come into contact with his heat and not finding it.

My body’s reaction is instant and instinctive. A driving panic that jams my heart up into my throat. He isn’t here. I’ve lost him.

“Darragh!” I scramble out of the bed. Shit.

I’m naked. Darragh is gone and I’m not even dressed to go and find him.

He could be bleeding out somewhere! Every second counts.

And I’m painfully aware of every second now, as they pass me by, taunting me as I stand there, frozen with indecision and fear.

My heart is beating so fast it sounds like I’ve got two pulses. But, no. That second pulse is outside me. Rapid, explosive, getting louder every second.

Darragh bursts into the room like a storm, thunder on his face and a gun in his hand. His wild eyes scan the space, locking onto me. His strides eat the floor in seconds. He grabs me tightly, his eyes examining every wall, window, and corner.

“What is it?” he asks. “What did you see?”

“No… I didn’t…” God. I am so embarrassing.

I pull myself out of his hold and grab the bedsheet for something to wrap around myself.

Like a shield against my shame. Darragh watches me in cool-eyed silence, which doesn’t help.

“I just woke up,” I stammer, “and when you weren’t here, I panicked. Silly. I know.”

He still hasn’t said anything. He also hasn’t moved.

“What?” I finally mutter, tugging sullenly at my sheet.

There’s an oddly rocky quality to his voice when he replies. A roughened affection.

“That isn’t silly.”

“It absolutely is!” I scoff. “You’re recovering. You shouldn’t have to run up the stairs like that just because I got all freaked out that you weren’t here.”

“Recovering?” He says, raising his brows. “Valentina, I could be half-dead, chained to a wall in a fucking basement somewhere, if you called I would still find a way to come running. Don’t you ever worry about that.”

“OK. Well. Still silly.”

He slides his gun into place at his lower back, then uses both his hands to smooth my hair away from my face.

We tumbled into bed still wet from our bath last night.

I don’t even want to think about how my hair dried.

But there’s no judgment in his gaze as he strokes the sleep-kinked waves away from my cheeks and forehead.

“The few times I slept in Dublin, it was fucking agony to wake up. Not because I was tired and needed more rest,” he says softly.

“But because you weren’t there.” He tucks a particularly stubborn curl of hair behind my ear.

His fingers linger at the side of my throat.

“So if that makes you silly, I guess I’m silly too.

” He smirks. “And I will have you know that I’ve never been silly once in my entire fucking life. ”

I bite my lip and nod. Then, without thinking, I blurt, “Can I have a hug?”

Oh my God. If I thought I was embarrassing before…

Now I’m just humiliating myself.

But Darragh’s arms wrap around me immediately. I feel his chin bump the top of my head as he quietly says, “You can have anything you want.”

Well, not anything. Not the one thing I actually want.

To be with Darragh. Not as his mistress, or his nurse, or his prisoner.

As his wife.

I never thought I’d want it. Never thought I’d be the one to crave it. But I nearly lost him once, and now I am terrified of it happening again. I want to be his in all ways. And I want him to be mine, too. Legitimately and legally.

But my actions, my foolish desires, have already put him in grave danger once. I told him what I wanted and he made it happen at terrible cost to himself.

I could never ask him to do it again. Give up everything in Ireland just so that I could be his wife. Not after what I’ve done. What my family has done.

So I lock my secret love away and pull out of the hug.

The next day, as I wake up, I become aware of a sticky stiffness in the vicinity of my forehead. When I try to move my eyebrows, something tugs uncomfortably. I open my eyes, only to flinch when my eyelashes collide with… Paper?

My fingers fumbling, I rip it off and hold the bright orange square up to my face. There’s writing on it, messily scrawled slashes of ink.

Don’t panic, pet. I’m in my office downstairs.

It’s a fucking sticky note. He put it on my forehead while I was sleeping.

I don’t know whether to roll my eyes, laugh, or go all googly-eyed over that. I settle on a small smile, putting the sticky note on the bedside table. An interesting method of calming my morning nerves, I’ll give him that.

But… I kind of love it. I can picture him writing the note while I’m snoozing away, then thinking to himself, Yup. Forehead ought to do it. She’ll never miss it there.

I sit up, and a square of hot pink on the blanket immediately catches my eye.

In case the one on your forehead falls off, it reads, I’m downstairs in my office.

This time, I do laugh. And it feels so fucking good to do it.

When was the last time I laughed? Sincerely laughed because something was funny or brought me joy, not out of sarcasm or bitterness? I honestly can’t remember. There were times recently when it seemed like I might never laugh again.

And here I am, laughing at something as small as a sticky note.

Just because he left it there for me.

I put the pink sticky note with the orange one, already thinking of places I can keep them permanently.

I don’t have a journal or anything like that.

Maybe I should take up scrapbooking. Might be kind of soothing, who knows.

I’ll decorate it with ribbons and bows, and spray romantic perfume on the pages. An ode to my memories with Darragh.

I pull on one of Darragh’s T-shirts, which is practically a nightie on me, and go padding through the house. I’ve decided that I really like Darragh’s home. It’s spacious and elegant, with dark wood floors and accents of green that for some reason remind me of Dublin.

Darragh’s office is on the main floor of the house.

If he’s in it, he’s probably trying to catch up on business in Toronto, after all his time in Dublin and then in the hospital.

I probably shouldn’t disturb him. Papà never let me intrude on him when he was working.

I’d have to resort to pressing my ear up against the door whenever I wanted to have an idea of what was going on.

But…

But Darragh’s office door is open.

He told me where he’d be. And then he left the door ajar, as if…

As if he’s quietly inviting me in.

Maybe it’s a trap.

But what if it’s not?

I make my way silently to the door, pausing in the doorway.

Darragh is on the phone with his phone up to his ear.

His office has a large wall of windows that look out onto the backyard with its gardens and trees.

The morning light has a distinctly autumnal quality to it, illuminating the fiery veins of green and yellow and orange leaves.

My appreciative gaze goes from the vivid spray of the leaves on the branches to Darragh’s back.

His substantial shoulders are set in a natural position of confidence.

I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how excellent his posture is before.

His back is broad and straight, his waist taut, his legs slightly apart.

Still listening to whoever’s on the phone, he turns around without warning. Our eyes meet from across the room and dark heat snaps between us.

He doesn’t tell me to come in.

But he doesn’t tell me to leave, either. He just stands there at the window, observing me, waiting to see what I’ll do.

I’ve always been stubborn. Too bold. Going where I shouldn’t. I step fully into the room.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” he says. “Tell me more about the tax implications on that move.”

Tax implications. Riveting stuff. It makes me smile, though, to know that Darragh doesn’t spend all his time elbows-deep in blood – other people’s or lately, his own. Some boring office work will be good for him for the next little while.

He continues watching me as I wander around the office. His bookshelves are stuffed full, something I approve of. I walk slowly along, tracing titles and spines with my nails.

“What about that capital gains increase? That still happening anytime soon?”

When I’m finished checking out the shelves, I move on to his desk.

There’s a computer, of course, and various papers piled up here and there, some of them in rather haphazard-looking stacks.

Darragh may have his quirks and obsessions, but he certainly isn’t anal about organizing his documents.

Without really thinking about it, I start idly straightening things up.

Not because I care about how clean his desk is. But because I want to help him.

It's something that a wife would do.

Sighing quietly, I abandon the papers and examine the other items on the desk. I can feel Darragh’s eyes drilling into me as I pick up a pair of dice. One is black, one is red. On the side of each die that should have a single dot, they each have a skull instead.

They’re the dice from Darragh’s tattoo.

“They were Callum’s.”

I look up, realizing Darragh is speaking to me now. His phone is no longer in his hand.

“His favourite ones,” Darragh goes on. “He taught me cards. Chess. Dice. He gave me those before I came to Canada.” He tilts his head. “Do you want to play?”

“I don’t know any dice games,” I admit. I roll the dice together in my right hand, enjoying the tactile sensation of the plastic cubes knocking together. “Besides, the last time I played a game with you in Toronto, I was left bleeding and alone at the end of it.”

“Doesn’t have to be any real dice game,” he says. “I’ll even let you make up the rules.”