Page 42 of Rise of the King (Checkmate 5)

8

Get me food

Jay

Not only do I get the day I wanted after my field trip to a valley to assassinate men, but I get three whole days and nights. Like I didn’t execute men in cold blood, I hang out in Sophia’s apartment and pretend my presence isn’t dangerous for her. I watch her TV, eat her food, mooch her warmth, use her body, and when she asks me to leave, I dig my heels in and promise she can work around me.

There’s no reason she can’t work while I’m here.

So she does.

When I first arrived back after my long drive, after I showered, ate, and went for the longest run of my life to work off the stench of murder, I knocked on her door and grit my teeth.

Who would be inside? Warm and relaxed Sophia? Or the uptight control freak who doesn’t like strangers in her home?

I’d snuck out.

I didn’t say goodbye.

And by the time I got back to her door, I’d been gone nearly twenty-four whole hours.

Thank God, she didn’t punish me for sneaking away in the night. I was able to breathe easy again for the first time since I left when she welcomed me in, took my hand, and let me slide back into bed, naked and warm as though I didn’t leave the day before.

Three days and three nights of her body.

I’ve never in my life revisited the same woman; there are millions of women out there I could be with, so I always figured, why limit myself, right? But here I am, revisiting, and better yet, enjoying it.

I don’t want to leave.

I don’t want to be alone in my apartment right now. I don’t want to not see Sophia’s face while I process what I did three nights ago, while those girls’ faces race through my mind and their tears rip my heart out.

Mercifully, when Soph couldn’t ignore her work any longer, she let me take control of her TV remote, donned a baggy pair of sweatpants, turned her music down, and got back to it, albeit in Mandarin.

If I want to know what she does for a living, I won’t find out by watching her work. I have no fucking clue how to speak Mandarin, and though I’m not incapable of learning, I won’t learn it in the couple days I set up camp in her living room.

So I leave her be, because it’s not like I don’t have my own secrets.Massivesecrets, secrets that include killing men, fucking whores, and having cocaine addictions.

And that doesn’t even mention the time I was shot in the head and executed right in front of my brother’s girlfriend’s eyes.

Soph doesn’t ask, and I don’t tell.

She gives me the privacy Ineed, so I can return the favor by not asking how she earns her heat and food. Instead, I watch midday soaps on her large-screen TV; I raid her pantry every hour; I bring food to her desk and grin when she flips screens every single time I approach, and I put my feet on her coffee table while I mentally work through my actions from three days ago with a Winchester and four shots.

It’s crazy that I kind of want to call Kane and tell him I made four shots and hit my targets each time.

Even at thirty years old, I want to impress my big brother.

“Jay?” Lifting her mug of coffee, Sophia turns at her desk and meets my gaze. It’s dinner time, almost bed time, but she drinks coffee like it’s water and doesn’t worry about the effect of caffeine on her sleep. “I’m starving.”

I toss the remote away and study her from her bare feet with sparkle-painted toenails, up to her hair in that bun. She promises nothing, doesn’t give a shit that she looks like a bum, wears no bra beneath her hoodie and no makeup on her face.

In fact, I haven’t seen her in makeup yet at all.

She’s as real as they get and makes no apologies like she thinks she needs to impress me.

She doesn’t.

I’m kinda crushing on her already, because she dances like an angel when she thinks I’m not watching, eats like a horse even when I am, and holds no shots when I give her attitude.

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