Page 169 of Under Your Scars

Baby steps, I guess.

In my father’s defense, Christian and I haven’t been together long at all, and suddenly we’re married with a kid. I can recognize that it’s weird. It doesn’t make sense, but Christian and I were always meant to end up together. I see that now. My love for him might not have been instant the way his was, but after everything we’ve been through, I know it in my soul that this is where I belong.

After breakfast, Caroline takes my parents and Edwin to the theater room, where she picks three Disney movies and proclaims that none of them are allowed to leave until they finish watching them with her.

With everyone else preoccupied, Christian takes my hand. “I want to show you something,” he says, and then leads me upstairs to the library and stops us in front of a bookshelf.

“First edition1984. Nice.”

“How do you know it’s a first edition?”

“Because you’re Christian Reeves.”

He chuckles, and then pulls out his phone. He opens an app I’ve never seen before and presents the screen to me. It’s asking for a password.

“Your birthday. Year, Month, Day,” he prompts.

I give him a strange look, but I type in the numbers. A simple green checkmark appears on the screen and then I jump backwards when the bookcase starts moving, revealing a narrow spiral staircase.

I raise an eyebrow at my husband, who simply nods at me. I step into the staircase, and he follows close behind. The bookcase shuts itself behind us and it’s nearly pitch-black in this stairwell.

“Lights,” Christian mumbles, and small bulbs lining the steps turn on. I follow them down, down, down, until I reach a dark basement.

“Lights?” I say apprehensively, and, shocker, the lights turn on. “Woah,” I announce as I take in the space.

A computer with massive hard drives and a dozen screens is directly across from us, his Silencer mask connected via USB to the tower. Tables with tools and wires and half-built projects sit in the center of the room. A rack of every kind of ammunition is on the far wall, next to an equally massive gun display. There’s a refrigerator with strange vials of liquid, syringes, bottles of water, and electrolyte bags. I open a set of drawers to find a plethora of medical supplies. To my left, a makeshift shooting range.

I admit, while I was still in my initial recovery stage and unsure about how I felt about Christian, I snooped around the entire house looking for an entrance to a secret lair just like this, or at least his mask or some other evidence of his alter ego hidden away. I never found anything, but that’s because I always expected the entrance to be in or around his room to be discreet. I suppose that’s why he has the entrance in the library on the second floor. Who would look there for a secret lair?

“I have a request,” Christian says as I peruse the space. He takes one of the pistols from the rack hanging on the far wall and loads it. He waves me over to the makeshift gun range and sets the pistol between us. “You once told me you were a good shot. Prove it.”

It’s a challenge. I suck in my cheeks and give him a grin before looking at the paper targets down range. “Which one do you want me to hit?”

“All three. In the head.”

“What do I get if I hit them?”

“Whatever you want.”

I smirk and then take the gun and aim at the first target. Then the second. Then the third. I put two bullets in each, and I think I’ve thoroughly surprised Christian. When he presses a button on the wall to bring the targets closer, I’ve hit all three in the head,andin the dick.

He chuckles to himself. “You’re full of surprises, Mrs. Reeves.”

I set down the gun and wrap my arms around his neck. He grips my waist as I rise on my toes to kiss him, hard and heavy and passionately like we kissed in the hallway before my parents arrived.

“We never talked about that photo.”

Christian growls, as if that’s the last thing he wants to talk about right now. “I’m not scared of a threat drawn on one of my mugshots.”

“I am,” I croak. “I already almost lost you once, Christian. I can’t go through that again. I can’t live without you.”

He takes my bottom lip between his teeth and we both groan. “You won’t have to.”

His fingers slide down my body sensually, leaving a path of hot desire in their wake. He pops the button of my jeans with ease, and he slowly makes his way to my core. I suck in a sharp breath when his fingers slide across my slit, already wet and needy. He smiles against my mouth and withdraws his hands before pushing me by my waist to the computer desk and pressing me against it. He doesn’t have to say the words for me to understand.

I lift myself onto the table and he shoves away loose papers and pens to give me more space before tugging my jeans and underwear down my legs and throwing them to the side. He kisses me again, his right hand around my throat possessively, but I stop him. He pulls away, and when we make eye contact, he sees that I’m holding his Silencer mask in my hands.

He pauses and something dark and sexy flickers across his eyes. My body responds by clenching around nothing and growing wetter. I put the mask on him, and this is the first time I’ve ever understood what he means when he says Christian Reeves and the Silencer are two different people.