CHAPTER FIVE

SOLOMON

"Where's your trusty knife?" 

Natalie gave just a hint of a smile, the first one I saw since I first laid eyes on her that afternoon looking like a frightened deer in a den of tigers. 

"I tucked it under my pillow," she replied as she came down the stairs with far less skittishness than when she first went up them. 

"Way to stay prepared," I chuckled and yanked my attention back to the Warriors game on TV to avoid staring at her. 

Her smile made my heart skip half a beat. It didn't help my situation that she was attractive, even beautiful after a hot shower removed layers of grime from her skin, which was pale and flushed with a soft pink. She stayed in the shower for a damn near two hours and I imagined her vigorously scrubbing her skin under the scalding water, as if that would erase every touch she didn't consent to. 

Her hair was dark blonde and framed her face like a halo. Big blue eyes that took up most of her face and a tiny nose made her look like a doll. It was no wonder why Antigua held her captive. With a gorgeous face like that, she must have turned a huge profit for him. 

Just as the thought flicked a spark of anger in my mind, I happened to look over and notice the pert buds of her nipples poking through my shirt she wore. 

Fuck. 

My dick stirred in response and I tried to casually adjust myself without her seeing. There was no way I could fuck this girl. Her body had been used enough and that didn't even begin to touch on the mental damage it caused her. 

I felt bad for what she went through. None of it was her fault but I also didn't want to stick my dick in crazy. I did that enough times already to learn my lesson.

No way in hell. Just let her crash here for a couple of days, get the info I need on Antigua, then let her go on her way. 

When I glanced at her again, she was still standing awkwardly at the bottom of the staircase, watching me with her huge eyes like a hawk. 

"You can sit down if you want," I said, gesturing to the couch. "If you're still hungry, I just heated up some lasagna. I already ate so help yourself to the rest of it." 

I smiled at her, secretly hoping to see that hint of a smile on her face again. "You can make your own choices now. Do whatever you feel like doing."

My heart surged victoriously as her little smirk returned and she happily padded across the tile floor to the kitchen.

I just happened to look at the square tiles where she stood a moment before and jumped off the couch in horror. 

"Jesus, Natalie!"   

A patch of smeared blood spread about a foot wide on the floor. A trail of bloody footprints followed Natalie to where she stood just outside my kitchen. 

She looked just as horrified as me. 

"Oh, shit! I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!" she cried, lifting one foot and then the other to reveal her bloody, torn up soles.

"It's okay," I assured her. "Here." 

Before I could think, I picked her up by the sides of her waist and sat her down on my kitchen island. I could feel the bones of her ribcage and she felt like she weighed nothing, as light as a feather. 

"Let me grab the first-aid kit," I said. "We'll get you cleaned up. Don't worry." 

By the time I grabbed the kit from the downstairs bathroom and returned to the kitchen, droplets of blood gathered on the floor underneath her feet. 

"I'm so sorry," she repeated, red-faced with embarrassment. "I don't know how I didn't notice." 

"It's okay, really." I knelt on the floor in front of her and retrieved gauze pads, Neosporin, and alcohol wipes from the kit and gently took her left ankle in my hand. "This is going to sting." 

"I'll clean up your floor," she continued to mumble apologetically, not seeming to notice as I wiped the blood from the bottom of her foot with an alcohol pad. 

"No, you won't," I replied. "It's nothing a little wiping won't fix. I can't believe some of the shit my daughter manages to spill on the floor. Thank fuck for tile. If I had carpeting though, I might take you up on it," I joked.

Natalie finally stopped apologizing. She sat silently like a rock as I cleaned the remaining blood from her feet and applied the Neosporin followed by the gauze pads to the open wounds. 

"You don't really feel pain anymore, do you." 

I said it as more of an observation than a question. 

"Sometimes I do," she answered quietly.

"You really ran for your life back there, huh?" 

"Yeah."

Motherfucking Antigua. I'm going to make you wish you never fucked me over. 

For some reason I felt oddly protective of this girl. The desire to hurt the scum that hurt her hit me like a slap in the face. People liked to pretend human trafficking or other evil shit didn't exist until it was staring them right in the face like Natalie's bloody feet and her knife under her pillow. 

I didn't know if I believed the bastard was being honest at our agreement. But until now, no one saw Natalie with their own eyes. She had the answers and the key to taking that piece of shit down and deserved a lifetime of reparation for it.   

I finished wrapping up her left foot and moved on to cleaning her right one. 

"You do this a lot?" she asked with a hint of amusement in her voice. 

"Ha," I scoffed. "I've cleaned so many boo-boos I could probably fall back on a career as a nurse." 

She was silent for another few moments before asking, "What's your daughter's name?" 

"Araceli." I couldn't help but smile and look up at her as I proudly said my baby's name. "Ari for short." 

"That's pretty," she said softly. "You can call me Nat."

"I don't think so," I said with a smirk as I wrapped tape around her foot to keep the gauze in place. "I like Natalie. It's much prettier than Nat."

I finished wrapping her feet in silence. The act of doing so along with our conversation felt oddly intimate, like the awkward first touches of new lovers before going to bed together. 

Even though that would never happen between us. 

"All done," I said, zipping up the first aid bag. "You should feel a lot better tomorrow."

"Sol."

The way she said my name was sultry. It matched the way her thin fingers caressed the back of my neck. 

I stood abruptly, thinking she must have touched me accidentally but no. 

She pulled gently forward on my shirt, which I remembered to button up halfway, until her knees straddled on either side of my waist. My hands braced on the island on either side of her. 

"Natalie, what are you--"

"Thank you, Sol," she breathed as her hands caressed over my chest, trailing down to outline each of my rigid ab muscles. "For taking care of me." 

Her lips brushed against my neck and collarbone, causing my cock to rise to the occasion. Heat and desire surged through me like an electrical current. When she brought one of my hands to her perky breasts as she took a firm handful of my erection, it took all my resolve to move away. 

"Natalie, stop."

I removed my hand from her warm, soft flesh despite how much it called to me like a seductive siren.

The confusion and embarrassment on her face nearly broke my heart. Fuck, this girl needed help. More than I could ever give her. 

“You don’t owe me anything, especially not your body,” I said. “No one owns you anymore.”

“You don’t want to?” she asked like we were discussing going to the movies. 

“It’s not that, honestly,” I grasped at the right words to say without sounding like a pig on top of trying not to embarrass her more. “You’re beautiful and I would, you know, under… different circumstances. But I promised to not let anything hurt you and that includes mentally.” 

I let out a long breath as if I’d been holding it all day. “Doing this would be taking advantage of you. I’m not going to do that.”

Her expression was unreadable but she remained silent and practically frozen. Until gingerly she slid off the island to the floor, careful to step around her now-drying trail of blood. 

“I guess I’ll go to sleep then,” she said in a monotone voice and started for the stairs. 

“Goodnight, Natalie,” I called after her. She was already up the steps and a few seconds later, I heard the guest bedroom door shut. 

“Fuck,” I muttered, rubbing my face with my palm and with my other hand, holding my rigid cock in my fist, desperate to relieve the throbbing ache that went from zero to 100 in mere seconds. 

All she had to do was touch me and barely at that. I responded like a goddamn teenager. 

With a resigned sigh, I grabbed a beer from the fridge and settled back in front of the TV. I needed a distraction to settle down the raging monster in my pants. 

I should’ve gone to bed too but knew it would be impossible to sleep with the beautiful, broken girl in the room down the hall and the biggest case of blue balls in my life.