Kennedy
What the fuck am I doing? What the royal fuck am I doing? I never toy with the skips. Once I find them, I never kill time or fuck around. That only makes room for error. And here I am, creating a whole day of error. This chick has my brains scrambled.
I glance back at her as she climbs the stairs behind me. To the third floor. Where my hotel room is. We left her father and the goons locked in their rooms.
I unlock my hotel room door and do a cursory glance to make sure nothing has been disturbed. And then the door clicks shut. We’re alone.
I flick on a lamp and the light washes over her. Her nipples are beaded against her purple dress and one of her hands trembles. Hair springs out of her ponytail. She is so goddamn hot.
“So. What do you want me to do for you?” she asks, her voice cool. I can tell she thinks I’m just as bad as Esposito. But she came with me to get away from him. So she must prefer me a little bit.
I walk across the room to the bathroom and wash my hands, eyeing her in the bathroom mirror. She doesn’t move an inch. I come back, sitting in the desk chair and stretching my legs out in front of me. “What do you want to do for me?”
She eyes me like she can sense the trick in the question.
“I want to walk out of here, load my father into a cab and go to the airport,” she says. “I want to disappear into the world where you and Esposito will never find me.”
Impossible. There is nowhere on Earth I couldn’t find her. But I don’t say it out loud. She’s scared. As soon as we came into my room, the lust I’d been sensing from her dried up. I can literally see her heartbeat through the thin fabric of her dress. I’m not a monster. I don’t want to traumatize the girl.
But as my eyes drop down her body I realize that I’m not a saint either. I inwardly shrug. I’m not a hasty man. We have an entire day to see if we can reignite that moment at the bar, and in the hallway, and on the bed. If we can’t, well… For some reason I can’t finish that sentence.
I’m on my feet and walking over to her. I can see that she wants to step back from me but doesn’t. It’s like she’s trying to look tough. Her cherry-red hair spills everywhere, her plump bottom lip caught between her teeth.
I take her by the hand and lead her to the bed. “I’m gonna tie you to the bed again.”
She nods, like she thought it was an inevitability.
“You’re a smart lady, Row Rourke Ph.D. Do you know what kind of knot this is?”
She looks up and studies the complicated weaving my hands are doing over her wrist.
She nods again, a resigned understanding comes over her face.
I say it out loud, just so there’s no confusion. “If you tug on this knot, it’s going to tighten against your wrist. Very fast. And seeing as I’m going to take a shower in a second, you could lose the circulation in your hand for a full fifteen minutes.”
She nods and for some reason I wish she would speak. I stare her in the eye until she gets the picture.
“I won’t pull,” she says, her voice low.
I rise, two steps toward the bathroom when she speaks again. “I’m smarter than you, Jones.” A smile flashes through me at her defiance, but I don’t turn around and show it to her. “I won’t tug on this rope, but I am going to figure a way out of this.”
I step into the bathroom and shut the door, stripping off my clothes. I crank the shower on and step in. I wish she would figure a way out of this. Something brilliant and undeniable. Something that would fool me, completely incapacitate me.
The thought is like ice water down my back, even though the shower water is steamy hot. I can’t believe I’m even thinking something like that. Esposito would skin me alive if he knew I was having thoughts like that. Thoughts that would deprive him of what he wants.
My stomach tightens and roils. Row. He wants Row. I don’t blame him. She’s exquisite. And so hot I’d knock out my own teeth to touch her again. But I think of Esposito, his inky eyes and perfectly oiled hair. I picture one of his ringed hands sliding down her back.
I taste the rage before I even feel it. Metallic and burning in my throat. I rip my hands through my hair and try to take a calming breath. Mechanically, I wash my body and hair. Maybe I just need to reset. Cool down. Take a walk around the block. This is crazy. What I’m feeling is crazy.
You don’t just cross a warlord because you’ve got the hots for some girl. But a whirl of images pass through my head. Row studying an object at her dig site, her eyes so concentrated it was like a tornado could pass by without her noticing. Row’s bare feet as she walked past her bed last night. Row standing in that dress in the bar. The weight of Row’s leg over mine. Row’s voice when she called me her husband. Her mouth on mine.
I lean my forehead against the cool tile of the shower. My life crumbling at my feet.
Fuck. Even if my brain still has to come to terms with it, something within me has already decided.
Fuck. Shit. Goddamn it.
I’m not taking her to Esposito.