Fall Into You (Morally Gray, #2)(82)

“You talked to Emery about me?”

Instead of answering, he makes a face.

“When?”

He admits grudgingly, “The day you started as my assistant.”

“After I told you she was the one who referred me for the job?”

“Yes. But don’t be angry with her, she wouldn’t answer any of my ten thousand questions about you except what your favorite book was. She said I should have a conversation with you instead.”

“That’s a surprising suggestion, considering conversations are your least favorite thing.”

“Not my least favorite.”

“No? What is?”

He answers with total nonchalance. “Getting blood stains out of white carpeting.”

When I stare at him in horrified silence, he chuckles. “I’m kidding.”

“I can’t deal with gallows humor at the moment, Cole. Have mercy.”

He tucks my head into his shoulder and kisses my hair. “Mercy it is.”

I close my eyes again, flatten my hand over the center of his chest, and count the beats of his heart until I get to sixty. Then I sigh and snuggle closer to him, hoping this man I’m so enamored with won’t someday be the subject of a true crime documentary.

He strokes my back and hair, stopping every so often to kiss my cheek or my forehead. He’s so gentle and sweet, it’s almost impossible to reconcile this side of him with the other side I know exists.

The side where all his monsters live.

After a long time, he murmurs, “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Which means I should probably be incarcerated.”

He knows what I mean. “You’re not a danger to society because you can accept darkness more easily than other people.”

“I don’t know if accept is the right word. It’s more like welcome it with open arms.”

“You didn’t have a crisis of conscience over the others.”

“No, but Bob is close to home. And I’m not having a crisis of conscience over him. I’m glad he’s gone.” After a moment, I add, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. If you have others who need taking care of, make me a list.”

“Oh my God! Or wait, was that more gallows humor?”

“No. You can literally make me a list.”

I groan. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“You never know. Having a man like me around can be extremely handy.”

“Please stop talking now.”

“Okay.” There’s a short pause, then he says, “How am I supposed to answer questions if I can’t talk?”

“You know what? I don’t care if you’re bigger and stronger than me and know how get blood out of white carpeting. If you don’t shut up for a minute, I’ll kick your ass.”

He rolls on top of me and laughs into my neck. When he comes up for air, he kisses me deeply, pressing me into the mattress and making a soft sound of pleasure in his throat.

“Shay?”

“What?”

“Tell me you’re mine.”

Gazing up into the depths of his beautiful blue eyes, I know that whatever strange forces brought us together are the same ones that make resistance useless. The connection we shared that first night hasn’t diminished with time, it’s only grown stronger.

So I give up any lingering hesitations and surrender in full.

“I’m yours. I belong to you, Cole McCord, come what may.”

He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they burn with a new—darker—fire.

“Good, baby. Because you offered this monster a home, and he’s taking you up on the invitation.”





Shay





He kisses me again, then rolls onto his back and arranges me on top of his body the way he likes to, cupping my head in his big hand as I rest my head on his shoulder.

He inhales deeply, exhales in a gust, then begins to talk in a low, emotionless voice.

“In Japan, people who go missing are called jouhatsu. Literally translated, the word means evaporated. Like people all over the world, they vanish for different reasons, but many of the jouhatsu in Japan do so on purpose with the help of companies called yonige-ya.”

“What does that mean?”

“Night movers. They’re specialists in helping people disappear.”

Already fascinated, I wait quietly for him to continue as he absently strokes my hair.

“I was first introduced to the idea when I was in boarding school in London in my teens. I had a friend named Kiyoko there whose family was wealthy, like mine. But one of her uncles had a gambling problem and went into deep debt. He borrowed money from the yakuza to try to repay it but defaulted on the loan. And if you don’t make good on your debts to the yakuza, you don’t get to keep breathing.”

“I take it they’re organized crime like the Mafia?”

“Yes. So Kiyoko’s uncle hired a night mover to help him disappear. He was never heard from again. The only reason the family knew what happened to him is because he left his mother a note. But they never spoke of him after that. Like suicide, becoming jouhatsu is a taboo topic in their culture. When it happens, everyone acts like it didn’t. You vanish, and nobody ever mentions you again.”