His cock grew stiff in his pants despite his best efforts to feel only pity for the girl.
“This place is protected. You have nothing to worry about here.”
“Please. I won’t take up much room.” She was still touching him, the heat from her hand searing his skin through the fabric of his shirt. “Please.”
“Fine. It’s late. We should get to sleep so we can be out of here by first light. Harb won’t be awake early. Hopefully we can ditch him.”
She peeled down the blanket on one side of the bed. “I don’t have anything with me. I still don’t have the being-kidnapped thing figured out yet.”
“It’s one night.”
“Right. Are you okay if I sleep in my bra and underwear? These pants aren’t very comfortable.”
He groaned in displeasure. “Do whatever you want once the lights go out. Just stay on your side.”
After shutting off the lights, he found his way back to the bed and tugged off his t-shirt. He could hear her undressing but tried not to think much about it. The past few weeks had become increasingly brutal for him. Cleo was lush and gorgeous and didn’t even realize it. Sometimes she’d walk around the house in one of his t-shirts that barely went past her thighs, and it took all his effort to keep disassociated. It was usually easy, but not with her. He’d spent many hours downstairs in his home gym working off the sexual frustration.
When they were both settled in the bed, the shroud of darkness covering them, it was too fucking quiet. He could hear his own breathing, and it was unnerving. She was too close. Too unnaturally silent. Something had broken inside her, and all he wanted to do was fix her, to put her back together without all the damage.
“I’m sorry you’re stuck in the middle of all this,” he said.
“Well, at least you didn’t kill me.”
“Cleo, I’m being serious,” he said. “If I knew things would get this deep, I would have just let you walk.”
“And break your own rules?”
“They’re not my rules.”
“Right. I’ve met your Boss. What he says goes. I get it.”
More silence.
“You aren’t an obligation, Cleo. I came for you. Nobody gave that order.” It felt foreign opening up, allowing himself to be emotionally vulnerable. But she’d gotten under his skin. He wanted to keep her. The way she made him feel was like coming out of a coma and starting to live again. To feel again. She made him laugh. Maybe she was just the push he needed to get his head back in the game, but he knew it was more than that. She put up a tough exterior, but she was vulnerable and fragile at the core. He saw through all her acting, overtalking, and deflecting. Her laughter was to mask the pain. They were more alike than either of them realized.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s because I’m innocent. You’ve told me before,” she said.
“No. It’s more than that. When I saw you were gone, something inside me came to life. Something I’d put to sleep a long time ago.”
She shifted in the bed, facing him. “What happened to you before? When you were still a priest?”
He didn’t share things about himself, certainly not the worst thing he’d ever endured. But he wanted to tell her. Needed to. There was something about Cleo that made him relax.
“It was a long time ago. I lost people I loved. Everyone I loved.”
“They were killed?”
He took a breath. “I was sent to the monastery when I was just a kid. I never thought it was wrong to be sent away from my family because I’d been prepared for it all my life. When I was born, my parents offered me to the church.”
“What? That’s horrible.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was normal in my village. Something special. And even as a kid, I was honored to fulfill my role. But after more than a decade in the church, one day stole everything.”
The local mafia had been growing and building power over the years. They came to the church and ask for blessings but were refused. When the brothers refused to lie and cover up their crimes, they were killed, every last one of them. They wanted to send a message—bend or die. That wasn’t enough. They made every family member related to the priests in the church pay the ultimate price.