Page 6 of Velvet Betrayal
“No. I keep both of you alive. That’s my decision to make. Not yours.”
“I can protect my daughter.”
“You’re only one person. Rubes, let me help.”
“So?” I said. “What’s the plan, then, oh Protector?”
Kieran’s eyes flicked up to mine. “We stay here. We eat, we sleep, we watch for signals. My guess: if they knew this place existed, we’d already have company. I want to figure out who before making a move.”
“And then?” I asked.
He shrugged, a wolf’s shrug, sharp and narrow. “And then I burn their entire fucking operation down. Clean and fast. You get your phone back. We go home.”
"But that's insane," I said, because that's what people said when their ex abducted them to the woods for their safety, which was, by now, almost a genre of true crime. "You didn't call the cops? Or, I don't know, me? You just—"
His fork punctuated the air, not at me but near. "You don't call the cops when your brother's got most of the department on his payroll, even now. And if I told you, you would have gone to your boss, gone through the official channels, and then you'd both be dead in a week."
That shut me up for a second, though I covered it with more wine.
Kieran must have caught the flicker of doubt. He dropped his gaze to his plate, shifting pasta to one side as if clearing away an intrusive thought. “You asked me for the plan,” he said, lower now. “It’s not pretty. But it’s the only one that works.”
I set my glass down and tried to rehearse what I might say next, but it all felt dumb and procedural. I could almost smell the courtroom polish on my own voice. “I have to know,” I said. “Was it really a hit? Or just some low-life tailing for Tristan?”
“This wasn’t a Callahan job.” He said it with the kind of authority that came from knowing exactly how and when a Callahan job got done. “And it wasn’t the Feds, either. Their kind of surveillance is careful. Doesn’t spook you, doesn’t risk a scene.”
“So I should be scared.”
“No,” he said, reaching out to touch my hand. “No. I’m right here.”
His touch stunned me. The hand that used to pick locks, reassemble semiautomatics in the dimmest closet, thumb cufflinks into place for donor galas, now lay heavy and plain and mortal on top of mine. For a full second, I couldn't move. Every inch of me expected pain, or threat, or hunger disguised as care. But he was just there, warm and ordinary. His thumb grazed my knuckle, then withdrew, leaving behind the print of a promise he’d never said out loud.
I turned my palm face-up as if that would prove something to both of us. It was not trembling. “You know I don’t do idle, Kieran.”
“There isn’t idle. There’s only waiting.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
He let it hang. Didn’t reach for the easy lie. Just flattened his hand on the counter like he was trying to remember what touch felt like.
I knew it then; he didn’t want nothing. He wanted everything.
“I want you alive,” he said. “I want Rosie alive. I want you to go back to your courtrooms and your conference rooms and have a life. And I want…”
He set his fork down, rounded the island. I smelled him before I felt him: warm skin, salt, the worn cotton of his shirt—like the ghost of sweat and sun.
His arms slid around me, slow, sure, pulling me in until his breath was at my temple. And I—oh, God—I wanted. Wanted so badly it burned. I wanted to tear my clothes off and feel him. I wanted to give in. Just for a minute, let myself stop fighting it and drown in this, in him, in the safety that suddenly tasted like hunger.
His hand fit at the small of my back, the pressure gentle but firm enough to remind me just who I belonged to. I tried to breathe shallow, tried not to give him the weight of me—but my body had already decided. My forehead found his chest, and heat bloomed where we touched. I felt him through the thin barrier of fabric, solid, vital, alive.
I waited for the roughness, the demand. But all he gave me was stillness. His hand found my neck, thumb brushing below my ear, fingers sinking into my hair. My eyes closed. His blood beat steady beneath his ribs, and it was all I could do not to press closer, not to beg.
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” I whispered, surprised by the sound of my own voice, and how tired it seemed. “Just for a night.”
“You don’t have to fight me, Rubes. I want to make you feel good.”
He didn’t push. Didn’t go for the kiss. He just stood there with me, his chin resting in my hair, his chest solid under my cheek, his heartbeat slow and sure—like he could wait forever if I needed him to. And somehow, that was worse. That was what made me ache. That was what made me want.
For so long I’d braced against him—for Rosie, for myself, for the life I thought I was protecting. But what if it could be as simple as this: his warmth sinking into me, the quiet tick of the house around us, the promise that for now, we were safe. That I could have this.
