Chapter 181

Helen’s POV

Randy frowned and stared at Lisa. “Do you live with anyone?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Do you have family or close friends around who can keep tabs on you?”

She shook her head again. “Why? she asked.

“I think you’d better stay with us,” Randy suggested. “I can’t see to your security if you go home alone. And you’ve been seen with us. The people who get close to us have a tendency to end up being used for bad purposes. I would hate to see you hurt in any way just for trying to help us out.”

She looked frightened for a moment.

Randy smiled at her. “Don’t worry. If you’re here, you’re under our protection. You’re safe. It’s only if you leave for home that it’s a problem.”

“But what about my job?” she asked with a tremble in her voice. “I have tomorrow off, but if I have to stay with you for protection, it might take longer than one more day. I mean, clearly, it’s going to take longer than a day.”

She waved her hand at the gigantic book on the table. “Even if we find a way to stop him, if you need my help performing the rite, it could take a while. If I’m in custody all that time, my house will still be there, but my job won’t.”

“Don’t worry about your livelihood,” Justin soothed. “If you help us out, I will make sure that you get whatever employment you want when we’re finished. I am the king, after all.”

She blushed and looked at the table, folding her hands on her lap. “I keep forgetting that. You’re right, and thank you.”

“In that case, should we put the two ladies together in one room,” Russo suggested.

Lisa held out her hands apologetically. “No, I wouldn’t want to separate a husband and a wife. I’ll be fine in here with Randy and Russo. There’s two of them, so it should keep everyone honest.”

I blushed and bit my lip, a little bit annoyed that she had jumped to the rescue of my husband and me so quickly. If she had let me get a word in edgewise, I’d have said that sounded like a fantastic idea. But I hated broadcasting the issues between Justin and me any more than they already had been.

Lisa was proof that there were people in the far corners of the True Mate’s pack that didn’t know all of our dirty laundry. It was kind of refreshing not to have people judging me on what had gone on between Justin and me previously.

But if I said that I didn’t want to sleep in the same bedroom with my mate in favor of staying the night with a strange woman, that would definitely raise questions.

“I’m fine with that if you are,” Justin said. He was looking at Lisa, but I knew his question was aimed at me.

“Do whatever makes you most comfortable, Lisa,” I said. “I really don’t want to make this any more stressful on you than I already have. As I said, that was never my intent.”

“I’ll sleep here then,” she said.

“I can sleep in the same bed as Randy,” Russo volunteered. “There are two beds in here. You can have one, and we’ll share the other.”

Randy made a face at Russo. “You’d better behave yourself if you’re sharing with me. Otherwise, from here on out, you’ll sleep on the floor.”

Lisa laughed. “It’s nice to see that you two are such good friends. As long as you’re both okay with it, then I will happily take the bed. Thank you for being so chivalrous.”

“Well, wife,” Justin said, waggling his eyebrows at me mischievously. “Shall we head to our bedroom?”

He walked for the door that connected our two rooms, and I reluctantly followed him, nerves buzzing all through my stomach. Justin and I hadn’t been alone in a bedroom since we became estranged. And I honestly wasn’t exactly sure how tonight was going to play out.

Justin had been nothing but courteous to me ever since we established the new rules between us. And we had been working on dating one another properly. We held hands and, like that one day in the office, had done a little fooling around.

But there was a big difference between letting Justin toy with me in the office while Randy read the news on his phone and being alone in a bedroom with someone whom I had such a violently passionate relationship with.

“How would you like to work tonight?” Justin asked me in a low voice after the doors were closed behind us.

I glanced at the single king-size bed in our room and blushed even deeper. “I think I’m okay to share the bed with you,” I said.

He put his hand in the center of my back, right between my shoulder blades, and ran his fingers in small circles. “Everything about tonight will be your call,” he said. “I’ll be your husband in whatever way you dictate.”

“However I want?”

He nodded. “If you want to line the middle of the bed with pillows and each stay to our own side, we’ll do that. Or you can come as close to me as you wish.”

Justin leaned in, running his nose along the rim of my ear. “We can try out something with a little more lust if you’d like.”

I shook my head at that. “I don’t want lust,” I said. “Lust is what got us into trouble in the first place. The next time we do anything together like that, I want love. And I don’t mean the ‘I love fucking you’ sort of love. But I want the ‘I would die for you. You are my other half,’ sort of love.”

“You are my other half. And I would die for you,” Justin said. “And that was true even when we could barely keep our hands off each other for all the fucking. All of those are a part of our relationships.”

His breath whispered out with his words, tickling my ear. “That’s what I’m trying to say. You take back whatever you want tonight because you have all of me. Everything I have to give is yours.”

I ducked my head so that the top of my head rested against his chest. Heaving in deep breaths, I tried to think, but my brain felt like mush. This was the Justin that I had fallen in love with. I was so desperate to believe that this loving Justin was still inside the monster who had tortured me.

Tentatively reaching around, I tested Justin out by placing my hands in the center of his back, very close to where I’d stabbed him. The muscles underneath my hands tightened just slightly, but otherwise, he didn’t give any indication of a flinch. That didn’t change the fact that I’d caught him.

We were both still learning to trust each other.

“I don’t know, Justin,” I said. “I wish I could tell you exactly what I wanted from you and what I was comfortable with.”

I splayed my fingers across his back and rubbed. He tightened up a little more.

“Just like you,” I said. “I don’t know where the line is at, just like you don’t. I can feel that you’re trying not to flinch away from me, but you’re scared of me, as well. What that’s going to translate to if we try to be with one another, I don’t know.”

I sighed and leaned against his chest. “What I do know is that the next time that we have sex, I want it to be a beautiful event. I don’t want it to be hot and fast, and I don’t want it to be sloppy and rough. I want it to be amazing. We’re not going to fuck. We’re going to make love.”