She’s my prey, and I’m her monster.
The tinny sound of a voice from the front signals the start of our journey, and the SUV rolls forward. I can feel the caution in the way the vehicle moves, sense the strategy in the path we take. We’re in good hands right now. Safe right now, which is the only reason I roll up the divider between the front.
Holly looks at me, wariness in her sweet brown eyes.
Good.
I drag her onto my lap, ignoring her whimper of surprise. God, she’s so soft and perfect in my arms. A little slimmer from life on the run, but still plenty soft in the places I need. I long to press my palm against the weight of her breast, to nudge her ass with my hard cock.
I could even make her want it. Call it gratitude, call it an adrenaline response. She could be warm and lush around my cock as we bump over roads hundreds of years old.
That’s not what she needs, though.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice trembling. “I don’t—know why—I’m doing this.”
The same chemicals that would have made her pussy wet are making her do this.
A normal response to being in a life-or-death situation. The only thing to do after is fight or fuck. Or if you’re a beautiful woman, both strong and fragile, you cry.
The realization is like a gut punch. She’s going to cry. There’s nothing I can do to stop it.
“Let it out,” I say, no softness in me whatsoever. There’s only iron in my arms as I hold her, ice in my heart as she fights those hot tears glistening in her eyes.
“Why did you—”
Why did I follow her? Because I can’t sleep or fuck or breathe when she’s not near me. I need her, and I resent that fact even as I acknowledge its finality.
She sucks in another shaky breath. “Why did you take so long?”
It’s a bullet in the brain. A killing blow, the knowledge that she must have been scared, that she must have been goddamn terrified to want me. Me. “I’m sorry,” I say roughly, meaning it. God, it’s one of the only honest things I’ve said. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”
An eternity, and she spills out every second we were apart in saltwater. Tears leave glittering tracks down her cheeks. They land in fat drops on my arm. I squeeze her tight, as if I can apologize for the time with pressure, with pain.
“I was so afraid,” she gasps, sobs wracking her body.
“I know. The gun. That bastard Taggart.”
“He said he had my sister.”
She will tear herself apart trying to save her sister. “He had you.”
“And then Adam showed up with a gun, and I thought…” Her voice breaks. “I kept thinking you would be too late, and that you’d feel guilty.”
I’m not sure it’s possible for me to sink farther tonight. I’m lower than dirt, than clay, than molten tectonic plates. She will tear herself apart trying to save me. “You’re so damn worried about other people when a gun’s pointing right at you, sweetheart.”
She cries for an hour, each tear drawing a line across my heart, my private penance for failing to be there a minute early, a month earlier. An eternity earlier.
That’s me, though. My curse, always to be too late.
Finally her tears quiet. She looks at me, curious. “Were you worried about me?”
Was I worried? She must not be able to see the shadows under my eyes. The edge of frantic worry that kept me awake as I wondered where, where, where. “A little.”
“How did you find me anyway?”
I don’t really want to tell her. Partly because it gives away my edge. If she escapes again, she’ll hide the same way. And partly because it exposes too much about her. About me. “I read your book. The one about the tooth fairy.”
“I told you that story.”
“You told me about how she became fascinated with humans. How she went to visit one boy in his room, but he was sick. Terminal. And he died. You didn’t tell me the story ended there.”
“It did,” she says on a sigh. “Readers were so angry, but it had to end that way.”
Once upon a time we were trapped in a prison together. She told me about her work as an author. She didn’t tell me that she was world renowned, with photos of her in signings around the world, smiling teenage girls holding up their fan art.
She didn’t tell me that reading her books would be a window into her soul.
“I read the sequel.”
She scrunches her nose. “You did?”
“I did.”
Twelve months after she disappeared from my apartment, another book was published. This one was sent digitally to her publisher from an anonymous device. A sequel to the tooth fairy book, titled After You Left.
I used every contact, every resource, every goddamn method of finding someone, but she was untraceable. Disappeared. In my darker moments, I was afraid that she had died. That’s why I couldn’t find her. She was buried at the bottom of a lake somewhere, like my mother.
Then the book came out, and I read about how the tooth fairy, expelled from her community of other fairies, heartbroken from losing her only human friend, wandered the world. She sold handmade trinkets for cash from tourists, acting always as the native, even though she never belonged. Never belonged anywhere, really. Cash. Trinkets are a cash business, and she paid for her purchases the same way. A coastal town. Some references to an Italian church.
It had been enough for me to finally find her.
The SUV bumps along at an incline, and I know we’re beginning the long climb up the Amalfi coast. There was enough time between reading the book and finding her for me to purchase a small house. A small fortress. It overlooks an expanse of blue—the ocean, the sky. Hardly any land. Sometimes I think she’ll like the lemon trees in the yard. Other times I imagine her beating herself against the confines of the cage, breaking her bones like a small, wild bird.
“Are you taking me back to Paris?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Then where?”
She may not realize it, but there’s trust in her voice. Like pebbles at the bottom of a lake. I can fish them out, start building something strong again. I broke her trust once. After we escaped the prison I tried to hold her in again, to keep her as my own, very safe captive. I’ll be more careful this time around. More careful to make her believe she’s free.
I’m not my father. I don’t want to hold her captive. I want her to be with me of her own free will. It’s only that I can’t take the risk. What if she decides to walk away?
I can’t hold her captive.
I can’t let her leave.
The contradiction is tearing me apart.
“A place I bought for you and your sister to stay until I take care of things with Ian Taggart. He’s too dangerous for you to deal with, and after tonight, he’ll be pissed.”
“Pissed,” she says, her voice hollow. “My sister—”
“Will be safe in the house. It’s your job to make sure she stays put.” And in doing so, it means that she has to stay put. Yes, that’s the secret to keeping Holly. Her sister.
“That means you need the diamonds.”
“I don’t need the diamonds to pay off Ian Taggart.” I have my own money, as well as my own methods of persuasion to make sure he leaves the Frank women alone.