Page 18 of Silent Heart

Kole didn’t react.

I burrowed into the warmth, realizing that it mostly came from the furnace of living flesh next to me.Wow.What would a winter night snuggled next to him be like? I yawned. A rom-com filled the screen. As the meet-cute began, my eyelids drooped. I blinked rapidly, shifting to sit upright. By the time the first date was done, right before the characters became enemies, I found myself leaning toward the hot, solid wall of masculine flesh. Jerking upright, I winced. Sudden movements weren’t the best course of action around someone who could easily be spooked.

Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be the case here.

Because I felt the exhaustion coming on strong, I leaned the opposite way, reaching out for a stylized throw pillow. I reasoned that lying down would mean I didn’t flop suddenly on him and startle him. The last thoughts I had were directed at Kole as I watched that dark face fade away.

Chapter 8 – Kolya

Inever slept past dawn. Yet the brilliant light piercing through the backs of my eyes could only have one possible source. I peeled my lids open, sending out trickles of awareness to my other senses. The stirring on my lap had my heart jumping to a full beat.

Those weren’t my feet resting on my thighs.

It took less than a minute to realize who was snoozing on the couch, body curled cozily into the cushions. I used the silence to piece together last night. Dinner at the Landing was firmly embedded in my memories. Coming back here and lying down around seven thirty were also fixed images. No other evidence presented itself between closing my eyes and opening them just now.

Fuck.

It happened again. I blacked out.

Only right now, it was a thousand times worse. Harley was here. Best case scenario was that she’d come for swimming lessons, seen me on the couch, and fallen asleep.

But that made little to no sense. I’d established boundaries with this woman. Even though I sometimes had the trickling sense that she would like to try something more, I kept her firmly at arm’s length. I could look but never touch. Harley wasn’t from my world. The life of organized crime was frightening enough; she couldn’t know what kind of monster I really was. Couldn’t know the demons I spent my days hunting.

But saints! She was temptation incarnate. Just look at that face. How was a smart, driven,sexywoman like her still single? Men around here must be idiots. If I was a normal, all-American, good old boy, I would move heaven and earth to make her mine.

Selfishly, I stole this time to stare at her as she slept. Her steady breathing, the flush on her cheeks, hell, even the way her eyes roved under the lids indicated a restful snooze. Careful not to wake her, I reached out and brushed the pad of my thumb over the curve of her lip. What did that taste like? While something hot and desperate—like sinking my teeth into the pillowy flesh or better yet, seeing them sliding over me as I pounded into that full mouth—would be nice, I would be content with the smallest, barest of kisses.

Knowing what that felt like would stay with me for the rest of my life.

I leaned forward, about to give in to the temptation.

Harley moaned and rolled over. That sound was nothing short of intoxicating. I brushed back the lock of hair that slid across her forehead, obstructing my view. She was here, right in front of me. I only had to pull her in, bring us closer, and bridge those last few inches of separation—

She came over while I was out of it.

My fist curled reflexively. Anger, hot and volatile, surged through my veins. This beautiful, talented woman, who was going back to school this fall to take on a second career as a veterinarian, had been in danger.

Because of me.

The muscles in my jaw clenched tight.

The periods of unconsciousness—where my body had mobility, but my mind was absent with no recollection of events—started to happen while I was in the service. I was thrown in a blast. My brain was knocked about and shrapnel nicked a key nerve line. While the wounds healed, insomnia set in place. The trauma morphed into chronic fatigue, a blanket medical term to describe my symptoms. The result was an honorable discharge. While my superiors were loath to lose one of their elite soldiers, the periods of lost consciousness that replaced REM sleep produced an unstable and therefore unreliable state of being. They’d had no choice but to put me to pasture.

The episodes didn’t start with violent tendencies. But the various lowlifes in my uncle’s criminal organization thought it would be funny to mess with me during the zombie periods. They didn’t live long after making that fatal decision.

Not wanting anything to happen to his eldest son, my father took precautions, finding the best neurologists in the city. They couldn’t do anything for me, other than draw the conclusion that the periods of lost consciousness were linked to sleep deprivation and high stress—two things that were oh-so-easy to cure. I could stare at the ceiling for hours and not sleep. Days went by without silencing my mind, until my body took over and zoned out. Drugs didn’t help. Therapy was useless.

I was doomed to this curse.

Here, alone in this huge house with a big enough property to keep the neighbors away, it shouldn’t have been a problem if I blacked out.

Clearly, that wasn’t the case.

“What am I going to do with you?” I rasped, tugging the blanket around her toes.

Rising, I went to the kitchen and pulled my laptop from the top shelf in a cupboard where I’d stored it for safekeeping. Checking the encrypted server was a much-needed distraction to keep me from reaching out and touching what I shouldn’t.

The email that opened on the screen was a welcome change.

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