Page 107 of Merciless Heir

That was stupid. I can’t get it out of my head and I can’t one hundred percent get behind it because sex with Kingston could become as important as breathing air.

“Hey.”

I look at him, halfway to getting dressed. I hold my top. “I know, I know. I get it. That was sex. And I’m with you. I’m getting out of here and back on the case and then I’ll be out of your life.”

“Sadie?”

“Yes?” I scowl at him.

And he smiles. It’s a heartbreaker of a smile. He hooks a finger into my lycra laced top and pulls it away, flinging it down. “I’m not asking you to be out of my life.”

“Kingston.” I close my eyes. “You don’t want me.”

“I think we know that’s a lie. Open your eyes and come back to bed.”

“We have a ticking clock.”

“And we have the fake and not much we can do unless you’ve got a big, bad confession. Do you?”

I do. My father is there, suddenly in my head, or rather, his visit. It would be so easy to tell this man about it, the way I felt like I was ten. The manipulation that crawled over me. Or the fact I didn’t listen to Athena telling me his parole was coming up.

I didn’t think he’d get out, I could say. Hell, maybe I could tell Kingston my charming father, the man who tried to make and break me down into an image of him, had been nothing but nice, contrite, and vices closed in.

Nice and contrite and it was all a threat without a single word of malice.

I could say that Trevor Masters turned up and I felt like I was a scared child again. One whose eyes had finally been opened.

I could tell him every sordid thing I’d done, the kind of crimes he’d made me complicit in that I worry that stains won’t come off my skin. That they’d sunk deep and down into my bones.

Shit, I could even tell him how I got my hands on my birth certificate and when I could, legally changed my last name to my dead mother’s name. A woman who’d run away, died in childbirth, or was a drug fiend my father saved me from. Take a pick because Trevor liked to change the story to suit his mood and every single one was true in that moment because he had that gift of turning anything into the truth.

I don’t even know what happened to her. And years ago I stopped looking. No death certificate existed but that didn’t mean anything, just she didn’t die in childbirth. And…forgive me, I’ve stopped searching, stopped caring. I have myself. And Athena. And I don’t need or want anything else.

I could say all this.

I don’t.

I don’t say a word. I take in that smile, the naked torso, and the offer in his eyes.

If anyone could make me believe in a better world then it would be him.

But I made my own world.

And Kingston doesn’t make me any kind of offer except here. And now.

“No confessions,” I say. “Not one. Except I don’t want to go. Not right now.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Are we on the same page?”

I smile and go to him and he pulls me down over him and kisses me.

I’m ready to take the offer of sex. It’s warm and real and there.

But he doesn’t move to touch me except hold me against him, and stroke my cheek as he kisses me again.

“What…what are you doing?”

He laughs. “Holding you. Until my mother calls back and until I get word on Jenson, and you go and find the tiara, then I can think of other things to do with our time.”