Twisted-Games

it hadn’t been our priority, and it gave away our location. Everything went to
shit after that. We were swarmed, and out of the eight men in my squad, three
survived. The agents didn’t make it out alive, either. It was a total fucking
bloodbath.”
His words tripped something in my memory. A unit of Eldorran soldiers
had all been wiped out in a joint mission gone wrong a few years ago. It had
received nonstop news coverage for a week, and I bet it was the same mission
Rhys was talking about.
Horror and sympathy gripped my chest. “I’m so sorry.”
I should be loyal to Eldorra, and I was, but loyalty didn’t mean blindness.
Everyone messed up, and in Rhys’s case, the soldier’s mistake had cost him
the lives of those he loved.
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” Rhys rubbed a hand over his face. “It
happened years ago, and yeah, it added to my huge fucking hang-ups about
Eldorra, but what’s past is past. Can’t do a damn thing about it now.”
We fell silent again, each lost in our own thoughts, before I worked up
the courage to ask, “Why did you take the job as my bodyguard then? If you
knew it meant having to visit Eldorra.”
Rhys’s expression relaxed into a smirk. “You got a real pretty face.” His
smirk widened at my exasperated huff. “I don’t know. Guess it felt right at
the time.”
“We always end up where we’re meant to be,” I said softly.
His eyes lingered on mine. “Maybe.”
He hated Eldorra, yet he’d not only taken the job but moved here
permanently. For me.
“Well.” I forced a smile, hardly able to hear myself over the roar of my
heart. “I should turn in for the night. Early morning tomorrow.”
Rhys rose when I did. “I’ll walk you to your room.”
The soft creak of the wooden stairs beneath our feet mingled with the
sounds of our breaths—mine shallow, Rhys’s deep and even.
Did he feel it, the electric current running between us? Or was it only in
my imagination?
Perhaps not, because when we arrived at my room, I didn’t open the door,
and he didn’t leave.
Goosebumps peppered my flesh, either from Rhys’s proximity or from
the air-conditioning blasting through the hall.
Even when you’re not there, you’re everywhere. In my head, in my lungs,