Page 57 of Irrevocably

I feel even colder. This should worry me, this should be making me head straight home and inform my father, yet all I can feel is the hurt sitting like a piece of broken glass inside me.

“You want it, too, don’t you?” I ask, even though I already know. “Is that why you fucked me? Is that why you⁠—”

“No.” His voice falls over mine like an iron bar, cutting me off, the familiar blue flame of his hunger burning in his eyes. “I fucked you, because I wanted you, Astrid. Not for any other reason.”

It’s stupid how that eases the hurt, sands off the sharp edges of that piece of glass. I did want him to want me. I wanted him to want me the way I want him.

“But,” he goes on. “I did target you. I put those cameras in your house and in your father’s office at the station. I put spyware on your phone so I could track you. I decided you were the key to getting the information I needed.”

This is not news to me. Of course he targeted me, that’s why he approached me on the beach that day, why he followed me around on campus, and blackmailed me into going for a drink with him. The spyware on my phone I had no idea about, though.

“But I didn’t have it,” I say.

His eyes glitter as he stares at me. “No, and I still need it.”

“I really was going to talk to Dad tonight,” I say, and it’s the truth, though it wasn’t for his sake. It was for mine. “I can still talk to him.”

“Or I could take you into the shed where your friend is and put a little pressure on him to spill his guts.” His voice is almost casual as he talks about potentially torturing me, and maybe even a week ago, I would have been terrified.

But I’m not terrified. He threatened to do the same with Dad and he didn’t. He won’t do it now, either. I don’t know why I’m so sure of that, not when he hasn’t given me any reason to be, yet I am.

“No, you won’t,” I say quietly, clearly.

For a long second, we stare at each other, then finally he says, “Why do you trust me? Because you do, don’t you?” There’s a note of genuine puzzlement in his voice now. “You fell asleep on me, like you knew I wouldn’t hurt you.”

He looks baffled by this, and I think I understand why. In his mind he’s a killer, and if his world is as dangerous as he implies, then trust must be a very rare commodity.

I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I just… You didn’t do what you threatened to do with Dad, though you could have. And you didn’t kill Wolf, though again, you could have.”

“Mistakes,” he says, dismissive. But his gaze is pinned to mine as if he wants me to keep going, to give him some insight.

Not for the first time, I wonder what kind of life he must have if simple human emotions like trust are such a mystery to him. Then I remember the scars on his back and how a man like him would have come by those scars. Someone must have hurt him and hurt him badly.

My heart tightens, though I have no idea why I should care, or why I’m even thinking about those scars, and how he got them. Why I’m hurt by the knowledge that what’s between us can’t go anywhere.

If anything, I should be scared. I don’t want to be anyone else’s target but his, after all. But again, all that seems to matter to me is him.

“I’ve never been afraid of you,” I say. “Perhaps I was on the beach that day, but not afterwards. You pissed me off more than anything else.”

His gaze roams over my face. “You have no idea who I am, though. I killed a man in front of you, I slit his throat then I kissed you, got his blood all over you.”

“I know,” I say. “But you didn’t kill me, did you?”

“That’s a very low bar.”

He’s not being funny, but I can’t help smiling, despite everything else. “True,” I say. “You’re dangerous, and yet … I don’t think you’re dangerous to me.”

But that’s a lie, isn’t it? He is dangerous to you.

The piece of glass sitting inside me, that little piece of hurt, shifts and I know that’s the truth. He is dangerous to me, though not physically. It’s more how he makes me feel and how he sees me, and how he doesn’t judge me.

He says nothing for a long moment, then raises one hand to cup my cheek. His palm is warm and I can’t help but lean into it. “I have orders, Tinkerbell,” he says softly. “Orders I have to follow, because if I don’t, I won’t ever be free.”

My chest tightens. He’s given me a little piece of himself, hasn’t he? A small truth that means something to him, I can hear it in his voice.

“Free?” I echo. “Free of what?”

He brushes his thumb over my cheekbone. “Everything.”