"How the h.e.l.l could you know what"s good for me? You don"t even know what"s good for yourself." Pulling the blanket up over her shoulder, she rolled onto her side. "Good night, Bentley."The way she said it stabbed me in the heart. I wished it could be as easy as just whisking her away and never looking back. But it wasn"t.
We were in Italy. How did she expect me to get her home? We couldn"t run in this country, we couldn"t hide, there was nowhere for us to go that he wouldn"t have eyes watching. He probably had someone outside keeping tabs on us right then.
Virgo had her since she was a child. If he hadn"t sold her off at this point, he never planned to. He would probably go to h.e.l.l and back to keep her. I was never afraid of that man, but I was well aware of just how unpredictable he was.
Virgo couldn"t kill me, but there was no doubt in my mind that he could, and would, kill her. That"s how men like him worked. If he couldn"t have her, no one could.
Jessie had reached out to me for help, but this was all I could give her. One night of freedom for the lifetime she had already served. I wanted to do more, but when I really thought about it, my hands were tied.
It was a harsh reality we both had to face.
We would spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders. Virgo would find someone else just like me at some point, and we"d forever sleep with one eye open. It wasn"t fair to either of us.
Fair? What"s really fair for her?
Turning off the lamp next to the bed, I laid down and stared up at the ceiling. My eyes slowly began to droop as my mind ran wild with ways to fix all of this.
We could disappear. . . But go where?
I could get her a new ident.i.ty. . . That would take too long.
I could kill him. . .
A flutter tickled against my cheek and I felt a weight on my chest. I wasn"t sure how long I had been sleeping for, but when I opened my eyes, the room was still dark. My brain was trying to figure out where I was and what was going on as the sleepy haze still coated my thoughts.
There was something hovering over me, so I reached out to feel what it was.
A small hand wrapped mine, pulling it in as delicate lips kissed my knuckles. "Jessie?" I asked, unsure if I was dreaming.
"Sh," she said, hushing me with another kiss to my palm. Moving my hand to her cheek, she snuggled up against it. "If this is it, if this all the time I have here, then I need more."
"More?More what?" Blinking my eyes, I tried to adjust to the low light creeping in through the cracks in the blinds from the lights outside. "What are you doing?"
"I"m not going back without having all of you." Rolling her face in my hand, she dragged her lips against my fingers. "I can"t. It"s not fair."
"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" Pulling my hand away, I tried to push myself up.
Jessie shoved her hands into my shoulders, forcing me back down. I was surprised by her strength. There was power and determination in her arms. The frail person I thought I had seen before was gone.
Rolling her hips, I felt something wet slip against my lower stomach. "You feel that?" she asked, continuing to rock her body. "Can you feel what you do to me?"
"Jessie, stop, this isn"t what you want." Gripping her hips, I held her still. "You can"t use s.e.x to change anything. That s.h.i.t doesn"t work with me."
"Is that what you think this is?" I could feel her smiling in the dark as her hands ran up and down my stomach, tracing my abs and chest. "Because it"s not. I know I"m going back tomorrow, so make this night really worth while for me. Give me something to remember when I"m alone in my room, or when I need something good to think about because my mind wants to wander to darker things."