Hidden with you, p.9
Hidden With You, page 9
“Yes?” The voice was low, almost a whisper. He would never recognize it if he heard the person speaking normally. His only clue was that he was almost certain the speaker was a man.
“This is Jasper Kent. I got a message to call this number.”
“Kill her,” the voice said. “Kill her, or others will die, too.”
“Kill her? Melinda?”
“I’m hiring you, Kent,” the voice said. “Kill Zelda Clayton, and in payment, I’ll tell you where to find The Maestro.”
Chapter Ten
I’m in bed, half asleep with a book on my chest when I hear the light tap at the door. The sound jerks me fully awake. At first because I’m startled—after all, usually there’s no one else in this cottage with me—but also because as soon as the strangeness of the sound fades, I realize who must be doing the knocking.
“It’s open.”
As the door pushes inward, I slide up to a sitting position, my back against the padded headboard. I’m wearing nothing but a tank top and underwear, and I keep the sheet pulled up to my waist.
He stands there, silhouetted by the light from the living room. In contrast, my room is dark, the only illumination coming from the small clip-on light I was using to read in bed.
He’s large, filling the doorway, and he looks casual, having changed into pajama bottoms and a plain gray T-shirt. For a moment, he just stands there and looks at me, the inspection taking so long that I actually pull the sheet up higher, strangely uncomfortable.
I tug it over my breasts, then hold it in place under my arms. Not that I was revealing anything, but I’m suddenly feeling strangely exposed. Ironic considering how hard I’ve been trying to get him in bed since the moment I met him. He steps all the way into the room, and I realize that one of his hands is in his pocket. He’s holding something, his clutched hand making a bulge in the pajama pocket.
I see his throat move as he swallows, then his head tilts to the side, and he says, so softly that I can barely hear him, “I’m sorry.”
For a moment, cold fear rushes through me. As if he is the one who was the danger to me all along. “Jasper, what—”
He tugs his hand free, and I see that it’s balled into a fist. His pocket is still weighted down, but whatever is in there, he doesn’t seem to be keen on showing me. My heart pounds in my chest, and I curse my overactive imagination. Jasper is here to protect me. Not hurt me.
But right now, everything seems so very, very wrong.
He shakes his head, as if shaking off a chill, and I hear a strange buzzing noise. It stops, then repeats. When it starts up again, I burst out laughing, the hysterical laughter of pure relief.
It’s his phone.
When he pulls it from his pocket, it’s still buzzing.
“Sorry. Just a sec.” He taps out a response to the text, then slides the phone back into his pocket, hiding it away. Then he offers me a watery smile. “Ryan. Sorry for the interruption.”
“Why are you here?” I can’t put my finger on it, but something still seems off.
“I just wanted to tell you that everything was calm today. No indications of any threat.”
“Seriously? You came in to debrief me on nothing?”
“Yes. No.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Maybe you came in to give me the chance to apologize.” I’d been looking at him, but now I glance down as I twist my fingers in the sheet. “I’ve been a brat, and I’m sorry. It’s just that I like you. But you’re here on a job, and the fact that we almost hooked up doesn’t mean you owe me anything. Not your secrets or your story. And definitely not sex, although I wouldn’t turn it down.” I lift my eyes as I say the last part. “Sorry. I’m trying to be polite and adult. I mean it. Really. Not trying to be flip.”
For a moment, he doesn’t say a word. Then he takes a step forward. “You’re right. I don’t owe you. But if it makes you feel any better, I want it, too.”
I bite my lip, feeling like I’m all of sixteen. “Yeah?”
“Don’t be coy. You know that I do.”
“But you’re not going there.”
“No,” he says. “And yet you keep pushing. Why?”
“I’m not pushing,” I say. “That’s the point of this speech.”
He laughs, sounding genuinely amused. I raise a brow, irritated.
“Sorry,” he says. “I mean before. You pushed. And hard.”
“Thus the apology. As for why…?” I trail off with a shrug. After a few moments, my chest feels tight.
“What?”
I realize I’m holding my breath. I swallow and look at my legs and torso, hidden under the sheet. At this body of mine that is craving. Wanting. “To feel,” I say. “There’s a sizzle with you. Electricity. I think you feel it, too, and I crave it. I really do.” I draw in a breath but then rush on, afraid he’ll say something before I can get it all out. “I want to feel that. I want the burn. I go out into the world, and everyone thinks that I’m so sparkly and full of sunshine, but I’m not. I’m dark and I’m alone, and I want to feel loved.”
He closes his eyes, and I’m afraid I’ve gone too far.
“Sex isn’t love.”
“Maybe it’s as close as I can get.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Believe me. I wish I hadn’t.” I want to hit myself. I sound like I’m on a goddamn psychiatrist’s couch. But there’s something about this man that makes me want to share my secrets. And not just secrets, my angst. My trauma. My psychosis.
“I’m messed up,” I continue. “Obviously. I put on a good show, but you came into my room to say goodnight, and I start spewing off about sleeping with you. Clearly, I’m a basket case.”
“Would it help if I said that I think you’re incredible?”
His words catch my attention, but his tone fills my soul. “You have very poor judgment.”
“No, I don’t. Say ‘Thank you, Jasper.’”
I swallow. “Thank you, Jasper.”
He comes and sits on the side of my bed, so close that his hip brushes my covered thigh. “What do you want, Zelda? Right now, what do you want?”
My heart pounds, my skin tingles, and my nipples are so tight he can probably see them even under the tank and the sheet.
“What I don’t want is a relationship,” I say, speaking rapid-fire fast. “Not that it matters, because nothing’s going to happen between us, because I’m too young, and you’re too old, and I’m hiring the company you work for. All of which are valid reasons even if they are stupid.”
He laughs.
“What?”
“For someone who tries so hard to tell me she’s not young, that sounded pretty much like a teenager.”
I reach over for one of the small pillows that decorate the bed, then smack him lightly on the head. “Do you want to have a real conversation or not?”
“Not if you’re going to assault me. Why don’t you want a relationship?”
“Why don’t you?”
His mouth curves into a grin. “I asked you first.”
“Now who’s acting like a teenager?”
He stares me down.
“Fine. I don’t want one because they’re not real. They don’t last. People die or they leave.” I think about Mark, my first boyfriend. I’d been twelve years old and we’d been best friends and so in love. At least, what passed for love at twelve, and I’d thought that being with him would fix everything that was bad about being in my house.
Then one day, he died. Turned out he had a defect in his heart, and he was just gone. I never trusted life again. It was too cavalier. Life had taken Mark and left me broken.
The only good thing that came out of it was Twisted Destiny, the series he inspired. I pumped that out of me over the course of several months of pain and loss and loneliness and do-it-yourself therapy with my fingers on a keyboard.
I’d said none of that aloud, but Jasper’s looking at me like he heard it all. “Some relationships last,” he says, and I snort, thinking of every failed date, every friend that moved away. And thinking of my mom and Carter, who just didn’t give a crap.
“Look at Ryan and Jamie.”
I shrug.
“Or Nikki and Damien Stark. They’ve been through hell, at least according to everything I’ve read in the newspapers. And they seem to be going strong. I know a lot of people with strong relationships.”
“Well, aren’t they the lucky ones. But that’s not me.”
“Maybe it could be.”
“This is my reality. I have to live in it. Besides, I would think you’d approve. All the sex, none of the clinginess. It’s an open offer.”
“Zelda.”
“Dammit, everyone’s reality is different. It’s spun from what we know, the world we’ve seen. The things we’ve experienced. This is mine.”
“Yours sounds sad.”
“And yours isn’t?” I snap.
I regret the question the moment it’s out of my mouth because I can see that it’s hit him with the force of a slap. His expression is a more potent answer than any he could ever speak, but when his words do come, they still break my heart.
“I loved my wife,” he says, his voice low but steady. “I loved my daughter. That relationship meant everything to me, and I lost it. And I swear I will do whatever I can to find out who took them from me.”
“I believe you.” I want to ask him if Leah’s right, and if he’s been using whatever resources he can scrape together to try and track down their killer. I want to ask him if he’s had any luck, and how long he’s going to pursue that path. Because I can’t imagine my mother lifting one single finger if I were to disappear from this earth, and the fact that he’s still chasing the monster who took his family after so many years gives me a little bit of hope.
I’m just not sure that I want to have hope. It can be so disappointing if it doesn’t pan out.
For a moment, nobody says anything, then he reaches over and puts his hand on my thigh. Even through the covers, I feel the heat of the connection. “You’re right. Our realities are different. My daughter’s life was nothing like yours. And I’m sorry for you.”
I shrug. He knows my story. “But don’t be sorry for me. Maybe my career is fate balancing the scales.”
His brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
I shrug. “Shitty family life but good career. Maybe it’s karma.”
“Is that what you really think?”
I glance away. The truth is I don’t have many close friends. Even outside of sex, I don’t do relationships, not really. Leah’s the closest, and I think that only lasted because she feels more like an aunt even though I know we somehow became friends. So yeah. I have a kick-ass career, but most of the time, I’m just lonely.
I smile up at him. “Karma really is a bitch.” I put my hand over his. “But at least I’m not alone right now.” I pitch my voice up at the end, like a question. Or an invitation.
For a moment we sit in silence. I don’t know what he’s thinking. If he’s thinking about his family or my life or about my silent invitation.
As for me, I’m thinking about Karma the Bitch. If my success really is a balancing of the scales, then I’d like to take it back. Because on the whole, I think I’d rather have my dad and a better mom and no Carter Malloy at all. But my life is not one of my fantasy novels, and I can’t rearrange the people in it any more than I can conjure a multiverse.
Beside me, Jasper is slowly stroking his fingertips along my forearm. The hairs are standing up, and the light tickle is more sensual than it should be. It’s a caress, bare fingers against bare skin, and all I want is for it to continue.
“Jasper...” My voice trails off. I want to beg, but I also don’t want to beg.
I’m not sure he even heard me, though. “You’re so young,” he whispers. “And so small. I could break you without the slightest effort, but all I want to do is take care of you.”
“Like a pet?” I ask with a laugh.
“No,” he says, without any humor in his voice. “Definitely not like a pet.”
“I told you what I want,” I say. “But let me remind you.” I slide out from under the covers, revealing myself in just the tank and panties. “Put your back here,” I say, urging him to sit where I’d been, his back against the headboard.
“Zelda.”
“Just do it.”
For a moment, I think he’s going to say no, but then he settles onto the bed. I straddle him, feeling his erection under the thin flannel of the pajama bottoms. I rock my hips as I hold onto his shoulders so that I’m leaning forward. The tank top is very loose, the kind I usually wear with a sports bra. I know that he can see my breasts, and as I grind harder, I see him bite his lip, trying to hold back. I lean forward and brush my lips over his ear. “Admit that you like this.”
“I can’t really deny it.” His voice is strained and only turns me on more.
“Do you want me to call you Daddy?” I whisper the tease, then feel him go tense.
“No,” he says, his voice hard. “I really don’t.”
I lean back to see his eyes.
“That’s not why I’m attracted to you.”
I’d been teasing, willing to play a game. To keep everything between us about the sex. The fantasy. Because everything else gets complicated. But at the same time, I’m glad he doesn’t want to play that game. “Tell me why you are attracted to me.”
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because you don’t want it to last. Which means you don’t get to know. All you need to know is that I want you. Is that enough?”
My heart is pounding in my chest, and I nod. “Yes,” I say.
He lifts his hands and cups my breasts. Then he raises one higher and encircles my throat. His hand is big, and he tightens it around my neck. “It would be so easy to bend you,” he says. “To make you do anything I want. To break you.”
“Yes,” I whisper. His eyes meet mine, and we stay like that. I’ve stopped moving entirely, and I can feel the pressure of his hand at my throat. This could be fun. This could be dangerous.
I think about the way he looked when he walked into the room just a few minutes earlier. Like a man on a mission. A man about to destroy. Right now, I can’t deny that I want him to destroy me.
He releases me, then slides me off him. I gasp in surprise.
“Get dressed. We’re going out.”
My whole body sags with disappointment. “I thought we shouldn’t go out unless it was necessary. There might be someone watching me. And besides, don’t you want to stay inside?”
“We’re going out,” he repeats. “And trust me. I know how to lose a tail.”
Chapter Eleven
“Did I piss you off?” Zelda looked at him sideways at him as they walked the beach. “I mean, this was your idea, and you haven’t said two words.”
She was right. He was being an ass. He was the one who suggested they go out. He’d taken a circuitous route to Santa Monica, taking care to make certain they didn’t have a tail, and now here they were walking barefoot in the surf under a starry sky.
It was a lovely night, and he was the one who had started this.
He was the one who was ruining it too.
“Everything’s fine,” he lied, the mysterious raspy voice still ringing in his head. Kill her, and I’ll tell you where to find The Maestro.
She stopped, tilting her head as she looked up at him. “So I didn’t make you angry. This isn’t about the daddy thing?”
He almost laughed, then he realized she was serious about the question. “I already told you that doesn’t do it for me. But it hardly pissed me off.”
“Good. It doesn’t do it for me either.”
“Then why’d you bring it up?”
“Hello? Because I’m trying things. I’ve made it perfectly clear that I want more. That I want to finish what we started. You kind of left me hanging. For that matter, you’ve kind of left me hanging twice now.”
“So you’re looking for ways to entice me into changing my mind.”
“Hell, yes.”
He laughed. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
“We get along, Jasper. You know we do. There may be two decades between us, but we get along great.”
He couldn’t disagree. It had been a long time since he’d felt this easy with a woman. He had a good time with Liesl, but there wasn’t this kind of heat with her. That was just burning off steam. With Zelda, it felt like there might be something real.
But he wasn’t sure he was ready for real.
“Did I lose you?”
He stopped walking long enough to look at her. “Just sex. That’s all you want. Just sex.”
“What can I say? I’m a girl who knows what she wants. And it sounds a whole lot less complicated than getting into a relationship.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said as he turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. She hurried to catch up with him as he lengthened his strides.
“Where are we going?”
“Back to the car.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Because sand is itchy, and the water is cold.”
For a moment, she looked confused. Then her laughter bubbled into the night as she skipped in the surf. “Finally.”
He shook his head, laughing. Unable to deny that this woman’s exuberance was working on him.
It didn’t take them long to reach his Alfa Romeo, but he decided to drive back the long way, and so he turned north on Sepulveda and took that street to Mulholland, the famous dark and twisty road that ran along the top of the hills that separated the San Fernando Valley from the West Side.
He wanted to see the night above them and the city below, and he knew damn well he was taking the curves too fast, but that was what this kind of car was made for. She didn’t seem to mind at all. She held on to the handhold and watched as the headlights cut through the dark. And when he made a sharp left into a turnabout with a view of the Valley, she squealed with delight.
“You do like to live dangerously,” he said, putting the car in park and killing the engine.
