Page 55 of Covert Mission
Fuck.
I don’t know what I need.
But I don’t need the headache that will surely come from letting myself take this farther.
I drop my head back and look at the ceiling as if answers are there like some random hidden message in the contours of the plaster. Next, I’ll be looking for pictures of Jesus in my toast.
I shake myself mentally.
Get it together, Beast.
Focus on the facts.
Camile is safe. Tonight, no monsters can get to her with her as close as a second skin. But I wasn’t there when she needed someone to protect her before.
That worthless, coward-ass bastard. Thinking about her father makes me see red.
Visions of Camile as a tiny redhead girl cowering in front of a drunk monster makes me livid. As I hold her in my arms, my blood pulses like black poison in the brambles of veins that fill my body.
I’d love to get my hands on the bastard.
It would be painful.
I’d scare the fuck out of him first.
Only nothing I could do to him would ever approximate the terror he wrought on his child.
With a ragged inhale, I tighten my hold on her.
I can’t take her past pain away. I can’t erase it. God knows I’ve tried to erase my own shit and it doesn’t work.
But I can keep her safe tonight.
Then her team will leave town. And I can get back to business.
The short hand on my tactical watch moves from the nine to the ten. Then the ten to the eleven. The night grows quiet.
My churning thoughts roll into another dark place—the vault where I store things that come out in the middle of the night and haunt the shadows.
Camile will keep me awake now, too.
Just like Nyx.
Fuck. I should call her…
The fist in my chest tightens. Nyx deserves to hear from me.
A deep wave of guilt, as inky as the bowels of the ocean, sweeps in tumbling with the fury that’s burning inside me.
Camile makes a little sound and shifts in my arms. When she burrows closer, I gently wake her. “Hey, let’s get you to bed.”
She stretches against me. Perfect. Warm. Sweet curves. Long creamy legs curled in my lap. Just the right size for my arms.
After a beat of comfortable silence, she murmurs, “I can’t believe I fell asleep.” She yawns and nuzzles closer. “I really want a shower.”
“How about some sleep first?”
She nods against my chest.