Chapter 41

I cannot help biting my lip – just the edge of it! – as Christian lifts up his shirt and reveals his very…very defined stomach muscles.

But my intrigue on that point is immediately dashed when I see the huge scar that stretches across his left side, moving from his ribs almost to his navel.

“Christian!” I gasp, again horrified, leaning forward and pressing my hand to the scar almost as if I could heal it, make it disappear. “What – what happened!?”

“Am I still a pretty boy?” he asks, sarcastic, not sharing any of my horror.

I flick my eyes up at him, glaring at his glib response, which just makes him laugh. “Seriously,” I murmur, shaking my head and tracing my fingers along the line of the scar. I don’t miss the way it makes him shiver. “What happened to you?”

“Job went wrong,” he murmurs in reply, still holding his shirt up, not protesting the feel of my fingers against his skin. “I got caught in a bad spot and took a knife to the gut. It was fucking horrible.”

I grimace, looking up at him. “How did you survive it?” Gut wounds, I know, are notoriously horrible to heal, and subject to infection.

He shrugs. “Money.”

I flick my eyes up to him, a little exhausted. “Oh, really,” I say, dead sarcastic. “So you just took a wad of hundred dollar bills and pressed them to the wound –“

Christian laughs, taking my point. “Dad’s got the money to pay for the best doctors,” he clarifies. “Though even then…it was close.”

Christian relaxes back against the pillows, letting his shirt fall back down over the tan skin of his stomach, and obliging me – however unwillingly – to move my hand away. I shake my head, still sharing at his shirt, at the horrible wound beneath it.

“I don’t like it, Christian,” I mutter. “You should let me take you away from here.”

The delight in his laugh – it makes me burst into a smile.

“You want to take me away, Iris?” he asks.

“What, you’re the only one who gets to play hero here?”

“All right,” he says, smiling and playing along. “Where would you take me?”

“Well,” I say, scooching closer and letting my fingers trail along the bare inch of blanket left between us, “now that I’m absolutely fluent in French –“

He laughs again and my smile deepens.

“Paris, then?” he asks, his voice quiet.

“Sure,” I say with a shrug. “We could start a new life there. I’ll work in a bakeshop,” I say, nodding towards the kitchen which I’m sure is still filled with all of my anxiety baking from today – not even Frankie could have made a real dent in it.

“And what will I do?” he murmurs.

“Hmm,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “You could be…a male stripper.”

He laughs hard at this one, again tossing his head back in that way I love, exposing the long, gorgeous length of his throat. God, but I have to fight the impulse to…

But, nope. Not even…not even going to let myself think that, am I?

“A stripper!?” he says when he gets his breath back, his eyes shining when he again looks at me.

“Sure,” I say, shrugging. “I’ll show you all my moves, and a pretty boy like you?” He laughs again. “You’ll bring in thousands each night.”

“Well, I won’t keep trim if I keep eating all of your baking,” he murmurs, and my breath hitches as he leans himself over me, just a little. But I do not stop him, do I?

“Then I’ll just starve you,” I say, my voice lower and deeper than it usually is as my hand wraps itself in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer. “Can’t have you messing with our profits, can I?”

He laughs, short and serious, and raises a hand to run over the long length of my hair as it spills over my shoulder. He leans close – so close – and I tilt my chin up, my eyes drifting almost shut…

But then he stops, and nudges his nose with mine, and sighs – a deep, defeated sound. “It’s a beautiful dream, Iris,” he murmurs. “Maybe…in another life.”

“It could be this one,” I say, my eyes opening with a plea. Because, I mean…we could do it.

Slowly, he shakes his head, and my hand loosens its grip on his shirt. Christian pulls back, and somehow I know that he’s saying no to…

To more than just the fantasy of it – of running away, starting over, just me and him.

“You still don’t understand this world,” he sighs, “they’d find me. There’s no…no getting away.”

And I sigh too, resting my head back against the pillows, feeling defeated despite myself. Because even though that dream only existed for what…thirty seconds before Christian shut it down?

Damn, but it had been a good dream.

I don’t protest at all when Christian wraps his arms around me, pulling me tighter, making me shift so that my head rests half against his shoulder and half against his chest as he turns back towards the tv – holding me close but, pointedly, no longer giving me his full attention.

“Well, we can’t have Paris,” he murmurs, reaching for the bottle of wine and pouring the rest of it in his glass so that it’s filled almost to the brim. Then he hands the glass to me, clearly implying that I should have some too – that we’ll share. “But we can have this.”

I sigh against him, letting him feel it, letting him know that it’s not enough.

But Christian just tightens his arm around me and turns his attention back to the TV.

When I wake up the next morning my headache is…vivid.

I groan, just lightly, as I turn over in the blankets, burying my head closer into the pillows. God, why didn’t we bother to drink any water alongside all of that wine – that, combined with over-sauced Chinese food, and all of the sugar in my baking…

But I am suddenly wrenched away from my dietary regrets when I feel the warm body I’m pressed up against roll with me, missing my heat, perhaps, and wrapping its arm tighter around me so that I’m again pressed to his chest.

His chest, I realize, my eyes going wide, because I mean – it’s certainly not fucking Nico, is it!?

I go completely rigid, looking around, realizing that I’m still in Christian’s bed, and that his arms are wrapped around me, and considering how warm and cozy I am that they probably have been all night –

God, what happened!?

I do a quick assessment of myself, remembering the movies, and the wine, and the conversation –

But eventually, I guess we just…kept going, kept watching TV, kept talking until…

My mind flits over my body and I exhale deeply when I realize that, thank god, I’m still wearing all of my clothes –

And my lips, they feel unbruised, so I don’t think that we even made out –

Not that I’d forget that, if it ever happened –

But I stop breathing completely when I realize that…

That, pressed tight against Christian as I am, with my shoulders flush against his chest, and his arm around me pulling my waist close to his, that my ass is pressed quite neatly into his lap and…

And Christian, apparently, is feeling frisky this morning.

I mean, what do I do? Do I just jump out of bed and like…run for it? Hope that I can go so fast that he never even realizes that I’m here?

Or do I…

God, do I follow my baser instincts and…see where this goes?

Biting my lip, kind of hating myself but fully unable to resist, I slightly – just experimentally – shift my hips backwards, pressing myself more tightly against the hard length of him that I can feel rigid against my backside.

And Christian, in his sleep, groans deeply and pulls me tighter into his warmth.