Strong Enough (Tall, Dark, and Dangerous #1)(48)

TWENTY-FIVE


Muse

The sun seems brighter, warmer. So do Jasper’s eyes. Maybe it’s just my imagination, which is admittedly overactive, or maybe we’ve reached some sort of milestone where he silently agrees to let me in, to let me see him. It could be that, or it could be that I’m seeing what’s not there simply because I so desperately want it to be.

“What was that?” I ask, even my lips languorously relaxed.

In one of the few actual grins I’ve seen from him, Jasper’s perfectly masculine mouth curves up at the corners, his face easing into a less intense version of its normal state. “You need me to explain that to you?”

I would probably be blushing if all the blood in my body weren’t still pounding between my legs. Instead, I laugh, a soft breathless sound. “Not that. I know precisely what that was. You’ve made sure I’m quite familiar with it.” A dimple appears right below his left cheekbone. I’ve never seen a man as sexy as this one. Not once. Not ever. “I meant the last words you said. What language were they in?”

“Italian,” he responds, helping my fumbling fingers to straighten my clothes. I feel like I could fall over at a moment’s notice. And not care at all. I might just lie on the ground, smiling.

“What does it mean?”

“It means ‘I will always think of you.’”

“Not just like this, I hope.”

He reaches up to pull a stray strand of hair from my cheek and tuck it behind my ear. “Not just like this. In every way.”

Little by little, his barely-there grin dies. He looks unbelievably bothered, which in turn bothers me.

“You don’t have to make it seem like such a bad thing,” I half tease.

“For the most part it won’t be.”

I don’t really know what to say to that. I only know that my chest feels uncomfortably tight, like he just told me that we are doomed never to be anything more than what we are right now. And while, going into this, I had no such expectation, I’d be lying if I said that now I wouldn’t love to have something more with Jasper. More time, more days, more emotion. Just more. More, more, more.

I try to gloss over it the best I can. “So why Italian? You know so many languages, why does that one come out unexpectedly?”

“One of my first assignments was in Italy. I stayed in a little town east of Rome. I met a woman there. She taught me quite a bit about the culture, some of the subtleties of the language. It was hard not to see the beauty that she found in it. I guess it just rubbed off.”

A spike of jealousy stabs me right through the sternum. This was obviously a long time ago, but that makes no difference to my wild emotions. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to scratch out the eyes of the woman I picture to be a dark, voluptuous, exotic Italian.

“You were happy then?”

“I suppose I was. Happier than I’d been in a long time.”

It’s hard for me to ask questions without letting some of my resentment seep into the words, but I try. “Why didn’t you stay?”

“I told you. It’s just not practical in my line of work. I pose more of a danger to people I’m close to.”

“But you’re a big, strong, capable guy. You can surely protect those you love.”

Jasper’s eyes settle on mine. They’re fierce once more, fierce and intense. “I’m not unique, Muse. There are others like me. Not many, but there are some who are as good at what they do as I am. If I wanted to get to someone, I could. Nothing could stop me. I would never take that chance with someone else’s life.”

“Not even if they chose it? I mean, what if she loved you enough to risk it?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. I wouldn’t have risked it. But that wasn’t the case anyway. She knew exactly what we had. And what we didn’t.”

As though that ends the conversation, Jasper turns and starts back down the path, the way we came.

“So you haven’t seen her since you left?”

“No.”

“D-do you still think of her?”

“Not until today.” My heart sinks. I should be glad he hasn’t thought of that woman again, but for some reason the fact that he hasn’t dashes a few unrealistic hopes I was beginning to harbor. When Jasper stops suddenly, I run right into his back. With a muffled yelp, I take a step back and stare up into his dark gold eyes. “Would you like to know one of my favorite Italian sayings?”

I gulp, thinking to myself that I probably really don’t. But curiosity (and pride) gets the better of me. “Sure.”

“Non potrò mai pensare a te. It means ‘I will never think of you.’ Muse, you have to understand what my job is like, what my life is like. I can’t have attachments. I can’t look back. I can’t think of the people I’ve met, the ones I’ve found. If I do, it’ll eat me alive. The things I’ve done, the things I’ve seen . . . I couldn’t live with them any other way.”

“But you just told me—”

He takes a step closer. “I know what I just told you. And it’s the truth. I will always think of you. God help me, but I will.”

After a long, unnerving stare down into my face, Jasper turns on his heel and walks off gracefully down the path, like he didn’t just tell me that he basically hates that he won’t be able to forget me.