Page 153 of Creep

“What bad things?” I asked, feeling myself softening toward him, even as alarm bells went off inside my head. The last thing I wanted was to soften toward Mael, especially so soon after finding out about him. It made me think there might justnotbe a line he could cross that I wouldn’t forgive him for.

How dangerous.

How stupid.

He shook his head. “Nothing you really need to worry about now.”

I shot him a look. “If you say I am never leaving you?—”

“You are never, never leaving me,” he interjected.

“Then you need to tell me things,” I said, speaking over him. “I won’t be kept in the dark anymore. You said you’d be honest with me. Was that a lie?”

“Of course not. I would never lie to you. But there are some aspects about my…jobthat you might not want to know.”

That was probably true. I shook my head. “Tell me.”

“I need to infiltrate the mob.”

I blinked in surprise. That was… not what I had expected him to say.

“Why?” I asked quietly.

“Because Briggs and your father are both in on it.”

I let my gaze fall to his chest, trying to process, as my hand fell away from his face and settled down on my lap. “What are they doing for the mob?”

“Right now, I’m thinking that’s how they got into the skin trade. They had backing from the Sicilians.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, feeling a small pain pinch inside my chest. Was my father really involved? Perhaps Leo had brought him in on it or tricked him…

The excuse sounded weak. My dad was a grown man. And considering how close he and Leo were, shouldn’t he have known about my “stalker” when Leo did? I had assumed Leo hadn’t told my dad about it because he didn’t want my dad to worry, but now, I suspected he knew, and he just didn’t care… and that he was in on it when Leo decided to send those two men to visit me at the cabin.

Mael cupped my cheek, much as I did to him, and waited until I looked back at him. I let my eyes take in the blue depths of his, feeling both settled and restless and not knowing what to make of that. Mael might be capable of taking care of himself, something he had proven to me over and over again, but that didn’t mean he was invincible. And what the hell was I supposed to do if something happened to him?

Mael had done exactly what he’d set out to do—made me depend on him. Made it so that I couldn’t live without him. He made me love him. My breath came out in stuttered gasps at the thought. Mael frowned. “What?”

“This sounds dangerous,” I said.

Mael shook his head. “And I’ll be fine.”

I glared at him. “You’re not God. You can still get hurt… get killed.”

He smiled a little, infuriating me more. “That’s not what you said as I was pounding inside of you.”

I slapped his chest. “Be serious.”

He grabbed my hand and brought it up to his lips, kissing the back of it. “And you need to stop worrying.”

With that, he wrapped his arms around my waist and repositioned us until I was the one sitting on the bench, and he was standing in front of me.

I looked up at him, feeling a little jarred from the move.

“I’m gonna go shower,” he said.

He was walking away from me before I could say anything, and though the tone of his voice and facial expression never changed, I had a feeling he was trying to walk away from the conversation.

I stayed seated for about a minute or so, still thinking about all that he said and the fact that he planned on infiltrating the mob.

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