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LIA

I didn’t even know he had left the apartment until I was startled awake early in the morning and realized I was in bed alone.

I touched his side, the sheets cold.

It didn’t tell me anything, but I had a feeling he never even slept here last night.

Had it been anyone else but Mael, I would have been worried there might be someone else.

I suppose there were some perks to being with a man who was neurotically obsessed with you. He would never cheat on me. That was a fact I was as sure of as I was of my next breath.

But then, where did he go, and should I be worried?

I didn’t know, but I was worried, even though I shouldn’t be. I shook my head. It wasn’t like Mael was… innocent.

I was still reeling over all he had told me. There was no question as to whether I would accept the reality of it. It didn’t matter. I could accept it or not, but the end result was the same. Mael would never let me go.

So then, did it make me a bad person to decide to accept it, knowing it wouldn’t have made a difference, only that it would make my life easier?

I let out a small sigh.

Talk about having a fucking dilemma.

I was still contemplating how my life could have turned out like this when I heard the front door click open. I didn’t think. I threw the covers off my body and got out of bed in time to see Mael standing by the small foyer.

He was sitting on the small black bench by the front door, taking off his boots. His back was to me. I let my eyes take him in, checking for injuries. It wasn’t like I could see much, though.

He was in his usual black, long-sleeved thermal shirt and black pants. The only parts of his skin that showed were his hands, his neck, and his head.

His blond hair was a mess, as if he had spent a good portion of the night running his fingers through it.

He didn’t turn around, but I knew he was aware of me standing there. It was confirmed when he said, “What are you doing up?”

“What am I doing up? What are you doing up? Where did you go?”

Finally, he turned to face me. His blue eyes were their usual lightness, but there was something off about them, and I didn’t know why that was.

The lights were dimmed, so it wasn’t like I could see him clearly. I cautiously walked over to him, and his eyes never left me. No, their focus seemed to increase with intensity, and I suddenly felt like a helpless gazelle facing off with a lion.

I stopped when I was about a foot away from him, crossed my arms, and looked at him expectantly.

He smiled. “Fuck, but you’re cute.”

Before I could react, he reached over and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me into his lap. I wiggled a bit, trying to get away. It was a mistake even walking up that close to him, and I wasn’t going to let him distract me.

“Let go.”

“Why?” he asked, pushing my legs apart and cupping my pussy over my sleep shorts. I froze.

He moved his hand a little, driving me crazy and taking most of the fight out of me.

“Mael,” I whispered softly.

“Yes, kitten?”

There were about a million things I could have said to him. A million and one scathing things I could have said. Instead, all that came out was, “What are you doing to me?”

He chuckled darkly, as if he found my question amusing, and pulled his hand away from me. I felt instantly cold, not that I would ever tell him that. I pouted instead, and he playfully tapped my lips with his finger.

“Fuck, no matter how bad things get out in the world, you always manage to make me feel better.”

I cupped his cheek, taking in the rough feel of his stubble.

“What bad things?” I asked, feeling myself softening toward him, even as alarm bells went off inside my head. The last thing I wanted was to soften toward Mael, especially so soon after finding out about him. It made me think there might just not be a line he could cross that I wouldn’t forgive him for.

How dangerous.

How stupid.

He shook his head. “Nothing you really need to worry about now.”

I shot him a look. “If you say I am never leaving you?—”

“You are never, never leaving me,” he interjected.

“Then you need to tell me things,” I said, speaking over him. “I won’t be kept in the dark anymore. You said you’d be honest with me. Was that a lie?”

“Of course not. I would never lie to you. But there are some aspects about my… job that you might not want to know.”

That was probably true. I shook my head. “Tell me.”

“I need to infiltrate the mob.”

I blinked in surprise. That was… not what I had expected him to say.

“Why?” I asked quietly.

“Because Briggs and your father are both in on it.”

I let my gaze fall to his chest, trying to process, as my hand fell away from his face and settled down on my lap. “What are they doing for the mob?”

“Right now, I’m thinking that’s how they got into the skin trade. They had backing from the Sicilians.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, feeling a small pain pinch inside my chest. Was my father really involved? Perhaps Leo had brought him in on it or tricked him…

The excuse sounded weak. My dad was a grown man. And considering how close he and Leo were, shouldn’t he have known about my “stalker” when Leo did? I had assumed Leo hadn’t told my dad about it because he didn’t want my dad to worry, but now, I suspected he knew, and he just didn’t care… and that he was in on it when Leo decided to send those two men to visit me at the cabin.

Mael cupped my cheek, much as I did to him, and waited until I looked back at him. I let my eyes take in the blue depths of his, feeling both settled and restless and not knowing what to make of that. Mael might be capable of taking care of himself, something he had proven to me over and over again, but that didn’t mean he was invincible. And what the hell was I supposed to do if something happened to him?

Mael had done exactly what he’d set out to do—made me depend on him. Made it so that I couldn’t live without him. He made me love him. My breath came out in stuttered gasps at the thought. Mael frowned. “What?”

“This sounds dangerous,” I said.

Mael shook his head. “And I’ll be fine.”

I glared at him. “You’re not God. You can still get hurt… get killed.”

He smiled a little, infuriating me more. “That’s not what you said as I was pounding inside of you.”

I slapped his chest. “Be serious.”

He grabbed my hand and brought it up to his lips, kissing the back of it. “And you need to stop worrying.”

With that, he wrapped his arms around my waist and repositioned us until I was the one sitting on the bench, and he was standing in front of me.

I looked up at him, feeling a little jarred from the move.

“I’m gonna go shower,” he said.

He was walking away from me before I could say anything, and though the tone of his voice and facial expression never changed, I had a feeling he was trying to walk away from the conversation.

I stayed seated for about a minute or so, still thinking about all that he said and the fact that he planned on infiltrating the mob.

The. Mob.

That sound like a fucking suicide mission to me.

How stupid.

I pushed off from the bench and walked over to the bathroom. He was already in the shower by then. His eyes were closed as he let the water rain down on him. I didn’t let myself think as I pulled off my own clothes and walked over to the shower, opening the glass door and joining him. I knew he was aware of me, but he didn’t turn around to look at me.

I used that time to take in his muscular back, feeling something inside me stir.

He had always been beautiful. It didn’t matter what I thought about him or how I felt. The fact had always been just how beautiful… how flawed Mael was. And he was mine. Every inch of his tattooed, scarred body was mine.

I leaned forward and kissed his back.

I felt more than heard his sigh. I kissed him once more and wrapped my arms around his waist, holding him close.

“I never had to explain myself to anyone.”

“And you don’t like it?” I guessed.

He surprised me when he said, “No, it’s not that. I just realized having someone I needed to explain myself to also means there is someone at home expecting me to make it safely back to her.”

“And you, what? Never took your safety into consideration?”

His nonanswer was loud. Had he always been this reckless?

I turned him around until he was looking at me.

“It’s your fault,” I said. “You made me depend on you. You made me need you. So you’re going to come home to me, no matter what.”

His eyes softened, and he nodded. “I’ll come home to you, no matter what.”

“And you’ll save all those women… those people.”

“I’m not the hero in this story, sweetheart.”

I shook my head. He could tell me he didn’t care, and I was starting to believe him, but I knew he cared about me.

He cared what I thought about all this.

“I’ll do my best,” he said finally, and I knew that was all he was going to give me. I shot him a small smile, and he seemed to freeze.

It took him a moment to catch his bearings, and then he was grabbing the shampoo bottle and helping me clean up, even though I had taken a shower the night before.

I let him take care of me.

The shower was quick. Mael didn’t linger, even if I wished he did. I let my eyes roam up and down his body while he washed himself. The suds streamed down his skin, covering up his ink briefly.

My eyes came back to the line of numbers on his ribs.

37654

I had thought it was interesting when I first saw it, but now, given what I know…

I reached and traced the numbers with my fingers.

“How old were you when you got this?” I asked as the thought came to my mind and wouldn’t leave me alone.

Please let me be wrong about this.

“Nine,” he said, reaching over and shutting the water off. He had the glass door open to the shower, ushering us out before I could say anything else.

I let him wrap the big white fluffy towel around me, let him dry me, and let him take care of me. He carefully wrung out most of the water from my hair, then wrapped it with a towel.

Mael lifted me up in his arms and carried me back to the bedroom.

He pulled the towel away from my body and let it drop to the floor before pushing me to lie down on the bed while he stood in front of me with only a towel wrapped around his hips.

He brought his thumb up to his mouth as he took me in.

Then he walked over to the nightstand and grabbed the lotion bottle. The bottle was here when I first arrived at the apartment just the day before. It was the exact same brand of lotion that I used. The exact same scent.

Mael squirted some on his hand and rubbed them together before he massaged it into my body, starting with my arms first, my torso… I gasped when he pinched my nipples playfully before moving further south. His eyes glinted with amusement at my reaction. He rubbed some over my mound, driving me crazy, then my legs, my feet. He straightened once he was done, his eyes light, seemingly satisfied over the act of taking care of me like this.

He walked to the closet. I stayed where I was, listening to him put something on before he came back out with one of his shirts. He was wearing black boxer briefs and nothing else. He pulled me up to a sitting position, helping me put the shirt on.

I grabbed his hand when it looked like he was about to walk away from me.

“Won’t you lie with me?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything for a beat, and then he was moving back onto the bed with me. I pushed back on the mattress, and Mael followed me. He laid us down until my head rested on his chest, and his arms were wrapped around me. He didn’t seem to mind that my hair was still damp from the shower. If anything, he pulled me in closer to him.

I ran my hand up and down his side, stopping when I got to the tattoo. He tensed slightly in my arms, the only indication that he didn’t like where I was obviously going with this.

“You got this when you were nine when your dad found you in foster care?” I said, remembering back to the words he’d told me as my stalker. That night, that conversation felt like a long time ago, even as I knew it hadn’t been that long.

He let out a small sigh. “Yeah. He tattooed it on me. Me and Theo.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, trying to brace myself for the ugly truth I knew was coming.

“Why?” I asked.

“He needed a way to keep track of his merchandise.”

I sucked in a sharp breath and closed my eyes. “What were…”

I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I didn’t know the right words to use in this situation or how to ask him. He took mercy on me when I felt him tighten his arms around me a fraction before he said, “We were trafficked. We were kept in the factory, given enough food and water to survive but not enough to run away. Some were there to be sold off to the highest bidder. Theo and I were kept to entertain some of the sick fucks who liked to visit and would pay good money for our time.”

Tears blurred my vision before falling and hitting his chest. I knew he could feel it.

“Hush now. There’s no reason to cry for me. It was a long time ago.”

The fact that he truly sounded like he believed that, that it was a long time ago, so the shit he endured shouldn’t matter anymore, just about broke my heart into a million pieces.

More tears fell.

“How did… How did you escape?” I asked when it didn’t feel like I was going to choke on my words.

“Sheer determination. Rage. And the guilt of a guard there.”

“He helped you?”

“Yeah. He gave me the keys to escape in the night. I took Theo with me. We ran and hid in the woods for about a week, trying to decide what to do. Things were bad for a while. The world isn’t kind, but especially to two boys it had already written off. But I managed.”

“How old were you when you escaped?”

“Thirteen. Good thing, too. I was getting too old for those fuckers. It was only a matter of time before he killed me.”

He meant his father. I tried not to show how taken aback I was over the casual way he said everything. It was as if he was just reciting the events of a baseball game. Unemotional. As if he didn’t care. And how convincing he sounded. I almost believed he didn’t care, but he had to care, didn’t he? This had to have left its marks on him.

Thirteen was not old. Still a baby, in my opinion. I couldn’t imagine how it must have been for him and his brother. I wrapped my arms around him and snuggled in closer to his chest.

“Mael?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Who’s your father?”

I already had an inkling. It would explain why Mael was even involved in this entire thing in the first place.

I held my breath when he didn’t answer me right away, staying on the precipice of wanting him to tell me, to confirm my suspicion, and for him to prove me wrong.

He didn’t prove me wrong.

He let out a small sigh and said, “Leo Briggs.”