Bold Beautiful Love -- A Temptation Court Contemporary Romance: Temptation Court: Passion in New York (14 page)

Part of me is wrung deeper from his desolation. Another part, smaller but giving similar orders, craves more.

Enough to make up for fourteen years of having to live without him.

“Hell.”

I mumble it, disconcerted. Yearn to be disconnected too. Wanting to feel anything but what I do right now. Hell…longing to feel
nothing.
But that’s not the case. That’s not the truth. That’s not the fact that he’s here in disguise instead of with his “buddies” Reyes and McCree, meaning he’s probably gone rogue on the CIA for me. Given all of it up for me. Literally come back from the dead for me.

The truth is…

this.

The stare we share, stripping the years away, and bringing brotherhood back.

The embrace we surge into, sealing that commitment. Fading that loss with new love.

Emotion is a brutal assault, pounding sharp stings behind my eyes—forcing me to yank back before it turns to full-on sap.

“I believe you, motherfucker.” I confirm the point as any good little brother would: by ramming his shoulder nearly hard enough to dislocate it. But I don’t—because I know how far I can push it with him. Because I always will.

And the surety of it fills me.

And makes me grin like an idiot, despite everything that’s so wrong about this damn mess.

And makes Damon smirk back. “Glad we got that settled, douche bag.” The sheen in his own eyes is blinked back after its two-second cameo. “Now let’s focus on the important part of all this.”

“About goddamn time.” Doyle shifts forward and swivels his briefcase around, so the lid blocks the direct angle of the camera’s lens. He shuffles the piles of papers inside, which turn out to be a disguise of their own. The compartment actually contains a dress shirt, tie, and suit jacket.

My
shirt, tie, and jacket.

I contain my features into a baseline of composure, though I don’t have to be so careful about my switchblade of a growl. “What the fuck?”

Damon speaks to Doyle as if they’re conferring
juristes—
and sure as hell not like I’m sitting there next to him. “I don’t think we’ll need the shirt. They didn’t make him change clothes or anything—”

“Because they haven’t actually arrested me?” I break in.

“Good point.”

Again as if I’m not even here.

“So we skip the shirt—”

“Makes things faster.”

“He can just cinch the tie around his neck.” Doyle tosses the tie my general direction. “Then wear the jacket on top.”

Damon smirks. “Too bad we can’t take a picture for posterity. I bet every fashion blog in New York would actually think Henleys and ties has become a new thing.”

Doyle lobs back a chuckle. “You have no idea.”

“Regrettably, I do. You know what it’s like to walk through the airport and see your little brother on the cover of every gossip rag, telling off the glam girl news babe on national TV?”

“Sitting right here,” I interject in a growl.

“Well, that must’ve been surreal.” Out of the briefcase comes something resembling another tarantula on the loose, slid my way beneath a sheaf of “legal papers” this time. I don’t pick it
or
the tie up.

“Once more, sitting
right
here, assholes.”

“A situation we’re working to resolve,
asshole
.” Damon turns, bringing a fresh glare with him—resulting in
my
new urge to smack it off his chiseled face. With this new chance to look at him and actually process the fact, I realize a lot has changed about his face—creases, tension, even a jagged scar over his left eye—but so much hasn’t changed. The dimples that match mine. The slight bump in his nose from where he endo’ed off his bike and broke it. The cocky sonofabitch who still lives at the back of his dark green gaze. Yeah, especially that. Thus the craving to lay him out.

But like the Court kid who actually
listened
to Mom, I decide to use my words instead. “The situation is what it is, D. And it won’t be ‘resolved’ like this.”

He clutches into stillness—creating room for Doyle’s hissed profanity. This much I’ve expected—though Samsyn’s grunt is a weird cherry on the stunned guys’ sundae.

“Excuse the fuck out of me?” Damon finally grits.

I jerk back to my feet. “You heard me.”

Doyle rolls out one of his slow, classic snarls. “
Cas
.”

“What?”

“Now isn’t the time to play Gallahad.”

“Not playing a thing.” I wheel back around. Once again, instinct dictates my take-charge boardroom stance. “What kind of a message does an escape send?” Though the answer creeps across all their faces, I voice it. “As fabricated and twisted as their information is, an escape instantly paints me in guilt. And we all know light shades lead to darker ones—before they become permanent ink.”

“God
dam
mit.” Damon drops his fist so hard, everything on the table jumps. “This is the CIA, dumb shit—working a high-profile incident. Shades of
anything
don’t come into play here, nor do right, wrong, truth, or the facts. These bastards just need someone in the general vicinity of ‘most likely’. A sap they can turn into an example on the guillotine, in order to appease the pissed-off mobs.” He storms to his feet. “And guess whose pretty gold head they’re targeting for that, brother?”

He keeps coming at me, before stopping just a breath away. I let him seethe, knowing I’m about to make his torment worse—but refusing to sugarcoat my truth for him.

“
I
don’t run from my fights, Damon.”

Rage blasts through his eyes. Fuels the indignation across his face…swiftly dissolving into resignation, then shame. And remorse.

It’s a shit fest to watch. So many emotions I could wipe free—by just combing my hair, cinching a Windsor around my neck, then letting him and Doyle lead me out of here. With Samsyn’s
blessing.

But it’s not the right thing.

No matter what the fuck they think.

“Okay, knock that the hell off.” Unfortunately, Doyle already has my number about this. Has had it since the day I hired him, for reasons I can’t or want to fathom—but right now, am damn irked by. “He’s right, you idiot. You need to stop living in another galaxy and get the hell over yourself, Obi-Wan.”

“Excuse me?” Damon and I retort it together.

Doyle rolls his eyes. “This light saber is going to slice you in two, yeah? But you’re not a fucking Jedi, Cas. You don’t get to come back as a floating head or a fun little voice in anyone’s ear.” He plunges a finger to the table. “This is the Death Star, and you need to shove the hell off.”

It’s effective. I’ll give him that much. Even more now than after D’s guillotine speech, I battle to clearly listen to the whisper of The Force in my own head. I’m stunned when only silence responds—before realizing that for some reason, that voice has always sounded like Damon. But now, he’s no longer my guiding ghost of right. He’s my reality of confusion. And Doyle, who’s always,
always
had my back, is poised there in a matching cheapo wig and glare of conviction.

“Asshole,” I mutter at him from locked teeth. “I should’ve ordered Ella to take you back on the plane with her.”

Once more, he goes completely still.

This time, turning me into an ice sculpture with him.

Especially when he growls, “What are you talking about?”

I force my body to move. To step toward him, every step a match to the cannonball thuds of my heart. “Mishella,” I utter. “She found you, right? I told her—
ordered her
—to find you, and coordinate with Laith and the plane, so she could—”

Screw it
.

His face, suffused with a mix of
holy shit
and
dammit to hell
, silences the rest of it in me.

Then turns it all into agony.

“Cas—”

“Save it.” I look up, making it clear I want my next answer with no fuss, no remorse, and complete honesty. “Just tell me…
did
she even
find
you?”

His mouth flattens, causing the mustache to writhe like a dying caterpillar.
Not amusing—
because I’m pretty damn sure what he’s about to confess.

“She secured the disguises for us.”

Damon leans over. “And supplied detailed instructions for back roads in and out of here.”

I glare over my shoulder at Samsyn. He raises both hands, stretching the black uniform across his Montana mountain range of a chest, while protesting, “It is all fresh fuckery to me,
arkami
. I got her to Doyle then ran off to the six alerts screaming for my attention.”

I look back to the Double D’s of steel-plated
cojones
. Grip the edge of the table, watching my fingers go white as I resist the urge to completely flip it over—instead shoving it back by a foot, as a new sensation winds into the feeling. Something tainting my rage. Weakening it.

No.

Changing it.

Forcing it into the hugest sensation I’ve fought since McCree and Reyes first clamped me into handcuffs.

Fear.

Not garden variety dread. Not even a giant fist in the gut.

This is shit I’ve never experienced before, threatening to combust me from the inside out—and it gets worse as I imagine Ella somewhere on this island, thinking she’s actually going to justify her disobedience by telling me it “all worked out” because she helped Doyle and Damon break me out of Censhyr Prison.

The little scammer couldn’t be more wrong.

And if fate will give me one goddamn break today, letting me reach the woman before her scheming parents, she’s going to learn exactly
how
wrong.

I snatch up the tie, throw it around my neck, and loop the fastest Windsor knot I’m capable of. Doesn’t detract me from firing a determined nod at Doyle then my brother.

“Tell me what the plan is, then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

*

Mishella

I’d forgotten how
vast the sky truly is. And how many stars it can really hold.

I let my head rock back, overwhelmed by the blanket of silver-spun light over my head. Even here, with the torchieres along the Palais balconies still lit, there is but a fraction of the light noise generated by the machine known to this solar system—and perhaps several more—as Greater Manhattan. Part of me misses the constant energy and movement and life of the city: the beeps, honks, shouts, sirens, and constancy of my second home. A bigger part misses the actual place that makes it such. I wonder how things are faring at Temptation Manor at this moment. Is Hodge puttering with something, or seeing to the landscaping? Has Prim baked a treat for him to enjoy when he is finished? Is Scott down in the garage tending to one of Cassian’s cars, or perhaps in his little office, studying for a test at university?

I miss it.

I really do.

But it will
never
be home without Cassian.

And it will never give me back the stars.

I wince. This is a good cautionary lesson for a mental journal.
Do not crowd Cassian and the stars onto adjoining thoughts—at least not while they are free and he is not.

Fat lot of good it does for my next morbid musing.

“Can you see the stars too, my love?” My whisper mixes with the soft ocean breeze. It smells amazing, like jasmine and sea brine, but I hardly notice. “Are you looking at the sky and even thinking of me, my
donné raismette
?”

My man. My reason.

I lift a clenched hand to the empty hole in my center. There is movement there, the steady thud of an organ with its valves and ventricles and arteries and veins, but there is no life. Not
my
life. A torment that just got worse throughout this horrific day…begun with watching those CIA
bonsuns
drag him away in handcuffs…

Nearly ten hours later, nothing has been made clearer. Not a shred of news has come forth from Censhyr. I struggle to keep my wits and my sanity, even to let Vylet speak inside my mind despite her refusals to do so to my face.
No news is good news, wench
.

The words just crash and burn in my heart.

“No news in
what
damn way?” I mutter to myself. “You mean, no news like they have not thrown him completely in prison yet…or no news like they are simply preparing to do it in the US instead of here? And does it make any damn difference, anyway?”

“At this point? Nope.”

The day has been so surreal, I wonder if the night is simply following suit by giving new voices to my internal conversations—until Brooke steps outside with me. She brings an added, small token in the form of instant curiosity.

Make that a big bite of what-the-hell.

I was prepared to simply ask why she dimmed all the lights in her wake. My second query takes immediate precedence.

“Has ‘girl ninja’ become a new fashion statement at court since I left?”

She follows my stare down her form. She is clad in a padded black jacket and matching combat pants, tucked into mud-encrusted boots—contrasted by the sudden blaze of her grin, showing up well beneath the purposeful black smudges on her face. Though her blonde curls are tamed into a severe bun, I am certain the black fabric bunched around her neck is actually a form-fitting hood, used to conceal those strands under different circumstances.