Demand (Careless Whispers #2)(16)

“Just tell me now and get it over with.”

“Like I said, you asked a complicated question that has a complicated answer. And while we’re both naked, and emotions are high—”

“I’m calm and rational.”

“You are always remarkably calm and rational. Two of the many things I love about you, Ella. But you’re wet, cold, and exhausted, not to mention affected by losing Enzo. Although this is the wrong time for this conversation, we need to have it—but my way. And that means that I’m going to get dressed and get that coffee going. You take time to dry your hair, and I’ll be waiting when you’re ready.” He steps around me and heads for the closet.

He’s right. We need to have this conversation in the kitchen. I grab another towel and partially dry my hair. It’s then that Kayden reenters the bathroom, wearing gray sweats, running shoes, and a white T-shirt stretched over his broad, muscled chest. His light brown hair lies in damp tendrils framing his handsome face.

He doesn’t immediately touch me, and despite every reason I have to doubt him right now, I want him to. “I need you to be the man I think you are.”

“I have been completely honest with you about who and what I am. I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re ready. Don’t feel rushed.”

“No problem there,” I say, a knot forming in my belly. “I suddenly seem to have gone from demanding answers to not being sure I’m ready for them.”

“I understand,” he says, caressing my cheek with two fingers, my skin tingling beneath his touch. “If I didn’t,” he adds, letting his touch fall away, “we would have had this conversation the first time you told me about the necklace.” He starts to step around me, but stops, and his hands go to the sides of my breasts as he kisses me firmly on the mouth. And then he is gone, leaving me aching for his touch and praying for answers I can live with.

I do not turn to watch his departure, but instead find myself replaying something he said. “I didn’t know David was dead.” Does that mean he knew David? That’s a bad thought I dismiss. He’d been upset over David, almost jealous.

Whatever the case, I’m suddenly over the dread that made me linger in the bathroom. I go to the closet and pull on black sweats and a black tank top, then shove my feet into slippers. Still cold, I pull on a matching black jacket and then return to the sink to use the hair dryer. As the wet strands become a sleek and shiny dark brown, I wonder if Kayden knows the me that had red hair. If he does and didn’t tell me, that will be a hard pill to swallow—especially since I still can’t remember my past.

That’s enough to launch me toward the bedroom, and I suddenly stop, staring at the massive king-sized bed I share with Kayden. My mind is searching for the secrets of my past and I have a flickering image of me naked and tied to a bed, and another image of David and me fighting in our hotel room, and I’m not sure why I’m thinking of these two things right now. How do they connect to this room, and this moment? They feel nothing like any experience I have ever had with Kayden. But then, maybe that’s the point: he is different. My instincts about him say he’s different. But if my instincts are good, how the heck did I have those prior experiences?

Shaking off the questions, I leave the bedroom, entering the hallway with an odd sense of being watched. Ridiculous, since Kayden doesn’t allow cameras in our tower, but I leave the bedroom door open and peer at the high ceiling as I start to walk, deciding I’m just spooked due to Enzo’s death. How can I not be? Still, I rub the prickling sensation on the back of my neck, and it feels like forever before I turn into the living room. Crossing behind the couch toward the kitchen, I find myself remembering those naked, intimate moments with Kayden only a short time ago. The passion. The trust I’d felt for him. And then his words: “We both want more. Until we don’t.” The words send a surge of adrenaline and nerves through my body.

The scent of freshly brewed coffee teases my nostrils as I reach the kitchen, where I immediately find Kayden standing behind the island. But it’s not him that makes my heart lurch, as usual. It’s my gun that’s lying on the counter between us. And when I should perhaps step backward I find myself charging forward to claim the other side of the counter. “What is that for?”

“You thought you needed it earlier,” he says. “I want you to have it now.”

My fingers curl on the tiled counter. “Do I need it?”

“That’s for you to decide.”

“That isn’t the answer I want.”

His jaw sets hard. “If you’re expecting an answer you’ll want, you’d better pick up that gun.”

We stare at each other, a push and pull between us that has nothing to do with fear or intimidation, and everything to do with a bond we both know is being tested. “I know what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“The same thing you did outside that church, when you helped me hold the gun to your chest.”

“Which is what?”

“Offering me the fa?ade of control.”

“You holding a loaded gun on me in no way equals a fa?ade.”

“I know you now,” I counter. “You don’t give up control, even when you say you are.”

He rests his hands on the counter, one turned just enough for me to catch a glimpse of the hawk inked on his wrist, its wings spread, the mark of a man whose rules of many must dictate his actions. “There are two sides to this coin,” he says, his words drawing my attention, his pale blue eyes piercing mine. “The me with you, and the me with everyone else.”