Page 9 of The King's Pawn
Killian sauntered back into the living room, coming straight for me. He loomed and handed me a beer. I took it with both my bound hands, thoughts falling over how—this close, with himpeering down at me—his pants hugged thick, sculpted thighs, and how the black T-shirt he wore strained to contain his chest. He’d always looked good, but maybe a little murder on my behalf had me reassessing Killian Donovan. Because fuck, he was hot when he got his murder on.
“Who is he?” I asked, taking a swig.
“Garren Reed. Piece of shit your father knows. I didn’t think he’d be up here.”
“Guess he didn’t think you’d be here either.”
We both stared at the dead man, drinking our beers in a weird moment of mutual disgust andsomethingelse. Some kind of shared chill.
“You going to untie me now?” I asked, breaking the comfortable silence we’d fostered over a dead body.
He downed the last of his beer and set the bottle down on a table he’d pushed to the side of the room. “Are you going to run?”
“I might,” I admitted. “I haven’t decided. Are you going to kill me?”
“I haven’t decided.” His mouth, always fixed in a stern line, ticked. Itticked. Which for him was a full-blown grin. And that tiny little twitch changed his mean face into something a lot more interesting. Made him seem younger too, not the miserable, grumpy dickhead asshole who my father sent after me. But an actual living breathing human being. He maybe even had a heart under all that macho bullshit, since he’d gotten all rageyafterlearning the wannabe rapist had almost touched me up.
“Wow, youcansmile.”
“I’m not smiling.” He stopped smiling.
“I saw it. It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone. If you untie me.” I used both hands to drink from the beer bottle again, hoping he took pity on my sorry state. “Also, I really need to… go.”I glanced at the unused bucket. “And neither of us needs the trauma of that. Come on, man, be a human, not the gorilla you pretend to be.” I raised my hands and fluttered my lashes.
There was that tiny twitch again. Look at that. A little miracle of a smile. Two in three minutes, in fact.
“Fine, you can help me clean this up. But if you fuck me, Noah, I’ll be digging two graves.”
He came over and untied the ropes. I watched his big fingers work, unpicking each knot. There was something about a man with capable hands. He didn’t waste gestures; when he used his hands—like when pulling a gun—he meant it.
Finally free of the chafing restraints, I hurried to the bathroom.
“Keep the door open,” he groused.
“Jesus.” A glance over my shoulder revealed him leaning against the back of the couch, arms crossed over his barrel chest, dark eyes on me. “You going to watch me? I might start thinking you and your dead friend there want the same thing.”
“Reed was no friend of mine.” His eyes skipped way. “Shut the door, then.”
I swung the door shut and eyed the narrow window. It wasn’t locked. I might have been able to squeeze through. But Ireallyneeded to piss.
“You won’t make it more than a few miles,” Killian grumbled behind the door, sounding closer now. Did he have fucking X-ray vision?
I unzipped my pants and did the necessary, sighing out my relief.
“It’s below freezing,” he went on. “You’ll start out fine, then within the hour become confused, start wandering in circles. Delirious. Hypothermia. You’ll wish I’d shot you.”
I rolled my eyes. He knew all thebestways to die. “How do you know that shit?”
“So, don’t climb out the window.”
I frowned at the window, finished up, and tucked my dick away. Farewell to that escape plan. “I wasn’t going to.” WhatwasI going to do? I stared at the filthy mirror, washed my hands, and wiped my face clean of blood. If I stayed, there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d come to his senses and put a bullet in the back of my head, probably when digging the grave for his not-friend.
Unless Killian planned to stand against my father, I wasn’t getting out of this. Killian wasn’t as dumb as he looked. He’d have figured out I wasn’t going to get a happy ending, same as I had. He’d fucked up my assassination once, but he’d have to pull the trigger eventually.
If my father found out I was still alive, Killian would be killed right alongside me.
Or, we figured out who the asshole was who had lied and put me in crosshairs. Maybe if we found the liar, we might have some negotiating room with my father.
It could have been any number of my father’s men. I wasn’t short of enemies. Most of the Back Bay family wanted me gone. Killian included. At least, I’d thought he did. Now? Now, I wasn’t sure what he wanted.