Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 130317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
She didn’t have any answers so she just nodded her head.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go make breakfast now.”
She turned and headed out of the bedroom, refusing to let herself look at her partner. But she couldn’t help catching the look of hurt and confusion on his face out of the corner of her eye.
And she couldn’t stop the feeling that she couldn’t have hurt him any more if she’d put a knife in his guts.
THIRTY-THREE
SEV
Sev felt gut-punched—there was no other word for it. He had known his partner might have some difficulty dealing with the things they’d done the night before, but he’d had no idea that she would threaten to end not just their personal relationship but their professional one as well.
I can’t live without her in my life—or at least, I sure as hell don’t want to, he thought. She’s holding all the cards. I may be the fucking Dominant in this relationship—at least sexually—but Mia is the one in charge.
The thought that he really could lose her made him feel sick. It reminded him of the time at the gas station when they’d walked in on a robbery in progress and the robber had turned his gun on Mia.
Sev had been willing to die to save his partner that day—and he’d been so horrified at the thought of almost losing her that he’d gathered her into his arms afterwards, even though at that time they barely touched. All he could see when Mia had been staring down the barrel of the gun was a life without her—a cold, empty void without the one person who brought color and life and love to his existence—even if she didn’t know it.
He’d sworn to himself on that day that he would do anything to keep her—even pretend he didn’t love her.
Well, I guess it’s time to make good on that promise, he told himself as he slowly finished getting dressed. Mia wants to go back to the beginning—to when we never even touched or hugged or laughed or joked with each other. She wants a strictly professional relationship and if you can’t provide it, she’ll find herself a partner who can.
But pretending that he didn’t love her had been a hell of a lot easier before they’d been intimate. Now he knew his partner in ways he never had before. He knew the scent of the delicate skin on her inner thighs…the taste of her honey…the sound of her cries as she came for him. Putting those experiences away and pretending they had never happened was going to be damn near impossible.
Well, you’d better make it possible or you’re going to lose her, he told himself.
He couldn’t help wondering why Mia was so against anything but a professional relationship. Was it something her ex-mate had done to her? Or—and he considered this second possibility much more likely—was it something that had been done to her when she still lived with the religious sect she’d called a cult?
“Bad memories—I’m fucked up in the head,” she’d told him on their first night here. But what was she remembering that made her so upset? What had been done to her so many years ago that had made her this way?
Sev wished he knew—he had the feeling that whatever it was, it held the key to Mia’s present feelings. But he knew better than to ask—that would only make her more upset. He would have to wait and see if she ever felt close enough to him to tell him.
That’s never going to happen, he told himself unhappily. She’s going to keep you at an arms length for the rest of this mission—probably for the rest of your professional lives together. She’s never going to want to get close to you again.
Little did he know how very wrong he was.
THIRTY-FOUR
MIA
After Sev left for his work duty, Mia had nothing to do but hang around the house and feel guilty. They’d barely spoken a word during breakfast—which was some kind of gloopy blue oatmeal concoction that tasted as bland as cardboard.
They hadn’t even looked at each other as they ate—or pretended to eat—the food really was awful. Mia suspected she had screwed it up somehow—she’d never been much of a cook, even back when she was still active in the sect and married to Michael.
Back then it was important to be domestic. In fact, the whole family had criticized her when she’d decided to go back to school to get a degree in Criminal Science. They’d even asked the Elders of the church to intervene and try to “talk some sense into her.” But Mia’s father—her real father, the one her mom had divorced after she joined the sect and he refused to join as well—had been a cop. And so, she had persevered.
Her real dad was dead now, but he had been the only one who came to her Police Academy graduation. He had already been diagnosed with an aggressive form of stomach cancer by then, but he had come anyway—sick and weak but incredibly proud of her. Almost proud enough to make up for the fact that the whole rest of her family had stayed away.