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Just for a split second, his gaze went deep, like maybe he wanted to challenge that. I stared back and he shrugged.
“I don’t know how long we’ll be in here together. I’m checking out everything again.” He rose.
“Why?”
His frown made as if he thought I’d just said the dumbest thing so far. “I never give up. You should remember it too. Never give up. Never give in.”
“Uh-huh.” It wasn’t a bad idea, really.
I said it to myself. The words were ones I could cling to, and it was nice to have this man still trying to find a way out. I watched as he looked up at the dome of the showerhead that was bolted flush to the ceiling, as if he could unscrew it by staring. Then he leapt up, grabbed the window shelf, and did a chin-up to stare out my...our tiny window.
I realized I had given in. I had decided whatever Gregor wanted, he was going to get. No matter how much I had to hurt.
Never give up. Never give in. Pieter had given me something good.
“What’s out there?”
“The courtyard. First a covered way right next to this room, then a courtyard.” He let go and landed in a neat crouch. “It’s where they had me staked out when I arrived. I was supposed to die until they decided I had a use.”
A use? Torturing me. My mouth hung open.
“Do you still have no idea who this client is? Whoever it is only visits weekends, so far. I’m guessing they’re from Australia. Someone you wronged, maybe?”
There were so many of those. I’d done a lot of stories, a lot of dirty laundry had been exposed over the years of my journalistic career, but no one special sprang to mind. “No. I can’t think of anyone.” I paused, remembered my fake career. “Librarians don’t tend to annoy people that much. Overdue loans, I don’t think anyone has ever been murdered over them.”
Though journos had been, regularly, when people like the IRA got annoyed. I wracked my brains for a clue. Still none.
He nodded. “Okay. Can I sit there?” He indicated the bed.
Ice swept me. “No!”
His nod was too fast.
I’d goofed. “How about we play a game or something?”
“Game?” His eyebrows shot upward. “Like? Noughts and crosses? How about I do something useful like self-defense lessons?”
That sounded good until I figured out the flaw. “Only if,” I said slowly, “you can do it without touching.”
“Hmm.”
Even that hmm reminded me. He’d said it once, before he finger fucked me. I didn’t think I’d ever forget his words.
I want you. One day, I’ll have you stand still, so I can look at you before I fuck you.
Such dirty words – ones that even now made me look at him and see the animalistic, dominating man who’d given me both more pain and more pleasure than anyone else, ever.
How could someone repulse me so much yet also make me want him to walk over here and grab me and do nasty things? Subtly, I squeezed my thighs together, feeling the tiny awakening throb.
We were going to have to shower and go to the toilet with the other person in the room. I prayed I could get him to turn away and not look...and that I could do the same.
His self-defense lessons were to the point and though maybe not as effective as doing them with a partner, I could practice eye jabbing on my pillow and shin sweeps and heel-of-hand to nose smashes. Things like breaking the hold when someone grabbed my throat from behind, they’d have to wait. I wasn’t letting him near me. Even when he sighed at my obstinacy.
The more I did, the more my stiffness ebbed. I’d be sore later though.
“So.” I straightened and kicked my pillow onto the bed, scoring a brilliant goal on the headboard. “Does this mean I stand a chance at taking out a guard?”
The hesitation said it all.
