by Sienna Blake
“But what?”
“I need clothes. I saw what looked like ladies’ stuff hanging over the door of your closet. Can I borrow those?”
He stiffens.
I realise my mistake in an instant.
Those clothes would be his dead wife’s things.
He probably hadn’t touched them since she died.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t think—”
“It’s fine. You can wear them. Wear… Wear whatever you want.”
This is a big deal for him.
I slip my hand onto his arm. “Are you sure?”
He shakes himself and forces a smile on his face. “It’s fine. You’re about her size, I think. Not like she’s going to need them anymore. I’ll grab clothes for ye while I’m out if you tell me your sizes.”
I tell him, noting how he can’t meet my gaze when I rattle off my bra and underwear size.
“Thank you.” I breathe a sigh of relief. This went a lot better than it could have.
“Magnar needs a push every now and then. More often than not,” I remember Charli whispering to me earlier this morning as we had our heads huddled together over coffee. “I think you’re just the woman to get him out of this rut.”
I hope to hell I haven’t pushed him too far.
~* * * *~
After Magnar leaves, I stand naked in his shower. It’s large enough to fit four people in here. I flush. Why the hell would four people want to share a shower?
My skin is tingly, my nerves seemingly frayed. I have been this way since I woke up this morning to find Magnar kissing me, rolling his delicious weight on top of me and crushing me. A need surged through me unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
Even now, as the water and soap run down my body, I feel as if I might come with just one touch from him.
I shut off the water and let out a breath.
Lord, help me survive Magnar King.
After I dry myself off, I stand wrapped in a towel in Magnar’s bedroom staring at the section of the closet where his wife’s clothes are hanging up. Caitlin wore a lot of dark colours, mostly reds and blacks. Probably to complement her dark hair and eyes.
Darker colours tend to wash me out. So I grab the lightest thing I can find. A white tunic dress with eyehole lace along the hem, and I pair it with skin-coloured tights.
As Magnar guessed, Caitlin and I are almost the same size. Almost.
The dress falls to mid-calf and based on the length of her pants, Caitlin was much taller than me. She fit Magnar, I think with bitterness. I must look like a fecking child next to him with my tiny frame, round eyes and plump cheeks.
The ringing of a phone startles me. I wonder for a moment if I should pick it up but think better of it.
It clicks over to voice message.
“Why aren’t you picking up your fucking phone?” a deep, rough voice barks from the speaker.
There’s a pause, then he hangs up.
Wow, whoever he is, he’s blunt as hell.
No greeting. No goodbye.
I finish drying my hair and think nothing more of it. My mistake.
It’s now what feels like hours later and I’m bored. Where the hell is Magnar?
I’ve walked through his entire apartment. There are three bedrooms, but the master bedroom is the only one that looks lived-in. I’ve run though his book collection and CD collection. I know he has a thing for motorbikes—he has a few motorbike mechanics books—and for business strategy with classics such as The Art of War by Sun Tzu on his shelf.
When I’m done with the living areas, I end up back in his bedroom, tracing my fingers along the dresser—nothing on the top, as if he’s tried to wipe all visual references. I brush my finger on the knob of the dresser and glance to the bedroom door, curiosity burning inside of me.
One insight.
One glimpse into the Magnar he keeps hidden.
No one would ever know.
I close my fingers around the knob and tug.
A hand slams the dresser shut. Before I can move, another hand wraps around my throat. I find myself slammed up against the wall. I can’t even scream; the air is forced out of me.
I blink at the man holding me as he pins me like a butterfly. His hold is firm but not too firm that I can’t breathe.
He is terrifyingly beautiful. Sharp cheekbones, hair cut close to his scalp, perfect skin except for a single mole above his lips that are curled into a snarl. And the most intense deep-set hazel eyes I’ve ever seen behind barely blinking lids rimmed with lashes so dark, they look rimmed in coal.
“W-Who are you?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.
He tilts his head like an animal would do.
Yes, that’s what he reminds me of. A sleek panther, wild and vicious under a glossy coat.
“I should be asking you this same question, little girl,” he says.
His voice is gun-metal deep and feels like it’s grating against the base of my spine. It’s him. The voice from the message. He’s one of Magnar’s friends.
I’m no longer afraid. My fear is drowned by an insistent wave of heat that starts in my core and spreads throughout me.
I should speak, explain myself. But I don’t say anything. I can’t. I’m mesmerised by those eyes, the way they barely blink, the way he studies me. I can smell his earthly scent, like oak moss and pine with a hint of frosty mint. I can feel his breath in a steady rush on my cheeks, feel the heat in his huge palm taking up my whole neck. He is power wrapped in defined solid frame, but unlike Magnar who appears like a sledgehammer, this man is a butcher’s knife: thick, sharp and quick as hell.
“Get your hands off her.”
I recognise Magnar’s voice from the doorway.
This man—Mr Intensity—gives me a single blink, before he uncurls his fingers and withdraws his hand.
I still can’t take my eyes off him. For some reason, I feel a sense of emptiness at the loss of his touch. How fucked up is that?
Mr Intensity finally breaks eye contact.
I feel like I have been released from his spell.
He turns to Magnar. “Explain.”
Magnar doesn’t answer him. He eyes me instead. “I apologise for his rude behaviour. He doesn’t play well with others.”
Mr Intensity doesn’t flinch at this. He hasn’t moved an inch.
Magnar turns to his strange friend and nudges his head to the living room. “Let’s talk,” he says, before walking back out of the bedroom.
When I look back at the beautiful stranger, he’s already staring at me.
“Hi,” I say, feeling shy. “I’m Waylyn.”
He lets his gaze trail over me like ghostly fingers, sending a shiver down my spine, studying me the way a wolf would a rabbit before he pounces.
Then he strides out, leaving me feeling lightheaded. Wondering what the hell just happened. And who the hell he is.
Magnar
“Who is the girl?” X demands before we even get out of Waylyn’s earshot.
We stand in the living room, the bags of food I bought sitting on the kitchen counter giving off a warm, savoury smell that’s making my stomach churn. Or perhaps it’s the way X kept looking at her when I came in, and the way she’d been staring back at him that’s making me feel…off.
I shove these feelings aside.
In a low voice, I explain everything that’d transpired since I left the clubhouse. Well, almost everything. I don’t admit the desires Waylyn inspires in me when she is close or the way my mind flips to her—in my shower, drying herself off with my towel, standing naked in my bedroom—the whole time I’ve been gone. I most definitely don’t tell X about what I did to her—almost did to her—in bed this morning.
As I finish my explanation, X’s expression doesn’t shift an inch. It rarely does with X. His poker face would set all the best players to shame.
“Waylyn Grace…” His voice rubs over her name in a way I’m not sure I like. “How do you know she’s telling the
truth?”
I frown, my defences rising. “Why would she lie?”
“To get insider info and report back to Keegan? To lead you into a trap? To kill you in your sleep? Any and all of the fucking above, King.”
“She could have killed me last night but didn’t.”
X snorts. “The absence of evidence does not prove anything.”
I stamp down my instinct to argue further with him. How can I possibly explain to a man who relies solely on strategy and cold hard logic that my instincts about Waylyn tell me she’s telling the truth? “I guess I don’t know,” I admit.
Despite how much I don’t want it to be true, he has a point. I know almost nothing about Waylyn. Instincts can be wrong. People you think you know can betray you.
Stupid, Magnar, thinking with his d—
Waylyn is making me stupid. And stupid gets you killed real quick in my world.
X glances back over his shoulder. “Leave her with me. I’ll get the truth out of her.”
They don’t call X the Truthmaker for nothing.
I want to say yes. I need space from her. Especially after what happened this morning—what almost happened.
But I don’t want to leave her with him.
Or maybe I just I don’t want to leave her. I remember the way she gazed up at me this morning while under me, awaking a need in me that I thought long dead. She trusts me. She needs me. She wants me the way a woman wants a man.
It’s been far too fucking long since I’ve felt like a man that way.
I let out a sigh. I need to clear my fucking head. I need space. I need to get my sources digging around for information on Waylyn.
“You won’t hurt her,” I say.
“I won’t if I don’t have to.”
“You won’t hurt her,” I say with a growl, feeling my entire body bracing as if I’ve turned into some kind of shield.
X studies me for a moment. Then nods. “As you wish.”
I let out a long breath and rub the spot between my eyes. I’ve leaked too much of my inappropriate feelings about Waylyn already. “I’m going to head to Declan’s, then to headquarters. I’ll stay there the night.”
“It’s for the best. I’ll make up some excuse for you.”
He doesn’t want to me to say goodbye to Waylyn? I open my mouth to argue but then snap it shut when I realise X is watching me. This is a test.
My weapon is testing me.
And I almost failed.
Waylyn
My heart flips when Mr Intensity appears at the bedroom door. He nudges his head out towards the living area. “Eat.”
Obviously, a man of few words.
I follow this mysterious man out into the living area. He stands by the kitchen counter where bags of food emit a lovely savoury smell making my stomach growl. More shopping bags in a pile on the floor.
But there’s something—or rather someone—missing.
“Where’s Magnar?” I ask.
“He had to leave.”
Without saying goodbye? A stab of rejection goes through me.
“Oh,” I say as if I don’t care. I do care. I care too fucking much. He obviously doesn’t, though. Stupid girl. “When will he be back?” In other words, how long has he left me alone with you?
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I almost choke on my tongue.
“Don’t worry. He’s asked me to…take care of you.”
The smile he gives me sends a thrill down my spine. “You’re staying here? Tonight?” Alone with me?
He nods. “Sit. Eat.”
My head is in a whirl as I slide onto one of the stools lining the counter and grab the nearest bag. My appetite seems to have gone. But I know I’ll regret it if I don’t eat something. The last meal I had might have been yesterday lunchtime. Over twenty-four hours without food.
Although it’s not the first time I’ve gone that long without it.
Why did Magnar leave me with his mysterious friend? And alone all night? Without even talking to me first?
Relax, Waylyn. Magnar trusts this man so you have to trust him too.
My stomach lets out a growl. I tear into the bags, determined to meet everything one thing at a time. Food first, then I can worry about what the hell this all means.
Magnar obviously didn’t know what to get me so he brought me a bit of everything: a breakfast muffin with egg and bacon, a ham and cheese croissant. Also, a yogurt bowl with granola and berries, a takeaway stack of pancakes with maple syrup in tiny pour packets. Then a takeaway container with what looks like a full Irish breakfast in it, complete with black pudding.
No wonder he took so long. Ironic that they’re all breakfast foods when it’s closer to dinner time.
Mr Intensity just watches me as I pick my way through the Irish breakfast, starting with the black pudding, my favourite. I can barely taste it, though. He is making me so nervous. I’m intensely aware of every time he blinks—rarely—and how his gaze seems to fix onto my mouth before sliding to my hands, then back to my lips.
He’s so damn beautiful. My eyes keep drawing to the sharp lines of his face, those structured cheekbones that Michelangelo would die to recreate. Every single time his gaze snaps to mine, it feels as if he’s too aware of me. I blush furiously every time I’m caught staring and tear my eyes away. But not for long. Never for long.
“So…” I blurt out when the silence has gotten to be too much.
He says nothing. I imagine he’d be perfectly comfortable sitting in silence all night long. The longer the silence goes, the longer he watches me, the thicker the air gets, and the more a strange sticky film coats the insides of my thighs.
“What is your name?” I start with something simple.
“X.”
I stop mid-chew. “Excuse me?”
“Everybody calls me X.”
I frown. “Like the letter?”
“Like the cross marking your grave if you fuck with me, Magnar or any of the Kings.”
I blink at him, my body pleasantly numb, as X’s words are like dirt falling off my shoulders.
The amount of threats and abuse that Keegan has served me over the last five years has made me immune to them. I know X should frighten me. But he doesn’t.
I’ve known evil. True evil. I’ve lived with evil, slept beside evil, shut my eyes and prayed as evil invaded my body time and time again.
X doesn’t feel evil. Not truly.
I nod at X. “You must be Magnar’s…enforcer. The name X is fitting for you, then.”
X lifts an eyebrow. “Girls like you shouldn’t be so well-versed in things like that. And you shouldn’t talk so casually about something so…ugly.”
“Yeah, well,” I say, tearing a hash brown into pieces, my voice going low, “there are a lot of things I shouldn’t know about, but I do.”
Keegan spoke openly around me. Too openly. And he did things in front of me I wish he hadn’t. Things I can’t unsee. Things I cannot scrape away from the walls of my nightmares no matter how hard I try.
They are stains that have soaked into my fabric.
Darkness woven into my soul.
And by the look on X’s face—the look he has somehow let past his cold, unfeeling façade—he understands too.
Like attracts like.
Dark calls to dark.
And there is something in me that calls to him. The same way he calls to me.
“Do you like what you do for Magnar? Do you like being…an enforcer?”
X blinks. As if my question surprises him. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.” To me. It should to you.
“Does a sword enjoy being a weapon? Does he revel in the blood that coats his armour? Or the lives he cuts apart from this mortal tether?”
“You see yourself as a thing?” I ask.
“A sword doesn’t see itself as anything. It just is.”
I suddenly understand.
Despite X’s coldness, his hidden savagery, there is som
ething noble about him, about his loyalty to Magnar and his brothers. He would slice a man into pieces but he wouldn’t enjoy it. In fact, the act would cost him yet another piece of his soul.
But he’d sell every last bit for his friends. His brothers. His family.
My stomach twists. I wish I had someone who’d do that for me.
If Magnar trusts him alone with me, then I do, too.
“Tell me about your fiancé?” he asks.
My entire body bristles at the mention of Keegan. “He’s not my fiancé,” I spit.
A slow smile crawls across X’s face, sending a shiver down my spine. “No? You weren’t slated to marry him…this week?”
I shake my head. “He… He forced me.”
“Really? You don’t fancy yourself an underworld queen? A Boss’s wife?”
“I don’t want that. Never wanted that. Any of it,” I add quietly.
“What do you want, Waylyn?”
I think it’s the first time in my life that I’ve been asked that question. This fact stings the back of my eyes.
I meet X’s stare. “I just want to be free.”
X
The girl must be lying.
She must.
But everything in her demeanour as she tells me her story screams to me that she truly is an innocent, a victim of Keegan’s for over five years.
Still, she might be the world’s best actress. I can’t fully trust her. Truthfully, I don’t want to.
She makes me…jittery. On edge.
I can’t put my finger on why.
She makes me feel…
That’s it…she makes me feel.
I thought I left behind such needless human trifles such as feelings and emotions. It is what has made me who I am, the best at what I do, Magnar’s perfect weapon.
I feel nothing when I kill.
No guilt.
No remorse.
Sometimes it even scares me when I consider how far I could go if Magnar wasn’t clear on several things:
No killing women.
No killing children.
No killing innocents.
That’s why I am just the sword and Magnar is the arm that wields me.