Kingstons salvation king.., p.9
Kingston's Salvation (Kingston Security 5), page 9
It was mind-boggling.
She was also reeling from the fact Darius had come after her at all, when her having left his apartment would have given him the perfect out to having to continue being involved in this dangerous situation.
Admittedly, the murder had been carried out in his building, but as all evidence of that had now been removed, Darius could just simply have carried on with his own life and ignored the fact he had ever met her or cared what happened to her.
It's what most men would have done—
“I have no idea what you’re thinking right now,” he muttered in the darkness of the SUV. “But I advise none of those thoughts lead to you even attempting to leave my apartment again until after I tell you it’s safe to do so.”
She turned to face him, very aware there was only the thin material of Darius’s T-shirt between her and the leather seat she was sitting on. “And when do you think that might be?”
He glanced at her, the lights from the dashboard throwing the starkness of his features into eerie shadow. “I’m not feeling inclined to answer any of your questions either, not until after you’ve had your arse spanked for so recklessly putting your own life in danger and scaring the shite out of me.”
She snorted. “You’re exaggerating—”
His fingers tightened about the leather steering wheel. “Andrew Bart left a trail of mutilated bodies behind him, including his own father’s, on his way to the top of ruling over the most vicious and cutthroat criminal gang in London.”
Mia’s throat moved as she swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Casper really thinks that’s who killed Giles?”
“He doesn’t think, he knows,” Darius assured tersely. “Not Bart personally, but it was carried out under his orders. Bart could just as easily order your death too.” His eyes glittered in the darkness when he glanced at her.
“I didn’t know…”
“I asked you to stay in my apartment, where you were safe,” Darius rasped. “And what happened while I was out dealing with your fuckwit of a landlord? I received a telephone call from the head of security of my apartment building,” he continued before she could speak. “He told me that you’d just sashayed out the front door.”
“I don’t think I sashayed.” She winced. “I was just feeling so angry and betrayed after finding the file in the drawer while I was looking for the TV remote. I reacted instinctively.”
“Instinct is fine if it’s applied in the right circumstances,” Darius bit out. “What you did this evening put more than you in danger.”
Mia realized that now, and if anything had happened to Emma or the other girls she shared the house with, she knew she would have been responsible.
She eyed him appreciatively. “Did you really ‘talk’ to my landlord?”
Darius’s jaw tightened. “Your living conditions are appalling. I merely pointed that out to him.”
“Merely?” she teased.
Darius released a heavy sigh. “I might also have intimated there would be physical repercussions if he didn’t immediately get the necessary work done to make the house habitable.”
Mia had never liked her weasel of a landlord, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and she couldn’t afford anything better. “You’re a hero—”
“Do not try and sweet talk me out of being angry,” he grated from between gritted teeth. “Or administering your punishment,” he added in warning. “Your behavior tonight was reckless in the extreme.”
“And for that I apologize,” she accepted. “But spanking a woman’s arse—or a man’s, I guess,” she added with a frown, “is the behavior of a barbaric Neanderthal.” Even if her pulse rate quickened merely thinking of the way Darius’s hand had felt when it landed on her bottom earlier, and the warmth it had created that spread outward before centering at her core.
“I can live with that.”
But could she?
Mia had her answer to that question soon enough. Because as soon as they entered Darius’s apartment, his fingers curled about one of her wrists and he pulled her along with him toward one of the large sofas in the sitting room. Within seconds, he had her facedown over his thighs and had landed the first smack on her bare bottom.
She turned to glare at him. “That hurt, damn it!”
“It was meant to.” He nodded. “This way, you’ll remember what to expect if you do anything that reckless again.”
“You don’t think I’m going to remember the humiliation of being tossed over your knees and spanked without you making it really hurt? Ow, that one really hurt, Darius!” she accused as he spanked her hard again. “Why aren’t you leaping to my defense?” she accused Honey, the dog sitting several feet away observing their behavior.
“Because she knows you deserve to be spanked,” Darius dismissed. “And it hurts because I’m too angry with you right now to be gentle.” He flexed the fingers of the hand resting against her bottom cheeks.
“Ouch!” Mia complained. “Darius, you—”
“Now would be a good time for you to learn when to remain silent,” he advised gruffly before landing two more smacks in quick succession.
“I’ve never been very good at that.”
“I suggest you learn.” Another smack landed, heavier than the previous ones. “Because I won’t be responsible for my actions if I have to go through another twenty minutes of emotional torture like I did this evening as I drove to your house after being informed you’d left the safety of my apartment.”
Mia stilled as she turned to look at him. “Emotional torture…?”
“You probably scared ten years off my life!” Darius once again rested his hand heavily on her hot and throbbing bottom cheeks. “I’ve seen the police photographs of what Andrew Bart did to his father. Not that the police were ever able to prove he did it, but the thought of him ever getting his hands on you, of you suffering through any of the viciousness he’s capable of…” He shuddered. “That’s emotional torture!”
“Of a concerned-for-another-human-being kind? Or something more personal?” She held her breath as she waited for his answer.
He glared his frustration for several long seconds before speaking gruffly. “I’m no good with emotions, Mia.”
“Being good or bad at them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
He grimaced. “Okay, then it was personal. I care what happens to you,” he admitted grudgingly.
Mia felt a lightness building in her chest. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“A lot.”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “In a big-brother sort of way or—or something more than that?”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters to me!”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” Her chin rose, and her gaze met his in open challenge.
Darius studied her searchingly for several long seconds. Only to feel a deep sense of anger with himself when he saw the hopeful expression glistening in Mia’s mesmerizing eyes as she waited for his answer.
He knew, at some time over the years, he’d been irritated by every single member of his close and extended family. Because that’s what happened in normal families, big or small. It didn’t mean they didn’t love each other fiercely, because they did. It was perhaps because they did that they were able to scrap and argue without any lasting feelings of resentment on either side.
But Mia hadn’t had loving parents or grown up with five annoying brothers and a just as annoying cousin. There had only ever been her, and the staff at the orphanage or teachers at school, who either left altogether or at least went home for the night to their own family without giving another thought for that lonely little girl left behind in the orphanage, until they returned to work the following day.
His chest hurt at that realization. “Mia, I’m not someone you should care about or allow to—to care about you.”
“That I should allow to care about me?” she choked. “What does that even mean?”
Darius helped her to stand, straightening the T-shirt before gently turning her so that she was sitting on his thighs. He inwardly berated himself when she drew in a hissing breath as her tender bottom made contact with the rough material of his jeans.
His hands gently cupped either side of her face as he looked deep into her eyes. “I have more deaths blackening my soul than I care to think about.”
“You were a soldier!”
Darius didn’t bother asking how she knew that when the information was out there in the public domain. Although he did feel a certain warmth in his chest at knowing Mia must have specifically looked him up online in the same way he had her after they first met.
“I was a sniper, to be exact. But just because I mainly killed from a distance doesn’t mean I don’t have as many internal scars as I have external ones. The internal ones speak for themselves. The external ones are on my legs and thighs from a bomb explosion ten years ago,” he explained when she looked at him questioningly. “I’ve never told anyone exactly what happened that day. My family only know I was injured in a bomb blast, because I was sent home on medical leave and resigned from active service once I’d recovered.”
“I won’t share with anyone else anything you want to tell me. I promise,” she added earnestly.
“I know that.” And he did. Mia was honest and true. She was too damned good for a damaged bastard like him.
He released a ragged breath. “A bomb went off in the mess tent that day. I was caught on the edge of the blast, but the people around and in front of me weren’t so lucky. Some of the dead were—well, they were blown into so many pieces, there was no way to put enough of them back together to send back to their families.” The nightmare of that carnage was part of what still haunted him day and night.
It had seemed like just another bleak and soulless day in the hell that was Afghanistan. No better, but no worse than the last. And yet minutes, seconds later, the world had been thrown into a maelstrom of noise, blood, and flying body parts.
“Some of our interpreters had been allowed to have their families living with them inside the camp,” he continued flatly. “It was the safest place for them, when the Taliban considered them all traitors to the cause. This one guy, Ebrahim, had his wife and two-year-old daughter with him. Afhak was young and beautiful, and Anoushah was the cutest little thing I’d ever seen.” He smiled at the memory. “She had dark curly hair and eyes the color of warm honey. She was only two, but she ran everywhere, always with the widest smile on her face. I was living day-to-day in a hell on earth, but every time I looked at her, I was reminded of what we were fighting for.”
Mia’s hands moved up to grasp his forearms. “Please don’t tell me she was killed when the bomb went off.”
Darius released a shaky breath. “She was the bomb.”
Mia gasped. “What?”
Darius understood her shock because he still felt it to the depth of his soul every waking moment. “None of us knew it, but Afhak was working for the Taliban. Ebrahim had no idea she’d deliberately targeted and married him so that she was eventually able to live in a camp of enemy soldiers, as the wife of an interpreter, without arousing suspicion. Her instructions, when the time was right, were to set off a bomb that would kill as many soldiers as possible. That opportunity came on the day thirty or so of us were enjoying downtime eating, talking, and laughing together as we lounged in the mess tent.”
“How many died…?”
“Twenty soldiers and one civilian died in the bomb blast that day.”
“Anoushah was the civilian?”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes. “I can still see it now, as clear as if it happened yesterday and not ten years ago. It was a sunny day. We’d all just come back from three days out on patrol and were enjoying some much-needed R and R. Afhak appeared in the tent doorway holding Anoushah. The moment Anoushah saw me on the far side of the tent she struggled to be put down.”
“Oh God…”
Darius nodded. “She left her mother standing in the doorway, was running toward me, shouting ‘Darry, Darry’ when there was a deafening bang. I could only watch in horror as she slowly disintegrated, her body literally fragmenting, in front of my eyes.”
Mia moved back to look at him in horror. “Anoushah really was literally the bomb?”
He nodded. “It was in her diaper. I’d heard of women doing that in other countries. It just never occurred to any of us that Afhak would ever do something like that to the daughter she seemed to adore.”
“Ebrahim must have been devastated.”
“There were two other fatalities that day,” Darius revealed evenly. “Once Ebrahim learned what Afhak had done, he hunted her down and shot her dead before turning the gun on himself.”
Mia had no idea how it was possible to survive after witnessing such horror. But, the truth was, Darius hadn’t survived. Not completely. Oh, he breathed and gave the appearance of interacting with others. But he wasn’t actually living.
Or loving?
It was Mia’s turn to gently place her hands either side of his face. “You weren’t responsible for any of the deaths that occurred that day.”
“Anoushah was calling my name, running toward me, when the bomb went off,” he choked.
“Because you’re a good man. A kind man. I’d have run toward you too if I’d been there,” she told him warmly.
Darius blinked before refocusing on her. “I thought you said I was a barbaric Neanderthal?”
“Well, for spanking me, you most certainly are.” She gave him another deliberate glare before her expression softened. “But I understand your overprotective streak a little better now, and the overreaction that followed.”
His arms tightened about her. “It turns the blood in my veins to ice even thinking of Andrew Bart ever getting his hands on you.”
“Which brings us full circle to the reason you feel so fiercely about it.”
“It’s because you’re as innocent and not much older than Anoushah—”
“I’m not a child, Darius, so don’t ever try slotting me into that category. I’m young in years, yes, but the circumstances of my life have given me an old soul. I’m certainly old enough to know what, and who, I like. Or love,” she added softly.
Darius stilled, his gaze searching. “I have nights when I wake up shouting. I’m soaked in sweat, and sometimes my hands are gripping my pillow as if about someone’s throat. I haven’t dared to sleep in the same bed with anyone for over ten years because I’m terrified I might wake up and find I’ve strangled them in my sleep.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m unhappy about the not-sleeping-in-the-same-bed-with-anyone-for-ten-years,” she teased softly.
Darius eyed her ruefully. “That’s what you took away from that statement?”
She shrugged. “Well…yes. Because I’m sure that between Honey and myself, we’ll be able to ensure you don’t hurt anyone in your sleep.”
“I didn’t say I haven’t had sex in the past ten years,” he pointed out.
Her gaze lowered. “Twenty-six is a bit young to become celibate, especially when you’re so…so…”
“So what?”
“Gorgeous,” she snapped her irritation.
Darius was smiling as he placed a finger beneath her chin and lifted her head up until her gaze once again met his. “I haven’t had sex since before I left to go back to Afghanistan that last time. I was twenty-five.”
“Then you must be more than ready to have sex again,” she teased.
“No.”
Mia eyed him uncertainly. “No…?”
“I’m ready to make love with you, if it’s what you want too.”
If she wanted that too?
It was the only thing Mia wanted at this moment.
Because she knew Darius was all she wanted.
Not just for now, but forever.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Darius stood up, lifting Mia in his arms so that he could carry her down the hallway to his bedroom.
“Damn it.” He came to an abrupt halt in the doorway.
“What?” Mia looked up at him anxiously. “Darius, what is it?”
“I haven’t had sex for over ten years.”
She frowned. “I thought our previous conversation already covered that?”
“Yes, but… I haven’t had sex in over ten years!” he repeated impatiently.
Mia shook her head. “I have absolutely no idea why you keep repeating those words. If you’re having…a lack of confidence in your sexual ability issues, I’m sure it will all come back to you once…”
“I don’t have any sexual confidence issues!” he dismissed impatiently as he carried her over to sit her on the top of the duvet. “Sorry,” he muttered when she gave a pained hiss at the friction on her bottom.
“You can kiss it all better in a minute,” she invited.
Darius sat beside her on the bed to open the drawer in the bedside cabinet. He searched through the contents before taking out a packet. “As I thought, these condoms went out of date six years ago.” He looked up at Mia when he felt a slight shaking of the bed beneath him. “Are you laughing?” One of her hands covered her lips, but her eyes above her fingers were sparkling with humor. Indications the slight vibration of the bed was definitely being caused by her. “Mia?”
She burst out into raucous laughter when she obviously couldn’t contain her humor any longer. Within seconds, she was laughing so hard, tears were falling down her cheeks as she fell back on the bed.
Darius threw down the box of out-of-date condoms in disgust before lying full-length on the bed beside her. “Care to share the reason for your laughter?” he prompted.
It took her several seconds to get herself back under control. “You haven’t had sex for ten years, I haven’t had sex at all, and it seems we have no condoms to have sex now either.” She started laughing again.
