“Security?” She gives me a long, knowing look, brows lifted. “For Maxim Cade?”
“And others, as needed.”
“If I can trust you,” she says, challenge invading her dark eyes, “then tell me the truth. Do you kill people?”
No one has ever asked me that question outright. Why would they? Those who know the answer have no need to ask. Those who suspect know better than to ask.
If it were anyone else, I’d put on my clothes and leave without answering. I don’t only know where the bodies are buried—most of them, I put there myself. But this small woman with her arms folded over her heart and her lonely eyes begging for something real and true, her I can’t deny.
“Yes.”
Shock widens her eyes and parts her lips. “You do?”
“If people need killing, yeah. I’ve done it.”
My jaw ticks in the silence following my admission. I never give a flying fuck what anyone thinks, but I find myself tensed in case she leaps off the bed and orders me out. I’m braced for her contempt.
“Did they deserve it?” she asks instead, a frown knitting her brows. “Were they bad people?”
“Every one of them.”
A parade of faces passes through my memory—each one a murderer, a molester, a villain who would have only caused more hurt had I pardoned him. I hesitate, not sure I should tell her the real secret—that even though mercy never occurred to me, I’m still haunted by each life I’ve taken. I did what had to be done because I could; I was trained to, but I still wonder every time if it was my place to decide.
“So the end justifies the means?” she asks.
I wind a lock of her dark hair around my hand, tempted to jerk her to me and eat the questions out of her mouth. Instead, I loosen the hair, watch it fall over her breast in the dim light. “No, the end is just the end. Justifying killing someone is a dangerous habit. It fucks with your moral compass. If you kill a man, you have to be prepared to live with the fact that it may have been wrong. You can’t tell yourself it’s right just to scrub your conscience, or just to face yourself. You did what needed to be done. Full stop. If you keep telling yourself it was right, one day you’ll wake up a monster. Better to carry the wrong of what you’ve done than lose sight of what wrong is altogether.”
She studies me for long, tense seconds, biting her bottom lip. Then she shifts from my lap, rolls off the bed, and leaves the bedroom.
Okay. Well, there’s my answer.
I gambled, telling someone the truth for once, and I lost. I throw my legs over the side of the bed just as Noelani walks back in. Her silk robe is back in place, tied firmly at her waist. She comes to stand directly in front of me, between my knees, and pulls the downy comforter over my lap.
“I, um . . . was having trouble concentrating with all this naked skin,” she says, rose rising under the dark gold of her cheekbones.
“If you want me to talk . . .” She glances up at me. “I’m ready.”
Chapter 7
Noelani
Grim yanks me back into his lap, as if my being anywhere else right now offends him. His hands find my hair again, threading through the strands and tilting my head to his. His thumb traces the outline of the gem-studded flower in my hair, the action reverent even though I feel his cock doing very irreverent things underneath the blanket as he caresses the innocuous little flower that brought us to this moment.
But flower and interested dick aside, the rest of Grim is all focus. His eyes search my face as he asks me again. “Who, Lani? Tell me who it is, and I’ll fix it.”
It’s a habit to bristle when people ask about the ugly parts of my life. For years I had to pretend that Rua was perfect—attentive and patient and generous—and then after his death, any kind of honesty would have been tantamount to admitting weakness. That sounds like pride, I know, and I am a proud woman. I am descended from queens and I am a queen myself, after all. But in Ka’eo’s regency, there’s more than pride at stake. Any scent of weakness will bring the sharks, both from within Manaroa and from without. The last thing I need is our country’s politicians or oil companies aware of how fragile the palace peace is.
So yes, I was defensive earlier when Grim asked, and I’m defensive now. But his steady, no-bullshit gaze reminds me that there’s no hiding from the truth.
It reminds me that he cares. A lot.
Even though we’ve only known each other for one night, even though we will never see each other again. He wants me safe enough that he’s willing to be growly about it, and that sends a small jolt of happiness right down to my toes.
No one’s ever been growly about me before.
I take a deep breath and confess. “Kimo. My brother-in-law. You met him at the reception tonight.”
Grim’s anger, I find, is not like mine. It doesn’t gather like a sudden squall on the water, furious and crackling one second and then dissolve back into blue skies the next second. Grim’s anger is slow and hot, a kind of deep, geologic anger that rolls through his body like lava. I can feel it under his skin, turning his breathing into precise, controlled sucks of air, turning his muscles into sizzling stone.