Chapter 4: The Suite

The suite had a bed the size of my old kitchen.

I stood at the window in my wrinkled work blouse and watched the sun come up.

The city below wanted my daughter's name on a lawyer's desk.

I could not sit.

I could not eat the toast somebody had left on a tray.

Behind me, a door opened and closed.

I did not turn around.

"There's a room across the hall," Rafe said. "A lock on the inside. A guard at the end of the corridor."

"I know."

"You should sleep."

"I tried that at four. I counted her breaths in my head until I wanted to scream."

He crossed the room.

I felt him before I saw him, the heat of a big body and a scent like cedar and rain on hot stone.

The patch behind my ear was supposed to hide what I was.

It was not hiding him from me at all.

"Your blocker's failing," he said quietly. "You've been awake twenty-two hours."

"Does it bother you?"

"Yes."

The word was low and honest.

I turned.

He stood close, with his tie already pulled loose and a muscle ticking in his jaw.

Rafe was thirty-six, six feet and some inches of Alpha, looking at my mouth.

I was twenty-eight, and I had never started anything in my life.

"I'm married," I said.

"You signed a contract this morning that says otherwise about everything but the paper."

"That's not funny."

"No." His eyes did not move. "It isn't."

I thought about Cormac in his jacket, signing.

I thought about every night I had lain awake beside him, listening to the wrong kind of silence.

I pulled the patch off from behind my ear and dropped it on the carpet.

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