A Harmless Little Plan (Harmless #3)(50)

The private elevator takes us straight to our suite. I reserved the best I could get on short notice. A woman like Lindsay won’t notice. When you’re raised with money and power, you only notice what’s not there. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t care if I took her to a campground or a no-tell motel. She’s been through so much. She’s still shaky on the inside. Sticking to what she knows – and giving her the luxury I want to give her – is the safer choice.

Making Lindsay safe is my lifelong job. Her physical safety is assured.

Time to work on the emotional side.

“I ordered room service. I figured we’d be starving by now.”

“We wouldn’t be hungry if you’d agreed with my idea,” she teases as she gently sits on the edge of the bed, wincing and rubbing her bad elbow.

“Even I have limits, Lindsay, and having Elvis drive us to McDonald’s for a wedding meal in the drive-thru wasn’t going to cut it. Besides, you know we have to avoid surveillance cameras.”

“Right.”

Tap tap tap.

She looks at the door, then at me. I shrug.

“You are a well-oiled machine,” she marvels.

The image of a well-oiled Lindsay triggers something in me. I walk quickly to the door, hyperaware that she’s on a bed, we’re in a location where we have all the privacy in the world, and she’s my wife. As I tip the staff person and roll the table-cart into the room, I give myself permission to feel the never-ending passion I’ve felt for her all along, but kept in check.

Out of respect.

Out of a sense of knowing she needs time.

But damn it, if she keeps looking at me with those sweet bedroom eyes, I’m not sure I can hold off much longer. I don’t want to scare her, or make her feel like she needs to have sex before she’s ready. I don’t. But she’s given me more and more reasons to want her as she peels back all the walls, one by one, on this trip.

She’s a feast of love.

And I’m a starving man.

“Is there anything on the menu you didn’t order?” she jokes as I reveal all the dishes, one by one.

“They had fried alligator, but I thought that was a bit too much.”

She smiles at me. A yawn catches her unaware, her face stretching, neck creamy and long, marred by small, healing scratches and a bruise that bisects. It’s where John’s arm nearly crushed her windpipe. Three or four images from that horrible day power up my internal adrenaline, making my skin crawl.

If I can have moments like this, where my body reacts to my own memory, what is Lindsay’s hour-by-hour existence like?

I watch her dip lobster in melted butter. She stuffs a piece carefully in her mouth, avoiding the healing split in her lower lip, then groans with pleasure.

Damn it.

This is having a physical effect on me.

And then I realize it’s okay.

It’s fine.

It should.

She’s my wife. The love of my life. We’re done running. We’re done fighting off the demons of the past. We literally killed them, one by one.

Together.

Now it’s time to live.

I grab my own lobster tail and dig in.

The only taste better than this is Lindsay.





Lindsay


I eat all the things. I do. I just keep eating and tasting. I’m stalling.

Not like stalling when I was kidnapped. Back then, I stalled to give Drew time to find me.

Now I’m stalling to avoid giving Drew time to touch me.

This is so stupid. I feel encased in cotton, my stomach exploding from cheesecake topped with blueberry compote.

Drew yawns, stretching like a man whose blood has been pooled for too long, needing to move and race, heat his body and give him relief. We’re more relaxed with each other than we’ve been since I came home from the Island.

We’re also tense as hell, because we know what should happen next.

We hold two realities at the same time. When I do that with other people, it feels surreal. When I do it with Drew, it feels true. You can have conflicting emotions about something and not have to pick one or the other. Both are part of who you are.

So I can want Drew at the same time that I’m afraid of my own reactions, afraid to be bombarded by too many memories – physical reactions – from what happened with Stellan, John and Blaine.

I’m starting to think that the only way out is through.

Through Drew.

“Bath?”

His one-word question makes me jump slightly. I’m deep in my own thoughts. He’s staring at me intently, halfway between me and the bathroom. If he keeps looking at me with that smoldering gaze, then the parts of me that are still lingering, wandering behind the others in some strange, distant land, are going to quickly catch up.

“A bath? Sounds heavenly.” I hear the shake in my words. As I stand I groan, my stomach full of goodness.

His phone buzzes. So does mine, simultaneously.

“Ignore it,” he says, voice neutral.

“But -- ”

“Silas has strict orders. No calls for me. I have my emergency phone if it’s life-or-death. Those aren’t.” He crosses the room and puts his hands on my shoulders, rubbing them slightly, his thumbs moving in seductive circles that stoke a fire in me. “Let’s take a bath.”