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I had to admit that I didn’t want to leave him. Not really. Not when what we had shared last night had been so good. That kind of connection, I knew it wasn’t easy to find out there in the real world, and if I walked away from it now, there was no guarantee that I would ever be able to find it again.
Fuck! Was I really going to do this? I stared at him and then made my way back over to the bed, slipping back beneath the covers, hoping he couldn’t tell what had just gone on inside my head while I had been standing in the doorway.
As though woken by the feel of the movement beside him, he lifted his head from the pillow and turned to face me. His eyes were a little bleary, but they snapped open when he realized where he was. He looked over toward the door, making sure, no doubt, that I hadn’t tried to flee.
“Hey,” I greeted him softly. God, please don’t tell me I’ve made a huge mistake in staying...
“Hi,” he shot back gruffly. His voice seemed strained, somehow, like he didn’t want to talk to me. After what we had done last night, didn’t he owe me at least that?
He moved to get out of bed, and I sat up behind him, reaching for his arm. We needed to talk. I had to speak to him about what happened. He couldn’t just expect me to play it off like it was nothing. What we had done, it was crazy and probably reckless and probably stupid, but I needed him to assure me that it hadn’t been the worst mistake I had ever made in my life.
He shook me off without a word. My stomach dropped. Oh, shit. This wasn’t going the way I wanted it to. He clearly didn’t give a damn about me now that he’d gotten what he wanted, maybe even regretted what we had done before. But I could remember how he had looked when he was moving inside of me, how his eyes had burned into mine like he was branding me from the inside out. He couldn’t have just forgotten about that, could he?
“Zane,” I murmured to him, and he half-turned, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
“What is it?” he demanded coldly. I felt like I was going to throw up. Just a few moments ago, I’d had the chance to get out of here. I could have run the moment the chance had laid itself out in front of me, but I hadn’t. I had stayed because I had been stupid enough to convince myself that he could feel at least some of the connection that I had sensed last night.
“Nothing,” I muttered. I wasn’t going to force this out of him. If he wanted to act an asshole about it, I would let him. I had never been the kind of girl who would beg for a man’s attention, and I wasn’t going to start now.
He grunted and rose from the bed. I could hardly even look at him as he went, tears pricking the backs of my eyes. I blinked them away angrily, not wanting him to see how much he had gotten to me. Showing any kind of emotion right now felt like a risk, something he could use against me, if he wanted to. And he would.
That was the kind of man he was.
He pulled on his pants where he had kicked them off to the floor last night, and I stared at that one loose thread on the covers, picking at it over and over again. It gave me something to focus on other than the feeling of hurt stirring in my guts right now. I wanted to cry. I wanted to sob and weep and throw myself at him and tell him that I could have run, but I didn’t, and wasn’t that something? Didn’t that mean anything to him?
But I was sure he would just double down on security if he knew I’d come so close to getting out, and if this was the way he was acting, I was going to need every chance I got to flee from here.
He closed the door behind him, leaving me in this silence once more, with nothing but the painful doubt that clung to my mind hanging over my head and the terror that I had made the wrong choice when I could have left.
Even if I knew there was something about this man that would keep me coming back for more, whether I wanted it or not.
Chapter Ten – Zane
Something was wrong.
I could sense it in the air, something hanging over me. It was like the world was holding its breath and waiting for something to happen. In the room next door, Chelsea had just finished taking a shower. She had insisted on washing herself after being locked up in that room for so long, and after what we had done the night before, I figured it was the least I could do for her.
But I was keeping a close watch on the door, and I wasn’t going to let her get away with breaking out. There was no way she could have used the window to escape. It would have been a ten-story drop straight down, and besides...
When I had woken up this morning, I had realized that I’d left the door open. Unlocked. I wasn’t sure if she had noticed it or not. If she had, she had decided not to take the chance to run from here, and that was... a lot for me to wrap my head around. I would have guessed that she would flee the moment she got the chance, but she hadn’t. No, I had woken up beside her, her body just a few inches from mine. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I had come to next to another person like that, but it felt like a lifetime.
It had spooked me enough that I’d taken my leave the second I had woken up. I could tell she wanted to talk about what had happened, but there was no way I could do that. I had never been the kind of guy to sit around and talk about my feelings, not a chance in hell, and the last thing I needed was to complicate this by letting myself get drawn into something more. What had happened last night, it was nothing more than a mistake. I wasn’t going to let it get to me. Or get in the way of what I knew I needed to do to take revenge for my brother.
The water turned off next door, and I heard Chelsea humming quietly to herself as she got dressed. My mind drifted to what she must have looked like naked, the water dripping from her soft body, her red hair a mess around her delicate features...
All of a sudden, a noise caught my attention. My ears perked up at once, head snapping around toward the door. There was no reason for noise here, not in this apartment block. Nobody else lived here. It could have been just a creak of the house, some old pipes settling, but something told me there was more to it than that.
Something told me, after the call I had made nearly ten days ago, that they were here. Could have just been my paranoia, but my instincts rarely let me down.
I rose to my feet, moving toward the door and picking my way across the floorboards toward it. Pressing my eye to the grimy keyhole, I peered out into the stairwell beyond. For a moment, I thought I was just being crazy. There was nobody out there, no sign of movement. Nothing. Just as I was about to straighten up, though, I heard it again, the creak of footsteps on a floorboard, unmistakable. My shoulders raised to my ears, and I took a step back, reaching for the flick knife in my pocket.
My instincts were already kicking in, warning me to be ready to fight. But this was what I wanted, wasn’t it? A confrontation with the Dogs, a chance to lay them out and make them pay? I glanced back toward the bathroom, where Chelsea had no idea any of this was happening. But I’ll lose her. I couldn’t let that happen. I wasn’t ready to let her slip through my fingers, not yet.
And if I had to fight these fuckers off to do it? I would.
The door to the apartment burst off its hinges, and within seconds, chaos exploded into the air. The Dogs were here. I didn’t know how, but they had found me.
And they were going to do whatever they could to take Chelsea from me.
