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CHAPTER 9

NEVE

Morning light cuts across the concrete floor in sharp, pale lines and the man beside me is already gone.

Not from the bed. His body is still warm against mine, his arm draped across my waist, his breath slow against my hair. But the man who whispered praise into my skin and held me through the aftershocks last night is absent. Whatever came through on that phone replaced him with the controlled stranger.

Okay, granted. I haven't really known him for a long time. Hardly anything, actually. But I gave him my virginity and trusted him with my life. My gut screams safe when he's close, yet the man lying next to me right now is a million miles from the one who held me last night.

I stretch against him, testing. His arm tightens, a reflex, possessive even in his distraction. But his gaze is fixed on the ceiling and the muscles beneath his skin hum with a tension I can read from six inches away.

"Good morning." I press a kiss to the scar below his collarbone.

"Morning."

Ugh. An ice cube holds more heat than his flat, cold response.

I prop myself on my elbow and study his profile. Everything in his face is tight. The vein along his temple pulses. His free hand rests on his stomach, fingers curled loosely, but the tendons in his forearm are taut. He's running something in his head. Calculations, exits, plans. Whatever lives behind those whiskey eyes right now has nothing to do with me and everything to do with that phone call he won't explain. I can't prove it, but an educated guess and my gut tell me I’m right.

"You going to tell me what's going on? Does it have anything to do with why I am here and the contract taken out on me?" I am working on the assumption here that direct questions will get me direct answers.

"Nothing's going on, sweetness.” He pulls me into him and rests my head on his shoulder.

I stay there for two seconds before I bounce up and eyeball him. “Thane." I flatten my palm on his chest. His heartbeat is steady and controlled, the way it always is, but the rhythm doesn't match the tension holding his body hostage. "You went ghost on me last night. One minute you're holding me and the next you look at your phone and shut down. That's not nothing."

He turns his head. Those captivating eyes meet mine and for half a second the mask slips. I catch the edge of desperation underneath and it sends a chill up my spine. There’s also fear and fury behind those lashes and then the shutters slam back into place and Thane is his usual self.

"It's being handled, Neve. All we have to do is stay here."

"Handled? By who?"

"By me. I have my connections working on it. I can’t give you more than that."

He sits up, swings his legs off the bed, and reaches for the dark shirt draped over the chair beside the nightstand. Just like that, the conversation is over. I know because he moves with that deliberate efficiency that says he's done talking and his body has already left the room even though his feet haven't.

I pull the sheet to my chest and watch his back. Scars map the terrain between his shoulders, old wounds layered over new ones. My gaze traces the long, puckered line running diagonally from his right shoulder blade to the middle of his spine. A blade did that. A big one. And whoever held it got close enough to make the cut deep.

"I'm not stupid, Thane. I grew up around men who kept secrets and it always ended with someone getting hurt."

He pulls the shirt over his head and turns. His expression is unreadable but his voice softens a fraction. "I know you're not stupid. That's not what this is."

I clutch the sheet to me like a shield that will protect me against whatever truth he might lay on me when I ask, "Then what is it? Tell me. I can handle it."

He crosses to me, cups my jaw, and presses his lips to my forehead. The tenderness of it makes the locked door between us ache worse. "Trust me. I'm keeping you safe. That's all that matters right now."

He pulls away before I can respond and disappears into the bathroom. The shower turns on and the hiss of water fills the safehouse.

I drop back against the pillow and stare at the exposed ductwork overhead. My father's voice echoes in my head, calm and certain the way it always was when he taught me the rules of his world.

Watch what they do, baby girl. Words are tools that can comfort or destroy. Actions are the truth.

Thane's actions say protector. His silence says liar.

Thirty minutes later, I am out of bed, we’ve both showered and we are in the kitchen.

I'm sitting at the counter eating toast I don't taste when his phone buzzes against the glass-top desk across the open room. He crosses to it in four strides, reads the screen, and the line of his shoulders draws tight.

Same. Damn. Reaction-