Still Waters (Greenstone Security Book 1)

  “It matters a fuck of a lot to me, babe. You matter a fuck of a lot. And when you do things like compromise your health for a story, for anything, it worries me.” He paused. “I’m worried enough when you get your eight hours.” His eyes darkened as he pulled me even closer with a deliberate gesture that had my stomach dipping in the most delightful way. “I just need to tire you out enough that you have no choice but to pass out from the fact that I’ve fucked you into oblivion.”

  I blew at an errant hair that had tumbled into my face, flushing like a teenager on prom night from his words and the promise behind them.

  And then it wasn’t a promise, because his lips found mine in a brutal clash of both of our anger and frustration.

  We devoured each other like we hadn’t just had sex hours before.

  But my body didn’t remember that. My body only remembered the six months of his absence and all the bullshit before that.

  My body—my entire soul, in fact—urged me to do what I was doing, kiss him, let him rip off my halter, fasten his mouth against my breasts. And it urged me to tangle my hands in his hair, then let him carry me to my bedroom and proceed to fuck me into oblivion.

  Dinner was a long-forgotten dream considering Keltan had already feasted. And my sated body felt like it might explode if any food tried to enter it. We’d been lying together, silent and still. Wrapped up in my bedsheets and in each other.

  Everything on the outside was just that—outside. What we’d created, what had spent two years building, shut that all out. All the chaos.

  It was just the chaos on the inside that I needed to learn how to handle. And to handle it, I would reveal it, welcome it. Because two years building something would not be ruined by the demons of the past. Those ghosts.

  By Gray.

  It was time to let it all out if I wanted this. And damn, did I want this. More than the latest version of the Chanel Boy bag.

  “You said I’ve been drowning,” I whispered, trailing my finger across his scarred pec before looking up at him.

  His eyes saw through the moonlight. Saw through me. “Yeah. But not anymore. Not ever again,” he promised.

  I traced his stubbled jaw. “No. Not anymore,” I agreed. My heart thumped at the promise of forever. But my mind taunted me with how easy promises were broken, so I urged myself to keep going. “But you saw it. You didn’t know why or how, yet you still saw. The drowning. That I was broken.”

  His arms flexed around me. “Yeah. I see you, baby. I see all of you. Mostly because it takes someone who’s been under that water to recognize what the drowning feels like. Might not be the same. The reasons. What pulls us down. But the result’s the same.” His eyes glittered. “Yeah, babe. I saw it. My gaze found you ‘cause you were so fucking beautiful. Like you were carved out, separate from that entire party with your magnificence. It’s cheesy as fuck, but I don’t even care. I only had eyes for you.

  “My gaze found you for your beauty, the stuff on the outside. It stayed for you. For the beautiful drowning girl who found a way to breathe underwater, who found a way to hide how hard that was. It stayed because all I wanted to do was figure out how to pull you out.” He paused. “Though I was wrong. It wasn’t up to me to pull you out. Maybe that’s why it took so long for us to get here. I had to realize that you had to pull yourself out.”

  I let his words sink into me. Settle into my soul so I could find the strength to give him some of mine. Or at least show him the last broken piece I’d been hiding from him.

  “No. You did pull me out,” I argued, going up on my elbow so I didn’t have to crane my neck talking to him. “And it was because I didn’t want to admit that you could do that, that a man could do that. That was why it took so long to get here.” I sucked in a breath. A long one. A crisp taste of oxygen and clean air, tinged with Keltan and the aftermath of our coupling. “And because Gray,” I continued in a whisper.

  He frowned. “Because Gray?” he asked, confused.

  “Grayson,” I corrected.

  Keltan’s body stiffened with realization. “He’s ‘him’?” he clarified, referencing an e-mail from a year before.

  Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who had them committed to memory.

  “Yeah. He’s him,” I agreed.

  Keltan was silent. Not pushing me to continue, giving me time. Though I could feel the tightness in his body, the brace.

  “He was my first love. A teenage love, one I was certain was it.” I gave him a look. “I knew shit about it. But teenagers know everything about life. Until they’re adults and realize they knew less than everything. A little more than nothing but a lot less than everything. Especially about love. But then it was what it was. I gave my entire heart to him.” I paused. “Blind. Or weak. Or just too young to know better. Take your pick. But that’s how I found myself in an abusive relationship and didn’t realize it until he tried to rape me. That was, of course, after he’d beaten me so badly he’d broken my wrist and three of my ribs.”

  The air, once crisp and clean, was polluted with the memory of such things, with the pure fury seeping from Keltan’s every pore.

  Though his face was carefully blank.

  Still.

  But not the good kind.

  “There’s more?” he grunted, the words rough.

  I swallowed. “Yeah. There’s more.”

  He waited.

  “I had a choice that day as to what I would let that make me become. What it would turn me into. I’ve thought a lot about that choice. It was a phone call. The one I made when I crawled into the bathroom and locked myself in when he was done with me. The person I called would dictate which road I would take from there.”

  I paused again, not ashamed, exactly, of telling the truth, but the truth had a way of doing something to the air. Changing it. Maybe even taking it away completely if it was bad enough.

  But we’d had enough of untold truths.

  “I called Bull,” I said quietly.

  The flex of his hands around me was Keltan’s only immediate reaction.

  He eyed me, though they were unreadable. “You called Bull,” he repeated.

  I nodded. “I gather you understand what that means.”

  “I hope it means Bull was burying a body that night,” he said.

  I flinched, not at the memory but at the way Keltan said it. Without question. Or judgment. The air, which I thought had turned bitter with the truth, stayed the same as it had moments before. It was my mind that was convinced it was bitter. My heart reminded me it was clean.

  “Yeah,” I breathed the single word.

  He pulled me so I lay on top of him, my naked body delightfully pressing into him, but more importantly, my naked eyes plastered to his.

  “You made the right choice, baby,” he murmured. “The right road. And not just because it brought you to me but because it made you who you are. Showed you who you always were. Not blind. Certainly not fuckin’ weak. ‘Cause, babe, that’s a call not even some of the theoretically ‘strong’ men in my unit could have made.”

  I blinked at him. “But it was essentially murder,” I clarified.

  “No. Wouldn’t say that. Murder is classed as the unlawful killing of another human being,” he said. “Not only was ending the life of someone who beat and tried to rape—”he spat the word like it was physically painful to say. “—a teenage girl considered the most lawful thing that could have been done, by the thoughts of any rational person.” He paused, his eyes turning foreign, empty, dangerous for a moment before they shuttered that part of him that had done those things that haunted him. The killer. The killer left and Keltan returned. “But the thing that tried to do that to anyone, the thing that tried to do that to you?” He grasped my head in his hands. “Wasn’t human, babe. Not at all. So no. I don’t think that’s murder. It’s called justice. And that choice? It makes me love you more. Not that I thought that could be possible. In fact, it’s not. To love this Lucy, my Snow, more. But it makes me love t
hat Lucy more.” His eyes twinkled with something other than pure fury, lightening the moment. “As long as that doesn’t make me sound like a creepy old man.”

  I grinned at him, a gesture I wouldn’t have dreamed possible during this conversation. But then again, this was Keltan. He broke all the rules.

  “It totally does,” I informed him, eyes roving over his face. My hand trailed down the taut ridges of his abs. “But that’s okay. I like dirty old men. I love them, in fact. Well, not them. One dirty old man in particular.”

  My teasing had its intended effect, the hardness pressing into me, plus the blackening of desire in his eyes. That was until my last sentence.

  Then he froze. Literally. His entire body.

  I couldn’t even feel the rise and fall of his breath.

  I frowned at him in concern until it came back. “Okay, I know I said you’re an old man, but don’t keel over right here, right now. We’ve only just started this,” I instructed. “Or properly started,” I corrected.

  “You love me,” he said instead of responding to my statement.

  I stared at him. “Of course, I love you,” I replied simply.

  And then I wasn’t on top of him any longer. I was flipped so his body pressed on top of mine, him bracing himself on his forearm so I wasn’t squashed by his muscled expanse.

  So I could breathe.

  “Of course, you love me?” he rasped, his accent rounding the words in a beautiful caress.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Of course. I have since bungee jumping and crunchy peanut butter. Even before then.” My voice was so small and quiet, but the chaos had receded so there was nothing to obscure it.

  His eyes were glittering with everything. “Been livin’ in chaos, baby. Since I put my ass on the plane to go to a war I thought would be noble to fight in. No respite.” He paused. “Sometimes chaos is good, great.” His hand ghosted down my hip to tell me exactly what kind of chaos he was referring to. “But I’ve been craving a sort of stillness that I thought would be lost forever. Until you. Until everything with you, but mostly until you said those three fucking words. Warning you, babe. Now that you said them, I ain’t livin’ in chaos again. Ever. Not unless it’s when I’m inside you.”

  I blinked at him. At the words that should have scared me. Terrified me. I’d spent so much time pushing him away you’d think they would have me wanting to run. To sprint.

  “No. I don’t ever want chaos again either,” I whispered back.

  Fuck running.

  Standing still was best.

  Until chaos came back in.

  And then we’d face it together.

  “Walker! Where the fuck are we with this story?”

  I jumped from the perusal of the piece of paper in my hand that I’d been comparing with my search on Google.

  Shipping manifests were not actually easy to read. And the list of items on this particular one looked reasonably usual to me. At least nothing was jumping out and straight-up saying “this is the reason a woman got murdered and here’s how to tie it to her murder.”

  So inconvenient.

  Plus, it was the first time I’d had to look at it since I was kept very busy the night before.

  I whirled in my chair, meeting Roger’s eyes.

  “We are in a good place,” I lied.

  He crossed his arms, his cheeks moving as he sucked his lozenge. “A good place would be that screen—”He nodded to the computer. “—being filled with words of a fuckin’ story. Not….” He squinted. “Google, Jesus.”

  I clicked it off. “I’ve got this.” I waved the paper like a child wanting their parent to approve of their homework.

  He leaned forward, snatching it off me to look. “And what is this?”

  “A manifest.”

  “I fuckin’ see that, Walker,” he muttered.

  “A manifest that may or may not have been what the murderer was looking for,” I told him, voice low, mindful of Stephanie’s ears.

  He glanced up at me, no longer irritated. Or quite as irritated.

  “The cops know about this?” he asked, waving the paper.

  “They may not,” I hedged.

  He shook his head, thrusting it back at me. “I never touched this.”

  I took the paper.

  “And I never told you to push the fuck out of the manifest before you give it to the proper authorities,” he added.

  I grinned. “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t fuck it up.”

  I nodded.

  And then he was gone.

  Leaving me with Google and the jumble of words that was the manifest. The police didn’t know about it. It wasn’t exactly obtained by legal means, that was for sure. And if I wanted to get technical, it was withholding evidence. But procuring it in itself was already breaking the law, and I was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. And I would give it to them. Once I figured out how to use it for my story.

  Keltan didn’t exactly know about it either.

  We didn’t really have time to talk about such things, too busy talking about the demons of the past, and then doing the whole “I love you” thing. My stomach dipped just thinking about that. And what came after that.

  Me. A lot.

  And then going to sleep in his arms.

  And waking up in them. He said goodbye at my door, only because he had a meeting and because Heath was sitting in his car outside, ready to commence his duties. I’d instructed him to become invisible when Polly was around. Like that was possible with a man who looked like him, and a girl like Polly who sniffed out troublesome hot guys like catnip.

  And Heath was trouble.

  I hoped he was good at his job.

  “You can’t keep her in the dark about this forever, Snow,” Keltan murmured at my door.

  I hoisted my bag on my shoulder before closing and locking the door. “Yeah I can. I’ve done it before,” I told him.

  He eyed me. “But your dad isn’t currently roaming around L.A. endangering your life.” He referenced the thing I’d told him during the earlier stages of this. About my father and how Polly didn’t know Pete wasn’t our biological one. That she’d never know.

  “It may not be the exact same,” I said as we waited for the elevator.

  Keltan’s fingers intertwined with mine, and I didn’t hesitate to do the same. I wasn’t a hand-holding kind of person, but things changed.

  And I was okay with that.

  “But my life is barely in danger,” I told him as we stepped inside.

  “Fuck, Lucy. Are you really that blind to the murder you walked in on? To the man you witnessed?” he seethed.

  I rolled my eyes. “The alpha male has already pissed on this particular territory.”

  He yanked me to his chest. “Well it seems we have to stay in this particular territory until you understand,” he rasped. “This is serious. This is more than a story. More than a murder. This is more than anything because it involves you and other shit that’s going to endanger my stillness. I’m not letting that shit happen. I can’t stop you from investigating this story, but I’m gonna make sure you keep breathing the entire time you do it, and for a long fuckin’ time after. Preferably forever. If not, at least until I suck in my last breath,” he declared, circling the column of my throat delicately.

  The elevator doors opened and I didn’t even notice.

  The sun could fall from the sky and I likely wouldn’t notice.

  “But you need to help me out, baby. Take care. Caution. Realize what this is. And don’t take any fuckin’ risks with your breath. Or mine.”

  I swallowed, unable to suck in any of the breath he was talking about at that juncture.

  “Okay” was all I’d been able to whisper.

  Then he’d kissed me mute anyway.

  Not that I minded.

  The older couple that walked into the elevator did mind, though.

  Then he left me with Heath and a promise from me that I’d be “careful.”

  “
Careful” was a relative term.

  Rosie and I made “careful” our own.

  The familiar pang came with thinking of my best friend. But then something else came. A thought that had me abandoning the manifest, banishing it to the depths of my bag, clicking off Google and clicking onto Facebook.

  I’d been going about this the entirely wrong way. The sensible way.

  I had Rosie to thank for my idea that had me strutting out of the office.

  I didn’t know if Keltan would, considering his opinion of careful and hers might differ.

  Everyone had a best friend. Even the craziest of us. Even crazy needed company. And Lucinda had been apparently certifiable, but she also was a famous and talented designer. And, by the looks of the photos of her at parties, a great time. Though that could have been on account of all the drugs she was on.

  She had a lot of hangers-on. I’d had to wade through the surface ones to find the one who accompanied her crazy.

  It wasn’t exactly great journalism, or hard, but these were changing times and one had to change with them.

  So, finding the woman tagged most with her on Facebook and Instagram, and on society websites and one police report, had me driving out to Calabasas.

  Yeah, the universe was totally looking out for me. Ashlin Lucas was an heiress who partied for a living and shopped like no one I’d ever met. Because of my months as a fashion and lifestyle reporter, I ran in a lot of the same circles as her. My credit card may not have been platinum, or even black, but we found each other’s crazy and got on well enough for me to have her phone number.

  And for me to be able to call her and ask for a chat about a possible profile for a story.

  It was only a white lie. Roger had been making noises about having to “fluff up the publication with fucking stories about stupid heiresses who snorted cocaine while wearing couture, because who else would aspiring young girls want to read about?”

  Heath pulled up to the rounded driveway of the gated mansion in the same neighborhood as numerous other celebrities, ranging from reality stars to washed-up child actors.