The Australian (Crime Royalty Romance Book 2) (23 page)

“Crikey,” he muttered, pushing her off with his foot.

“Don’t!” I protested.

“I can’t be having claws near the donger, Charlie, and there isn’t enough room for all three.”

I stared at him.

“Oh, so it’s like that, is it? I’m the third wheel?” He was amused, and laughed. I laughed, too, because I was still on a high, riding out the chemicals he had triggered in my brain.

Oxytocin. Serotonin. Dopamine. Corticotropin. I did not worry, of course, because it felt so good. And anyway, the research I had read said that this feeling would fade the longer and the more time we spent together, so I let myself enjoy it while it lasted.

My stomach made a terrible grumbly pronouncement in the silence, and we both laughed again.

“I haven’t eaten today,” I realized, surprised that I should not only break from routine, but forget even basic survival measures. Then again, no, not given my earlier state of withdrawal. That was normal, too.

“Well, we can’t have that. Let’s go get some grub. Crown’s full of places.”

Neither of us moved.

“You first,” he said, adding, “I’m knackered.”

I rose up, slightly dizzy, and pulled up my jeans. He hastily covered his crotch with both hands as Miss Moneypenny, not to be denied, popped back up and meandered into the spot I had vacated. I smiled as she nestled into his side.

“You should try it more often,” he said, staring up at me.

“What?”

“Smiling.”

I glanced away. He was right, of course. Why did I not feel this way more often? I would need to analyze that. I picked up my T-shirt and bra and realized both had been ruined. I would have to go shopping after payday.

“Did I do that?”

I ignored him and unzipped my suitcase, fishing around for my other bra.

He propped himself up against the pillows.

“I’ve never known a woman with so little clobber,” he said.

My face flushed. I did not care for him having known any other women. I wondered how one controlled such a visceral, illogical feeling. “I did not have money to spend on clothing,” I admitted, thinking he would understand, given where he came from. When I stole a glance, he was not sympathetic at all. He appeared cross. “Yeah, and I bet that’s why you never wear jewelry, too. She’d just pawn it, I suppose.”

I gasped at him, raw, as though I had been sandpapered quick and furious on one spot. “No!” I lied. “I can’t wear jewelry. It distracts me in the same way wearing too-tight clothing does.”

“You don’t have to lie to me, Charlie.” His mouth was in a flat line. “We grew up around the same kind of derros. I know how it was.”

I frowned.

“I am not lying about hating to wear jewelry,” I insisted.

“If you say so.”

I wanted to tell him he did not know her, not from whatever background check he had run, or who he had grown up with.

Not at all.

But . . . it didn’t matter.

Because he never would.

He stood up and pulled on his black underwear. The bottom edge sat partway up his thigh and accentuated his strong set of
vastus lateralis
. I took a deep breath and turned back to my suitcase.

“Like I told you before about family,” he added, and I winced, greatly wishing for him to drop the subject, “it’s both a strength and a weakness.”

I spun around, holding my arms in front of my naked breasts, outraged he should think he had any right to discuss this with me. “And how would you know?” I demanded, staring at his bare back.

Oh. Wait. I shook my head briefly to reset—not because I had pointed out the fact that he was an orphan, but because of the horror of the round, puffy white scars on his otherwise smooth back.

I gasped.

There were four of them.

“Your back . . .”

He spun around. His eyes . . . I did not know what to expect . . . but not
understanding
.

“Family doesn’t have to be blood, Charlie. Those bullets would have killed me if it hadn’t been for Bennie. He and Simon saved my life. More than once, too. We grew up together. I’m bound to them in ways you were bound to your mother, in the ways we want to be, and in the ways we don’t want to be.”

I was . . . breathless.

He did understand, then. Yes, I could see in those caves . . . how you cling to the weight even as it sucks you down. He knew it. He lived it.

Only . . . my circumstances had never been life and death.

“What’s in these boxes anyway?” he asked, turning around, ending the connection. “They’re light as air,” he added.

I inhaled deeply, and switched tracks in my mind, manually.

“Look inside,” I finally responded, pulling out an old black blouse, wrinkled, from my suitcase, and my black bra.

I heard him open the box as I wrestled on my bra, then my blouse . . . and silence.

I turned around, buttoning it up.

In his hands at eye level, was the one-and-a-half-foot dragon I had designed and crafted from 2,832 pieces of red, green, and black paper. The fading golden sun flickered off the embossed folds, making the scales appear alive. “This is shit-hot,” he muttered, holding the tail, which wrapped around the beast’s body, turning it slightly. He looked past it, at me.

“You made this?”

I nodded, feeling my chest broaden at his regard. “It’s my favorite pastime.”

His eyes were back on the dragon, examining the intricate folds.

“You can have that one,” I heard myself say, quietly. “Or . . . another one, if you like,” I hedged, oddly anxious should he decline.

“No, I want this one. Thanks, Charlie.” He glanced at me, pinning me with his eyes.

The strange nervous sensation ran through my arms and left out my wrists. How peculiar.

“I’ll pick it up after we fill up,” he said, putting it on the desk. “That’s two pressies you’ve given me now,” he added.

Two gifts?

His eyes were full of intent. His own cheeks flushed. Oh! My virginity. I flushed. Yes, it was a gift, and I had given it to him, and it was the right thing to have done. I felt . . . rounded out.

“Should be the other way around,” he said. “I’ll have to rectify that,” he added, on our way out of my new apartment, his arm draped around me.

I tried to explain to him that I did not care to receive gifts—I have no idea why but I revile the sensation they create in me (and then what does one
do
with the gift afterwards?)—but he talked over me about which restaurant we should go to. I got the message, as rudely delivered as it was, and dropped the subject, indicating that I preferred nouveau café cuisine over Asian.

We walked over to Crown Street, instead of taking Jace’s bike, and only after a few minutes, when I stopped admiring the location of my new apartment, did I realize Jimmy was behind us. Jace said he had been there the whole time, not far away, following us on his own bike, and waiting outside the building for us.

My heart sank suddenly, and did not reach its former heights the rest of the evening. For I realized only when I had thought we were truly alone, carefree, if you will, was I fully and completely happy. And I questioned how and when it would be possible for us to ever be properly carefree, though I had enough sense not to raise the subject. Instead, I worried furiously over how and when Sullivan would pressure me. If he actually went through with deportation, I’d tell Jace everything, I told myself.

Yes, but then what good would that do? I would still be deported, and never allowed back into the country. I would never see Jace again.

We had to cut the night short from the terrible headache I had given myself.

“I hope you do not mind meeting B,” I said to Jenny, who sat beside me on her living room sofa waiting for the FaceTime call on my work laptop, which Jace let me take home. (He said I could keep it for myself, but I declined because it is Knight Enterprises’ property. I picked, and won that battle.)

“B was the oldest of three siblings,” I explained to Jenny. “She did not have a mother, and her father worked a lot so she raised them herself. It is her way to express affection through a nurturing impulse.”

“Or she just cares about you,” said Jenny.

Sarcasm.

“I don’t mind, really,” she added, quickly.

Jenny had been a satisfactory roommate in our first three days of living together; however, over the past day or so, she had been short with me, mostly over the hair balls Miss Moneypenny was generating. I wondered if she had regretted her decision to rent me her spare room, though she insisted that was not the case. “I’m just glad
the boss
is not going to be around for a while,” she added, surprising me.

Jace had left Tuesday morning for Las Vegas on his private charter with no specific return date.

“He and I can spend time at his place when he returns,” I offered quietly, which was a preference he had voiced on Monday night anyway. However, we came here after work because I did not wish to leave Miss Moneypenny alone any longer than the workday in her new abode. Jenny had barely said hello to Jace before we retreated to my room. He left at eleven p.m. because I pointed out neither of us would get a decent sleep on such a small mattress.

“When’s he back, then?” she asked, leaning forward with her wine glass in one hand and the remote control in the other.

“I don’t know. He doesn’t know himself, but he said as soon as he decides he will let me know.”

“Why didn’t you go with him? I would love to go to Vegas, wouldn’t you?”

“I declined.”

Her eyes popped open.

“What?! Why?”

“I have no desire to return to America.”

Truthfully, I’m terrified of flying over large bodies of water and had not realized how much so until I was trapped aboard the Boeing 757, thirty thousand feet above the eternal Pacific on my way here.

“You’re a bit gone,” said Jenny.

No, I was not crazy. I was safe.

“So do you miss him?” she asked, smiling a little.

I was surprised at her interest, since after I tried to dispel her of her notions about Jace she insisted I still should not let my guard down around his sort. She said that a man like him never knows what he wants, only that he wants
more
, which means the present would never be enough. I did not know what to say to that, other than it was very presumptuous of her, but I assumed she already knew that.

I thought about her question. “I long for him,” I admitted, “However, that is not missing someone.” I hoped that some distance would allow me to analyze this new perspective I had developed with him firmly implanted in my life.

“So you said he’s building a new hotel in Vegas. That’s odd, right, because in bookings, I should have caught wind of it,” she said. “We normally spec out employee relocations, for example, whenever he’s kicking off a new hotel.”

“Yes, I am certain,” I said, deciding I was not breaking any confidences, since we were both Knight employees. “I am currently working on a dossier for him. And yesterday he asked me to obtain contact information for the best real estate lawyer in Nevada from one of his lawyers in Sydney. Perhaps it is early days?”

“Hm,” said Jenny, sipping her wine. A thought occurred to me.

“Why do you ask?”

She glanced at me. “Because I’d like to move there!”

Oh. I smiled. “I could mention that if you like, and inquire if there is a possible position for you?”

“No, no, it’s too early. But later on, I’d be heaps grateful.”

We shared a smile.

“You should put on your program,” I said, checking the time. B was already eight minutes late calling. “B’s always late,” I mentioned to Jenny.

“No worries, Charlie, really,” she said, then sipped her wine.

B had, true to form, been late calling Jace and me on Monday night, so much so that we had given up fighting our lustful impulses, unable to control ourselves, and were kissing softly and petting each other on the tiny single bed when she finally rang.

B had texted me a few hours later and said that when I had answered her call, and Jace joined me from the bed, standing behind me before crouching down beside me, she had caught a glimpse of his “iguana” pressing through his dress pants, and was worried for my safety. (She was joking.) This explained, perhaps, why she was out of character on the call, shy even, at first. (B is not often shy.) Jace filled in awkward moments, and even made her laugh, as though he needed to impress her. (He had pointed out she was my only family, and I had not realized how true that was until that moment.)

I watched them talk, no,
banter
, back and forth, and felt a deep, ardent desire to achieve the same thing with him, and then a smack of upset, because I simply was not capable. I lacked the skill.

I wondered if Jace preferred discourse in that fashion with a woman, and, when I asked him after we hung up, he said he had thought so, until he met me. Now he prefers the “sincerity and truthfulness” and the “calm reliability” of our conversation. I was relieved.

Jenny turned the mute off after all. She was listening to the local news, and I thought about how fortunate I was compared to the family in south Sydney whose home had just burned down. Furthermore, I had my cake and was eating it, too. There had been no sign of Sullivan Blaise so far (which was, admittedly, somewhat surprising, albeit pleasing). In addition, my first day at the office since engaging in coitus with my employer had gone exceedingly well.

I did slip effortlessly into a removed mindset from nine to five, and even called Jace “Mr. Knight,” which, he told me back at Jenny’s that night, had given him a raging hard-on all day. While I appreciated the reaction, I worried whether he was right when he said I turn off emotions. When I mentioned this, he pointed out that that could be a good thing, a skill . . . even if it left him blue ballin’. (He insisted the euphemism is a very real and painful condition.) He had a way of turning almost any negative into a positive, and when I pointed this out to him, he said that that’s the answer to the mystery of life.

The laptop rang, and my heart fluttered. My deep, undying affinity for B asserted itself. I missed her deeply. Seeing her a few days ago on the screen, her jet-black dyed hair, her nose ring, her lovely, gentle face, which belies a no-nonsense personality, made me ache inside. I wondered how I could have thought to leave her when I made my decision to move here. I had mailed her a package yesterday, full of koala paraphernalia—magnets, a T-shirt, a mug, and a tiny stuffed one—as well as a photo I had taken of me holding one when I visited Sydney’s zoo the second week I was here. (I was deeply worried about its surprisingly long claws; however, I prevailed in the moment and came through without injury to myself or the animal.) B had admitted to having an obsession with the indigenous animal shortly before I left.