by Nina Levine
“Yeah, I figured as much.” I put a bullet through his skull.
As he slumps to the ground, Hyde comes through the door. Glancing down at the dead guy, an irritated expression I know well from him crosses his face. Looking up at me, he asks, “Was that fucking necessary?”
I put my gun away. “Yeah, it fucking was.” And besides, King won’t give a shit. His orders are always the same—get the fuck in, get what we need, and get the fuck out. However it needs to be done.
Hyde isn’t King, though. They often disagree. Not that I pay much attention; King is my boss as far as I’m concerned. “It’d be nice if for once I showed up and you didn’t have anything for me to help you clean up.”
The VP knows his chances of that are slim. People always get in my fucking way. Hyde isn’t like me. He can fight like a motherfucker, but he prefers no mess. Me? I’ll take mess any day. It keeps life interesting. The messier the fucking better.
“Okay,” he says, “let’s do this and get the hell out of here.”
We clean up fast and head to the warehouse where King is waiting for us. I’m surprised as fuck to see Detective Stark with him when we pull in. What reason could he possibly have to invite her here? This is where we do the kind of shit no cop should ever fucking know about.
“He still breathing?” King asks as I jump out of the van. He appears stressed, which makes me wonder what the deal is with this guy.
“Yeah. I took care of things exactly how you wanted.”
Hyde exits the van. “Except for the guy you shot.”
King glances between us while Stark watches on in silence, seemingly unfazed by the things she’s hearing. “He’s clean?” Meaning we left nothing that can link him to us.
Hyde nods. “Yeah.”
Stark steps forward. “There better not be any connection to Storm. We don’t need this coming back to bite us on the ass.” Fuck, she’s ice. Emotionless. I’ve never met a female like her. To King, she says, “Let’s get this done.”
As we watch them haul Stefano away, I say to Hyde, “What the fuck is her deal? And why is she here?”
“All you need to know is she’s helping us with a problem we’ve got in Melbourne. This guy was payment for that.”
I arrive home just before 11:00 p.m. and stand under a hot shower for a good fifteen minutes, washing dirt and blood off me. My body is exhausted, but my mind is wired. I won’t sleep much tonight with all this adrenaline racing through my veins.
After I dry off, I pull a pair of jeans on and head to the kitchen to grab the bottle of whisky I picked up earlier. The alcohol will help settle me. I then flick on the television and have just rested my ass on the couch when a text comes through. Figuring it’s King, I check it straight away.
* * *
Zara: Are you home?
Fury: Why?
Zara: Holly’s out. I’m kinda going crazy home alone.
* * *
I call her.
“Hey,” she says in that soft, sexy voice that does shit to me it shouldn’t.
“You okay?”
The line goes quiet, so I repeat myself. A little more forcefully this time, because my need to know is far greater than I wish. “Zara, are you okay?”
“I feel like a fucking idiot, Fury. I told her to go out because I want to face my fears and I figure starting that process in my own home is the best idea. Rationally, I know I’m safe, but I’m slowly losing my shit here tonight. Would you mind if I came over and hung out with you until Holly gets home? I mean, unless you’re going to bed…. I don’t want to bug you if you are. God… I’m sorry. I—”
“Zara, stop. You’re not an idiot.” Then, against all my better judgement, I find myself saying, “Stay there. I’ll come to you.”
She turns silent again, and then says, “Okay. Thank you.”
Jesus, what the hell am I doing?
I pull up outside Zara’s house ten minutes later and steel myself for the onslaught of curves and temptation coming my way before making the short walk to her front door.
When she opens the door barefoot, wearing the tightest black jeans known to man and a flimsy, see-through white tee that dips in a V at the front, I wish to fuck I’d never answered her text. The V draws my eyes to her tits and they stay there for long enough that when I drag them back up to her face, she’s watching me with the same kind of heat blazing through my body.
Christ, I’m not even inside her damn house yet and I’m already imagining my hands on her.
“You cut your hair,” I say, entering when she steps back to let me in.
She closes the door. “Yeah. I wanted a change.”
Her hair now sits just above her shoulders and hangs in sexy waves. It’s on the tip of my tongue to suggest she shave her head the next time she wants a change, but I suspect even a bald Zara would turn me on. I’m fucking screwed.
I head for her lounge room and am almost there when she grabs my shirt and slows me. “Thanks for coming. I’m sorry I interrupted your night.” Her eyes hold hesitation, like she’s not quite sure what to expect from me.
“You didn’t interrupt anything. I’m keyed up tonight, anyway, so I won’t sleep for hours.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You’ve been out doing club stuff? Did you get any dinner?”
“I had something earlier.”
“What?”
I’ve no idea why we’re discussing what I’ve eaten, but I answer her. “I picked up a kebab.”
Taking hold of my arm, she leads me into the kitchen. Nodding at a stool, she says, “I’ll make you something better than a kebab.”
“I don’t need you to—”
She gives me a bossy look. “Sit. We’re not arguing over this; it’s happening.”
The fact I sit confuses the fuck out of me. But I do, and I glue my eyes to her while she rifles through the fridge.
Glancing at me, she asks, “Is there anything you don’t like?”
“No.”
“Allergic to anything?”
“No.”
“So basically, you’ll eat anything I cook?”
“Yeah.”
She smiles big. “Well that makes shit easier.”
She then goes back to rummaging through the fridge, eventually locating ingredients to cook me a meal.
“Right,” she says, loading the counter with a bunch of vegetables. “I hope you’re ready for one of my specialties.”
I eye the ingredients. “What is it?”
She reaches for a chopping board and knife. “You’ll have to wait and see.” As she cuts a red capsicum into strips, she says, “Do you cook much?”
“No, not unless you call throwing frozen shit in the oven and heating it, cooking.”
“But you can cook?”
“Yeah, but cooking for one feels like a waste of time.”
She finishes with the capsicum and stops to look up at me. “Have you always lived alone?”
I might be reading between the lines, but the way she’s looking at me, makes me think what she’s actually asking is ‘have you ever lived with a woman?’.
I nod. “Yeah. Unless you count the six months I lived with my brother after Mum died.”
Moving onto the snow peas, she says, “Does he live in Sydney?”
I never talk about my family. Mostly because no one ever asks me, but also because they’re my least favourite thing to talk about. Family doesn’t mean as much to me as it appears to mean to Zara. Not blood family, anyway. My Storm family, on the other hand, means the fucking world to me.
Knowing she’s got a million more questions inside her, I give her an answer to this one and hope she’ll move on to her next one. “He’s in jail. In Adelaide. I haven’t seen him for four years.”
“Oh, okay. Does he keep in touch with Violet and her mum?”
“He’s never had anything to do with her. Calvin is a piece-of-shit human being and that extends to his fathering efforts.”
Her chopping slows and sh
e directs her full attention to me. Her voice is soft when she says, “It sounds like you made up for that a little, though. I mean, no one can fully replace your real father, but trust me, when a good man steps into those shoes, it makes a difference. And when your dad is a piece-of-shit father, a good man who steps in can make life good. I hope you know that you made a difference in your niece’s life.”
I’ve never known a woman to give enough of a shit about me to say something like that to me. And I know Zara means every damn word she’s saying because after weeks of spending time with her, I know she’s always straight up.
“I hope to fuck I made a difference in Violet’s life. She deserved so much more than I could give her, though. If I know one thing in this life, it’s that if I ever have a child, it will know and be loved by both parents. I’ll make damn sure of that.”
“I don’t know what you did for her, Fury, but I will say this: from my experience with King, him just showing up every day in my life has made a difference to me, let alone all the things he’s actually done for me. We all just want someone to see us and be around in case we need them, right? It’s just knowing he’s there; it makes me feel safe and loved. Violet will grow up knowing you’re there, and that’s everything some days.”
She’s right. It’s the knowing that I never had growing up. The only fucking thing I knew was to expect a beating most days. But this is the last thing I want to be talking about with her in the middle of the night, so I change the subject. “Is there any meat going in this?”
The mood shifts from serious to her blasting me with a sassy smile. “You’re a man who likes his meat, huh?”
I eye all the vegetables sitting on the counter. “I prefer it to all this.”
“And here I was thinking you must eat healthily if you’ve got a body like that.”
“I don’t rely on green shit to build these muscles.”
Her eyes flare with heat and she starts chopping again. Her technique turns a little rough, like she’s not fully concentrating on what she’s doing, to the point where I worry she’s gonna take a finger off.
Placing my hand over hers, I still her. “Let me do it.”
“I’m nearly done.”
I move off my stool and walk around the counter. Taking the knife from her, I say with more insistence, “You’re going to cut your finger off if you keep that up.”
She looks up at me at the same time she angles her body to mine and moves closer. I don’t think she even realises what she’s doing. We were already close; now we’re close in a way King would lose his shit over.
Pressing her hand to my chest, she says, “Careful. You’re showing more of your red.”
What she doesn’t understand is she’s drawing it out of me. She’s bringing feelings and desires to the surface that I’ve never experienced. And it’s causing me to act in ways I don’t recognise.
But damn if I don’t like all of it.
Every feeling, every action, every word.
She’s pulsing through my veins and I’m letting her stay there.
She feels too damn good not to.
I jerk my chin at her and growl, “I’m a hungry man, princess, so you need to get your ass over to the stove and start cooking.”
She doesn’t fail to give me that fucking sass of hers. “I will when you hurry up and chop those vegetables.”
I finish with the vegetables and she makes me a meal. It’s a veggie stir-fry, which I wasn’t keen on when she placed it in front of me, but fuck if it doesn’t taste good.
“You liked it, didn’t you?” she asks as I finish it off.
“If all veggies tasted that good, I would use them to help me build this body.”
She leans forward. “I think we need a little less discussion about that body and a whole lot more of you doing the dishes so I can see that body in action.”
Fuck. Me.
My brows arch. “So let me get this right; I come here when you call, you offer me a meal that I have to help chop veggies for, and then I have to clean up after the meal? Is that how shit works around here?”
She returns the arch of my brows. “Let me get this right; you’re a grown-ass complainer who should be more grateful for a home-cooked meal. And you should show the woman who cooked it some appreciation by getting your ass over to the sink so she can check it out while you wash the damn dishes.”
I’m hard just from listening to what comes out of her mouth; I can only fucking imagine how hard I’d be if that mouth was on me.
I need to slow this train down.
Hell, I need to derail this fucking train.
Moving off the stool, I cut the sexy banter and say, “I think you should go find something for us to watch after I do these dishes.”
Zara reads into what I’m saying and nods slowly. “Yeah, I probably should.”
I watch her leave the kitchen, wishing—not for the first time—that her father wasn’t my president.
She makes me sit through two hours of Friends episodes.
God fucking help me.
Holly texts her around 1:00 a.m. to see if Zara will be okay if she stays at her girlfriend’s place tonight. I don’t miss the panic that fills Zara’s face as she reads the message and relays it to me.
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I offer.
“Are you sure? It’s uncomfortable.” The words coming out of her mouth don’t match the look on her face. She wants to beg me to stay.
“The couch is good. Tell her to stay out.”
“Thank you.” The extreme gratitude she blasts my way hits me fair in the chest. The only other time in my life I recall someone looking at me with that kind of expression was when Violet’s mother thanked me the day I turned up on her doorstep with a week’s worth of groceries and a promise to help her with her new baby.
“Yeah,” I say gruffly.
The next fucking thing I know, she’s snuggling against me with her head on my shoulder and her hand on my stomach as she watches the TV.
Christ.
Tonight is swerving down a risky path.
However, she’s asleep within ten minutes of resting against me.
Thank fuck.
I let her sleep for a while, until I figure she’s in a deep enough sleep for me to move her without fully waking her. Carrying her into her bedroom, I settle her under the covers. I debate whether to remove her jeans. She’d be a helluva lot more comfortable without them, but I don’t want her to wake to a man stripping her. Not after what she’s been through. So I leave her dressed, turn off her lamp, and make my way back out to the lounge room to settle in for the night.
I actually fall asleep. Something I don’t easily do. I’m jolted awake by the sound of Zara having a nightmare. I slowly regain consciousness, but when she screams, I wake fully and bolt into the room.
She’s thrashing around in her bed when I get there, so I flick on the lamp, sit on the edge of the bed and pull her into my arms, trying to soothe her. Her hands grip my shirt and she clings to me as I smooth her hair and try to ease her distress.
It takes a good ten minutes to calm her fully. Once she’s got her breathing under control, she lets me go and rests against the headboard, knees to her chest, arms around her knees, eyes filled with torturous agony. “How long is it going to take for this to stop?”
The anguish in her voice stirs my anger that’s caused by the motherfucker who did this to her. My anger is the last thing she needs, though, so I lock it down.
She’s also not looking for an answer to her question.
She just needs to know I’m here.
She needs someone to sit and wait her fear out with her.
Silence consumes us for a long time until finally she looks up at me and says, “Did you put me to bed? I don’t remember falling asleep.”
I nod. “You fell asleep on the couch.”
“Thank you.”
I stand. “Are you good now?”
Panic touches her face again. “Will you sleep
in here with me?”
Christ.
I eye the floor. “Yeah, okay.”
“Not on the floor, Fury.”
Fuck.
“It’s not a good idea, princess.”
“I know,” she says quietly. “And I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t need you.” It’s when she adds, “I feel like I’m drowning here,” with raw honesty that I cave. I’m used to women trying to manipulate me into shit, but this isn’t Zara trying to do that. This is a cry for help that I can’t ignore even though that’s exactly what I want to do.
I toe my boots off and round the bed. Lying next to her, I place my hands on the pillow under my head and stare up at the roof. What the fuck am I doing?
She switches the lamp off and rolls over to face me, her leg brushing mine as she curls it up.
She then falls back asleep, leaving me wondering how the hell I’m going to survive her.
20
Zara
* * *
Sleeping in jeans is the most uncomfortable thing in the world.
The most comfortable thing in the world is waking up to Fury spooning me, those big arms of his holding me tightly.
He makes me feel safe.
“Are you awake?” I ask.
“Yeah.” The husky tone in his morning voice is something else. I need a whole lot more of it in my life.
A few moments pass before he unwraps his arms from around me, and rolls away. I miss him instantly.
I turn to face him. “Thank you for last night.” I was a mess when I texted him just before midnight. I’d spent the three hours before that telling myself I was okay, that I could make it through the night by myself. I tried to downplay my anxiety when he called; I felt so dumb to reach out to him for help.
He shifts his attention from the ceiling to me. “Do you have a lot of nightmares?”
“Some.”
“How often?”
“A few times a week.”
“And being scared while you’re home alone. Is that usual?”
I nod, feeling defeated and like a failure. “Yes.” My voice cracks as I answer him. These are things I’ve tried to make go away, but instead of succeeding in that, they’ve gotten worse. Or maybe it’s not that they’ve gotten worse, but that each time compounds in my mind, making it all feel like a mountain I can’t scale. I feel like I can’t make it over the top of this mess and get to the other side.