Page 42 of At Your Mercy
The room was quiet except for the soft hum of the city outside and the sound of Wes breathing against the back of my neck. I remembered falling asleep on his chest. We must’ve shifted in our sleep.
His chest rose and fell against my back, warm and solid, and the hand resting over my ribs shifted in his sleep, pulling me in tighter. I should’ve shoved it off. I should’ve bolted the second I woke up. But instead I lay there, staring at the wall, and hated the way it felt… safe.
Safe with him.
My jaw clenched, and I tried to remind myself what this was. Whathewas. Dangerous, highly-trained. The kind of man who never lets his guard down. Except—he had. He was fast asleep, arm wrapped around me like I belonged there.
Like I wasn’t the one who’d tried to kill him, the one who’d caused the angry red gash on his side.
The one who was still trying to kill him.
It’d be easy to kill him right now. I could sit on his chest and smother him with a pillow. I could snap his neck with my bare hands. I could slit his throat with the knife that sat on the floor among my discarded clothes. I could probably crack his skull with one of the expensive modern-art-looking decorations littered around the room. I could do a lot of things.
And yet what I wanted to do most of all was juststay.
But I knew I couldn’t. I shifted slowly, inching his arm off me. He stirred, murmured something under his breath, and my heart stopped, but he didn’t wake. Carefully as I could, I slid out from under him and sat on the edge of the bed. For a moment, I just stared at him. His hair was a little mussed, the streaks of silver a little more noticeable. There were lines at the corners of his eyes, his mouth—signs of age, of wear. Things that should’ve made him look weaker, but didn’t.
They made him look like a protector.
Someone who knew how to weather the storm.
I shoved the thought away, pulling on my clothes as fast as I could without making noise. By the time I slipped out the door, my chest felt tight, my throat raw.
The late afternoon sun blinded me the second I stepped out of the hotel. And as I walked down the street, I still felt him everywhere—his hand around my neck, the weight of his body pressing me down, his cock filling me up.
I told myself I was going back to my apartment to regroup. To get my head straight. To remember the plan. To remind myself of who I was.
But all I could think was that I already missed it.
The walk back to my place felt longer than usual. Every step dragged. My legs moved on instinct, but my head was somewhere else—back in that bed, in those sheets, with him.
By the time I made it up the cracked stairwell to my apartment, I was shaking. I shut the door behind me, leaned against it, and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. My place smelled like old wood and dust, not linen and cologne. The silence was heavy, not soothing.
I couldn’t get him or what we’d done out of my head.
I didn’t know it could feel like that—sex.
Before Wes, sex had been nothing more than a task, sometimes a punishment—always a performance. It was something I’d been made to do, and I’d done it well enough to survive. I knew how to fake moans, how to arch my back just right, how to choke down the bile after.
It was always aboutthem. Never about me.
But last night… it hadn’t been like that. Wes hadn’t treated me like just a hole to use. He’d looked at me like I was something precious, like he’d tear the world apart if it dared lay a hand on me. And when he touched me, it hadn’t just been about getting off. It had been about undoing me, stripping me down, making mefeel.
And God, I’dfelt.
I hadn’t even known my body had the ability to feel good like that, that it could unravel in someone’s hands instead of just endure them. And the emotions… It was everything, too much, things I didn’t have names for. It was safety tangled up with fear. It was longing tangled with shame. Trust wrapped around a man I shouldn’t trust.
I sat down hard on the edge of my bed, running both hands through my hair until it hurt.
I hated him for it.
Hated him for showing me that side of myself, hated myself more for wanting it again.
Because the truth was, Wes had touched something in me no one else ever had, and now that I knew what it felt like…
I wouldn’t be able to forget it. And every time I would have to be under someone else, take someone else, I would remember.
And that made him more dangerous than any weapon I’d ever faced.
