Page 84 of It Hurts Me

I smirked. “I need a couple minutes, sweetheart.”

She grabbed my face and pulled my lips to her. “Then I’ll wait.”

I lay beside her in the king-sized bed, the heater kicking on and off throughout the night. It was the first time I’d slept with her somewhere else besides my home, so it was hard to relax. Bolton would have constant eyes on her, and even though the curtains had been drawn shut the entire time, I could still feel his stare.

I’d just come inside his wife—several times—and if that wasn’t a form of revenge, I didn’t know what was.

Killian would smirk at that.

I checked my phone on my nightstand, and it was quiet. No messages from anyone. It was almost five in the morning.

I looked at her beside me, dead asleep with her arms around me like I was her favorite teddy bear. Her hair was a mess, but the sexiest mess I’d ever seen. And she had a little smile on her face, like she was happy even in her dreams.

I hated to leave, but I shouldn’t stay. Not when her relationship with Bolton was so tumultuous, when he still struggled to let her go. I wasn’t scared of him, but I preferred to be with her on my turf rather than the unknown.

I left the bed and got dressed.

She was so tired she didn’t even notice.

I checked the peephole to make sure the hallway was vacant before I walked out. I took the service elevator like I did last time and snuck out the back of the hotel, quickly swallowed by the city.

I’d walked to the hotel, so I walked home, enjoying the city in the early morning, taking the alleyways between the buildings and the shortcuts only a resident would know. I entered the gates of my property and stepped inside the home that was my fortress, the one place where I could stare out the window without worrying about taking a bullet, because the glass was bulletproof. The place where I hid in plain sight, my walls impossible to pass unless you rammed it with a Hummer.

But the second I stepped inside, I knew something was amiss.

Not because of anything I could see…could only feel.

I stood in the foyer and noticed how bright the dimmers were set. There was a different smell, the scents of cider and cigarette smoke. I stared at the staircase before I reached for my gun tucked in the back of my jeans.

My butler knew when I was on the property and always came to greet me, regardless of the hour, and the fact that he wasn’t there told me he physically couldn’t be. “I hope you took your boots off before you came inside.” I walked around the stairs with the gun at my side, unsure how they’d bypassed the security measures, how they’d infiltrated a place that couldn’t be broken in to.

“My boots are propped on your coffee table as we speak.” The voice came from the study, farther down past the staircase, the place where I spent most of my time.

With my gun still in hand, I came around the corner and spotted Bolton in my armchair, dirty shoes on my coffee table, drink in front of him, a lit cigar in his mouth because he really had made himself at home.

With a bomb strapped across his chest.

My gun had been pointed at his head, but I lowered it to my side.

My butler was in the other armchair, appearing still and calm except for his trembling hands.

Bolton pulled the cigar out of his mouth and rested it in his fingertips, not afraid of the ash that might land in the wrong spot on his chest. “You made yourself at home in my house.” He smashed the cigar in my ashtray. “Thought I’d do the same to you.” He nodded to the couch. “Take a seat, Theo.”

I glanced at my butler then looked at Bolton again. “He’s got nothing to do with this, Bolton.”

“He has everything to do with this, Theo,” he said. “Because we both know what he’ll do once I cut him loose. Now take a seat.” He gestured to the tray of cigars. “Help yourself. I don’t mind in the least.”

I took a seat on the couch across from my butler and stared at Bolton.

He stared back, lounging comfortably like the bomb didn’t bother him at all. “When I think of revenge, I only think of torture and death. But you have a very different approach to it.”

I assumed he meant Astrid, but I wasn’t sure if he was fishing.

His stare continued to burn into my face, growing hotter and hotter.

I wasn’t sure if he knew where I’d just been. What I’d just been doing. That my dick smelled like her because I hadn’t showered.

His stare continued, explosive like the surface of the sun, his rage so intense he seemed to forget words.