A One Woman Job

Chapter 9

9

Koen

“ I have clothes at home,” Meg says in between bites of her omelet, her angelic hazel eyes sparkling back at me across the kitchen island. My beautiful, beautiful girl. “I don’t need new ones.”

Every time I think I’ve reached peak madness when it comes to this girl, it goes up another notch. I can almost feel a crank turning inside me, tautening the bow strings of my sanity at the mere suggestion that she has somewhere else to reside beside my bed. Under my roof. In my possession. “Meg, there is a major problem with the clothes you have at home,” I say, attempting to sound calm. Reasonable. Which I am not.

Her brows pull together. “What is the problem?”

“You’d have to go home to get them. And that’s not happening.”

Slowly, her fork lowers and my stomach ties itself in a knot. I swear to Christ, if she tries to leave, I will go fucking mental. “My siblings are at home, Koen. I take care of them.”

Stay calm. Stay calm. “I told you, they can come here.”

“You’re so ready to have this peacefulness shattered, are you?” she laughs.

“You’ve shattered my peace and given it to me at the same time.” Unable to stay away from her, I finish pouring my cup of coffee, then move around the island to stand in front of her, wanting to beat my chest like a brute over the fact that she’s wearing my T-shirt as a nightshirt. “I don’t know left from right anymore. I just know you’re not going home. This is your home now.”

She strokes the sides of my face with her fingertips, coaxing happiness through the panic. More happiness than I’ve felt in my entire life. With one tiny little touch, she wields magic. “If I left, I would only come back.”

“ No. ”

“I told you, Koen. I’m yours.”

“Then act like it,” I grunt, playfully nudging her forehead with mine.

Her face tilts up to mine, her tongue making the barest contact with the seam of my mouth. Ever so slightly, her thighs inch apart on the stool. “I thought I did a good job showing you earlier how completely I’m yours.”

Good fucking lord, she has my dick on a string. It stirs every time she breathes, let alone reminds me of our explosive chemistry in bed. The way she looked up at me with a mixture of realized power, encouragement, trust and obedience is addictive in itself, but there’s such an overflow of good fortune beyond that, I could never list everything that makes me want to fuck her repeatedly for eternity and beyond. Her flexible body, her instincts when it comes to my needs, my hunger . Her husky cries. Her pussy . I’m not joking when I say I’d pay a million dollars just to look at it while I beat off, let alone have the honor of fucking it. I’m sweating right now just picturing how my dick is going to look sliding into that little wet hole from the back.

FUCK.

Her body is a drug, yes, but even I am not emotionally blind enough to miss what happens to my heart and soul when she’s letting me make love to her.

I didn’t know it was possible to connect with another human being like that. It’s not possible for me. Not with anyone but Meg. My Meg. A collision of wild happiness and blistering lust I don’t think men experience often, if ever. Somehow, she is giving that experience to me. “What we did together, baby…” I have to pause, thanks to the emotion in my throat. “There are no adequate words.”

“Not even fucktastic?” she deadpans.

I laugh through the choked feeling. I laugh in my own kitchen for the very first time.

Does she know she’s a one in a million? Does the world know? I struggle between wanting everyone to witness her majesty and hide her away, so no one can ever see her. How is it that I’m the one who gets to keep this person? “Fucktastic. Let’s trademark it.”

Her nose wrinkles when she laughs, but it dissolves into a sigh. “I don’t want you to buy me new clothes. I’m not…accustomed to someone supporting me. I’ve always done the supporting.”

“And now you’ll be rewarded for your selflessness. It’s as simple as that.”

“It’s not. I like to earn my keep.” I’m ready to start shouting about my nine-figure bank account and multiple investment properties, but she gasps, bringing me up short. “I have an idea,” she says. “We should take your violin down to the bus station and perform for cash. I could dance for my cut. It’ll be fun.”

“You think I’d let you dance in front of people for money?” I recoil at the thought. “That’s sounds more nightmarish than fun.”

“You won’t let anyone bother me.” She hops off the stool, throwing her arms around my neck. “Come on, let’s go. You’ve been hiding in this house too long, reliving the darkness. Dwelling on it. But there’s a light side to this world, too, Koen.” She sways in my arms, her expression cajoling. “Let me show you.”

I don’t think I’m capable to denying Meg anything, especially when she speaks about it with so much passion. I want to understand what she’s feeling. The truth of what she’s telling me. And perhaps she’s right. I’d been closed up in this house with my unbearable thoughts right up until the minute she showed up on my beach. If I’m going to prevent that darkness from touching her, maybe I need to shed it. If such a thing is possible, she’s the only one who can help me succeed.

“Fine. Just this once.”

My lips move unbidden into a smile when she cheers and proceeds to demonstrate the dance moves she’s going to use while we busk. I don’t know what’s happening to my life, but I’m scared to imagine what would have become of me if she didn’t come crashing in to save me.

Meg

In the days since meeting Koen, my life has been a dream.

Perfect at times, confusing at others. Falling for him has challenged everything I thought I knew about myself. But I’ve fallen, nonetheless. Hard. Irrevocably. He’s woken up a sexuality inside of me that might have gone unnoticed forever, if the right man hadn’t made it come screaming out of me, unearthing my obsession with his own.

I am obsessed . With him.

However, even now, as I sit beside him on an old wooden bench in the train station, the violin resting in his lap, his protective arm around my shoulder, my responsibilities are calling louder and louder from the sidelines. I can’t put them off anymore. I’ve been caught up in what’s happening to me, to Koen, but my siblings are at stake. My father, too. As unreliable as he is, he’s my blood. I can’t continue to be selfish by ignoring what Etta sent me here to do—

The mere act of thinking the name Etta must spook me, because a woman in a sunhat meanders in a distance, before boarding a train. There’s something familiar about her. Something about her posture that harkens back to the woman from my doorstep, but I’m just hyperaware of my deadline. Of my upcoming confession. That’s all it is.

What I crave is one more magical moment…

And then I’ll tell Koen everything. He deserves every bit of my honesty.

“What are you going to play?” I murmur, nuzzling his shoulder with my cheek.

He watches his own fingers intently as they stroke through the strands of my hair. “Something I wrote for you. Something happy.”

I gasp, sit up straighter. “You wrote me a song?” I sputter. “When did you have time to do that?”

“When you left me to clean,” he responds, his disdain for my job obvious. “It wasn’t easy to compose something upbeat when I knew you were on the other side of the wall scrubbing baseboards.”

A flare of alarm streaks through my stomach at the specifics of his statement. Scrubbing baseboards. “I thought I heard a noise. You came into the office?”

He inclines his head, jaw tight.

“What is it?” I ask, rubbing the center of his chest, overwhelmed by so many things at once. The need to climb into his lap and be wrapped in his arms. The need to confess why we met in the first place. The need to run away…even though I’d only make it two steps before sprinting straight back to him. “You can’t be this upset over me cleaning an office.”

“I could. Easily. But…” He studies me closely, as if deciding how much of an explanation I can handle. “I wasn’t going to come into the office. I was going to wait for you in the parking lot. A man arrived, though...”

“A man…” My memory of that night drifts back in freeze frames. “The white car. I saw that white car in the parking lot.”

“It’s been stripped down and compacted now,” he says slowly, gauging my reaction.

“Did it belong to…”

His blue eyes narrow to slits. “Belong to who?”

I take a few breaths and try to relax my pulse, but it continues to race under his intensity. Books and TV shows portray healthy couples as comfortable. Calm. Content. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to feel those things around Koen. What I do feel is alive. Highly aware of every molecule dancing in my body. Poised for anything.

And I can’t help it. I prefer this over comfort.

Mystery. Darkness. The unknown.

“Did the car belong to a man? On the shorter side with blond hair?”

“Yes,” he says, sharply. “Who was he to you?”

“Was?” I whisper, every inch of my skin beating like a heart. “I don’t know him. Never spoke to him. He just…he watched me clean recently. It was creepy.”

Koen’s voice is deadly cold when he says, “He’s never going to do that again, is he?” He leans in close to rub his mouth against the skin under my ear. “I might be unable to kill for a living anymore, but this is different. It concerned you . I snapped his fucking neck for looking at what’s mine. For thinking of doing more.” He presses his bared teeth against my neck. “The fact that my Meg was his final vision on this earth burns me alive. I want to claw my way into hell just to rip the image of you from his head.”

“Koen…” I whisper, my fingers clutched tightly in my lap, scared by the impulse to kiss him after he told me something so bloodthirsty.

“Am I scaring you?”

“A little,” I manage, trapped in a rush of awareness. Of him. Of myself. Of the entire universe. This is what he does—he makes me feel sharply awake. Perpetually energized.

Koen presses his forehead to my temple and without taking his eyes off me, he lifts the violin bow from his lap, sliding it down between my legs. Playing the inside of my high inner thigh, right on the edge of my stockings, as if I’m the instrument. “Have I convinced you yet that I’m worth a little fear, Meg?”

“Yes,” I breathe, my sex in an uncomfortable clench. Dampening in my panties.

“You could be saving a lot of lives by quitting your jobs.”

“I can’t.”

A whimper leaps out of my mouth when he presses the violin bow to the juncture of my thighs, right along that wet valley, dragging it up and down, up and down. “We’ll discuss your job later.” He cuts the station a sideways glance. “For now, let’s do what we came here to do. I’m getting jumpy with so many people around you.”

In a haze, I glance around the train station and spot four people, in total now, the woman in the sunhat long gone. “It’s practically empty.”

Instead of responding to that, Koen taps the bow against my pussy. Tap. Tap. Tap. “If I had my way, I’d be the only one who comes within a hundred yards of this.”

“I can’t always let you get your way.”

His right eye ticks. “Case in point, we’re in a train station when I’d like to be banging your fucking brains out in every room of our house.”

I trap a moan with my lips. “Our house?” I murmur a few seconds later.

“Everything that’s mine is yours, Meg. I’m laying it all at your feet.”

My heart squeezes up into my throat and I’m forced to blink away the moisture in my eyes. Is he still going to feel this way after I tell him I met him under false pretenses? That I have an agenda that involves sending him back to an unhealthy and dangerous lifestyle?

“Is it possible to fall in love with someone so fast?” I say out loud, failing to limit the words to the inside of my head.

“No,” he says, his voice unsteady. He drops the violin bow back into his lap and cups my cheek, turning my face so I can see the gravity in his eyes. Enough gravity to fill the cosmos. “I’ve loved you since the bathtub.”

“I love you, too.” If my heart constricts anymore, I’m going to flatline. “Maybe we should go home.”

I’ll tell him everything once we get there. I swear.

His lips twitch. He’s coldly beautiful when he’s speaking about murder. But when he’s amused, he could pass as a Hollywood heartthrob. “One song, then we’ll go. I want you to hear the music that plays in my head when I look at you.”