I shook my head when she looked at me, tears still leaking from her eyes. “No, baby.”
Suddenly, a piercing blare wrenched into the air and I leapt to my feet, racing into the kitchen. “Shit.” I pulled the smoking frying pan off the stove and dumped it in the sink. London was right behind me. She grabbed a dish towel, stood on her tiptoes, and waved it in the air under the smoke alarm.
The alarm stopped.
I walked toward her and it was fuckin’ nice because London kept her eyes locked on me. No flinching, no tension, and she even raised her chin a bit. And that got me hard.
Because nothing did it for me more than London. The girl who had enough compassion for the both of us. The girl who was brave in her own quiet way.
“The belt. You did that on purpose,” she said.
I shrugged and kept coming until I was inches away and she had to crank her neck in order to keep eye contact.
“You were never going to hit me?”
I grinned. “You were ready. So, yeah, I would’ve if you refused to fight back.”
She glared. I grew harder because glaring was good. Glaring meant she had backbone. “And what if I never fought back?”
“Then you’d have a sore ass right now.”
Her mouth hung open, then she snapped it closed.
“It wouldn’t have come to that though. You were ready to fight me. You were just searching for a way to do it. I gave it to you.”
I watched her think about it. London calculated. She wanted every possible solution deliberated before she acted or spoke, except when she got angry. Then she was a missile. I did the same thing. I was dead if I didn’t, because in my business, it rarely went the way you anticipated. And outcomes were variable.
Our outcome was one big variable because she couldn’t stay here forever, and for the first time I was beginning to contemplate the possibility of ending Vault. How to get my sister out? How to shut down the farm and take out the board members? Because doing all that made London safe. It made us safe.
“So, what now?”
I walked over and yanked my knife from the cupboard it was embedded in. “We start over. Grab the bread, baby.”
Then we made grilled cheeses.Yellow SheetsWITH MY ARMS crossed, ankles matching, I leaned against the doorframe watching her. A subtle smirk played at the corners of my mouth.
I’d been watching her every fuckin’ chance I had. It was two weeks after our fight in the kitchen and each day she was getting stronger, not in the physical sense, but emotionally.
She no longer moved tentatively and cautiously. Instead, her shoulders lifted and her hips had a natural, delicate sway again. The magnetic draw of my brave little scientist was irresistible. London was the woman who tested all my control.
She was also the one who could hurt me, who would be used against me if given the chance. I could never let that happen again. But for once in my life, I had no plan except keep her here hidden until I did have a plan.
“Are you going to stand there or help me?” she said.
I inwardly smiled before pushing away from the doorframe and stalking toward her. And it was stalking because for the first time in years, I was going to taste her again. She may not know my intent yet, but she would soon enough.
I didn’t bring her to my home on a whim. There was always a purpose and my purpose was to have London again in every way. To make her completely mine.
With London, I had no need to hide who I was. She was the lightness. She was the warmth that built inside me that had been destroyed by the farm. I’d always have parts of who they made me into, just like London would from what happened to her, but both of us were finding a way to live with what was done to us.
She sidled past, completely ignoring me, focused on her project, which was putting together the spare bedroom. We’d finished the floors, sanding, staining, and three coats of varnish. I set up the bedframe and moved the mattress back in and now London was making the bed with fresh sheets.
I strolled over to the opposite side of the bed, grabbed the edge of the sheet to hook it on the one corner while she pulled tight and stretched it to the other.
“It would look much better with yellow sheets. Brighten up the room.” She ran her hand over the cool white surface, smoothing out the wrinkles then tossed one of the pillows to the head of the bed.
“You brighten the room enough. Don’t need fuckin’ yellow sheets.”
Her gaze lifted from the pillow sham she was holding and held mine. “Why did you do it? Put new sheets on my bed that first night?”