Page 64 of Game of Love
“Was that too forward, or… telling too much?” She grinned.
“More forward than me telling you I wanted to touch you?” I asked.
“That’s different.” Her voice was faint.
“Sleep can’t take away something that happened. Nothing can.”
Another truth. We’d have this moment and I wouldn’t know what would happen next.
“We’ll be different.”
“Maybe…”
She looked away from me and when she looked back there was a twinkle in her eyes. She reached up and cupped my face.
“I had a nice night Xander Cage. I escaped with you, and I was happy.” Her hand stilled by my jaw and as I gazed down at the beautiful woman in my arms I realized I was happy too.
Tonight was… the first I’d felt like myself in years.
It almost felt like a redemption from the vengeance I’d sought. Vengeance that was always eating away at my soul.
Always seeking vengeance, never resting. Never able to stop thinking about what had been taken away from me.
Tonight was a break, and in that break, something cracked the wall I’d placed up around my heart. Something Jia did to me. I didn’t know what it was.
Maybe it was just… her. The effect she’d had on me, and I hadn’t been able to resist it.
Tonight I’d escaped with her and went to a place I never thought I’d see again. Somewhere I could just be myself.
“I was happy too,” I told her and it felt more like a confession.
A faint smile tugged at the corners of her lips and her eyes fluttered shut, closing as sleep took her. Within seconds she drifted into sleep and her hand floated down to her side.
I stayed where I was, just watching her.
Watching her and thinking.
Thinking about the warning logic screamed to me. It all came back now, full force. Rushing in on me. Logic and reality.
I was never supposed to get involved with her.
A week.
That was how long it took to change my mind.
It had been a week since this whole mission came about with its crazy path.
Usually I wouldn’t care. A job was a job.
This was just the first time in a long time that my heart came into question.
My heart had been closed for business for the last five years.
I wasn’t sure how this woman had found the key to unlock the door to it.
What was worse was everything else.
She was Giovanni’s daughter and when I’d said I had a job to focus on I really did mean that. It just wasn’t the job she’d thought.
