Chapter Six

________

 

Dominic

 

 

 

I was still chuckling as I stood next to the bed and pulled my jeans on. This was actually turning out to be kind of fun. And, after I’d spent most of the day chasing her around while she shopped and went to the club, I didn’t even feel bad about it. Okay, I hadn’t really enjoyed her obvious fear in the bathroom, so I did what I could to minimize the threat and push her safely back to anger. Anger, I could work with. It didn’t move me in the least. In fact, it made things easier. Strange how the whole force issue didn’t seem as hard to wrap my head around as it had before.

She was having her turn in the shower, so I made a quick resting spot on the floor with one of the pillows and covers from the bed. Then I sat down at the small table that was placed just inside the door and checked my phone. I’d already texted updates to Thomas and there was no news or instructions, so I scrolled through various news feeds for awhile. Even as I did this my mind kept going back to the way I’d stalked Leah in the club, watching her down shots and dance on the dark, crowded floor. I’d worked in clubs for years and had barely noticed the music pumping through the place, or the mass of bodies bumping into me as I walked through them. I’d only watched her. Moving to the beats like she didn’t have a care in the world – which, let’s be honest, she really didn’t – and working her sexy little body with the pulse of the crowd, despite not appearing to actually know anyone there. She’d been…enticing, for lack of a better word. No plastic, no poise, no fake princess bullshit. Similar to what I’d seen at her mom’s house, only without the edge of hurt and anger. Just then, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I had a feeling that would have been true even if I hadn’t been on the job. Of course, it had all disappeared as soon as she saw me, but that didn’t matter. I had her. The victory of it was pretty satisfying.

The bathroom door opened and I glanced up, my eyes lingering for a moment on the sight in front of me. She was already dressed in a black tank top with tiny cotton shorts, and my eyes were running down the length of her legs before I even realized it. It wasn’t much less than she’d been wearing at the club, but suddenly I felt decidedly aware of the small and secluded space we were in together. And I felt aware of her. Not just the skin but the wet hair that fell down her back, and the way her face was scrubbed free of all the makeup she’d been wearing before. It made her look years younger and way more vulnerable. When she paused next to her suitcase and glanced over at me, I quickly dismissed her to look down at my phone.

“What are you doing?”

I almost gave her some smartass answer, as she could clearly see what I was doing, but instead I just gave it to her straight. “Reading something on my phone,” I said, not looking at her. “Are you about ready for bed?” It was intended to be an innocent comment but came out sounding wrong, like an invitation to something dirty. When I didn’t get an immediate reply, I glanced up and saw her thumbing through her phone like she hadn’t even heard me. Then, she lifted the phone and aimed it at me.

“What are you doing?” I realized I was now asking her the same thing I’d just internally mocked her for asking me, so I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Don’t take my picture.” I adopted the formidable voice I used to intimidate people, but she didn’t even blink. I heard the click of her camera and my jaw tightened in response. “Okay, why did you do that?”

She shrugged, peering at the screen and examining whatever she saw there. “It’s part of my photo project for the summer. I have to get at least one photo from every day.”

A photo project? It was such a harmless, pure response that I wondered for a second if she was fucking with me. But her face was earnest and devoid of any snark, so I decided she was actually serious. “And you want me to be in it? I’m touched.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Only because I lost my other phone and have to start over. Besides, the photos are supposed to tell the whole story. The good, the bad, and the ugly.” The slight emphasis she placed on the last three words made it clear where she placed me, which left me slightly offended. Bad, I could see, but ugly? I knew I wasn’t anything like the coiffed pretty boys she knew, but I didn’t think I was exactly ugly, even to someone like her. Instead of letting myself dwell too much on that, I responded to the other thing she’d said.

“Wait, I’m sorry, you lost your phone? I thought you left it behind to keep me from finding you. Something that failed, by the way. Though the recording was a cute trick.”

She smiled a little, like she couldn’t hold it back. “I can’t even believe you fell for that.”

I shrugged, unbothered. “Maybe I wanted a little bit more of a challenge. And it was a good try, but it wasn’t enough, because here you are.”

That wiped the smugness from her face, like I figured it would. “I strongly dislike you, just so you know. You had no right to use handcuffs on me. It was nothing more than a pointless display of dominance, because I can ditch you anytime I want to. You can’t get me through the airport and on a plane without my compliance, so maybe stop pushing me.”

I stared her down, not conceding the upper hand to her even as I said, “Noted.”

“Good. So we’re done talking. I’m going to bed.” She zipped up her suitcase and placed it on the floor beside the bed, but then stopped and looked back at me like she just remembered something. “Do you have my phone? The one I lost, I mean?”

This time, I decided to let the “lost” thing go, because I was exhausted and done playing games for the night. Instead I dug the phone out of my pocket and silently held it up, watching her march forward and snatch it from my hand. No part of her skin touched me as she did this.

“Now you don’t have to put me in your photo thing,” I couldn’t resist saying.

“Yeah. I wasn’t really going to, anyway.”

 

 

My mom had my baby brother Lucas when I was ten. I never knew who his father was, because he was never in the picture, and back then it wasn’t something I even thought to ask. Going off Luke’s pale skin and blond hair, all I could determine was that it was a white guy. That detail stuck out only because my mom usually dated Hispanic guys; my dad was supposedly of Colombian descent and Cory’s was Mexican. Anyway, we were still living in the old apartment when Luke came along, a tiny two-bedroom hole in the shittiest subsidized housing project, and I’d shared a room with him from the start. My mom rarely woke up when he cried at night, if she was even there at all. So by default it had been my job to get up with him, give him his bottle, change him, or just sit with him when he didn’t seem to want anything else. It got to where I would wake up at the first stirrings in his crib, even before he started crying. I would hear a rustling, or a cough, or the quietest bit of baby babble, and I would be awake and alert instantly. Mentally pleading with him to stay quiet, to go back to sleep, but quick to action when he didn’t. We had no chair in our room so I’d sit on the floor against the wall and hold him until he fell back asleep. Sometimes I’d doze off while waiting, but I always came awake again at the slightest noise or movement from him in my arms. It was instinctive after awhile. When he was older and figured out how to climb out of his crib, I always woke up and intercepted him before he made it to the door of our room. The movements of this tiny kid had somehow overridden everything else, even the deep, exhausted pull of unconsciousness.

So, I guess my point is, I’m a light sleeper. It’s kind of weird because I can sleep through the sounds of honking traffic and noisy neighbors just fine. But when it comes to noises that shouldn’t be there, like someone moving in the room with me, or someone creeping past me, I wake up like I was never even asleep. And that’s exactly what happened when Leah tiptoed her way to the door in the middle of the night. She stepped past me and suddenly I was wide awake, rising silently to my feet to intercept her just like I used to do with Luke all those years ago. I did it pretty much the same way, too. Swooping in behind her, I hooked an arm around her and pulled her back until her body hit mine. She gave a small, surprised gasp, and then her whole body stiffened, her lungs pulling air in sharply as a scream started to form in her throat. Again, I acted quickly, if not wisely. My hand came up to cover her mouth and muffle any sound from escaping.

“Quiet,” I hissed. I couldn’t have her screaming and carrying on in a hotel that I already knew had paper thin walls. The last thing I needed was for someone to call the cops. But she still moaned an attempt at a scream into the palm of my hand, and her whole body bucked against me, her head shaking back and forth and trying to knock my hand away. Aggravated, and already not in the best mood from having been woken up, I tightened my hold and spoke to her urgently. “Leah, calm the fuck down. I’m not going to hurt you. I’ll let you go, but you can’t scream, alright? Nod if you understand.”

Her hands had curled around my wrist but she wasn’t pushing, just gripping hard, her nails digging into my skin. She didn’t nod her understanding, and her breathing was quick and choppy through her nose, and that was about the point I realized she was actually terrified. Not startled, not pissed off, but fearing-for-her-life terrified.

I immediately let her go and went for the lamp that was next to the bed. She was almost to the door by the time I switched it on, but to my surprise, she stopped there and turned to face me. Her whole face was wild with panic, her breathing was hard, and her hands were fisted at her sides.

“Whoa.” I held my hands up and eyed her apprehensively, still a little stunned by how worked up she was. In spite of it, though, I was ready to stop her if she made another move toward the door. “Leah, it’s just me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her breathing seemed to be leveling out some, but it was still coming fast and hard. “You can’t,” she managed to get out between breaths. “You can’t grab me like that.”

That was the point when the last traces of sleep-induced fog cleared my head and I finally put two and two together. The attempted kidnapping when she was fifteen. Her reaction had to be linked to that, and I felt like a huge fucking asshole all of a sudden. “Shit. Look, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m not going to hurt you, you know that, right? My only priority is to keep you safe. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You’re safe with me.”

Bit by bit, I watched her shut it down. Her eyes focused downward and she seemed to push it all somewhere deep inside until her face was nearly blank, her body relaxed. One arm folded across her body so she could hold the opposite wrist in her hand, and she just stood there silently, not moving.

Warily, I ventured, “You okay?”

She gave a quick nod. “I’m fine.” She obviously wasn’t fine, but I didn’t push the matter. I was just relieved she was no longer looking at me like I was trying to murder her.

“Okay. Come over here, will you? I’m not going to hurt you, but I’m also not letting you walk out that door.”

She glanced behind her with a vague confusion, like she’d forgotten the door was there. “I wasn’t…I mean, I couldn’t sleep. I was going to get something to eat.”

I didn’t buy it. Just because I felt like shit for scaring her didn’t mean I was going to let my guard down around her. “Uh huh. Well, you should have woken me up. Come here.”

Slowly, she walked toward me, her hands clenching her purse strap. Most of her demeanor had gone blank, but there were still signs of nervousness that she couldn’t hide. And because I had never been any good at knowing when to shut the fuck up, I asked, “Is this because of what happened? When your dad’s employee – ”

She stopped in her tracks, her body stiffening. “I was just surprised. That’s all. I’m fine.”

Okay. That subject was off-limits. Got it. As a sort of peace offering, I said, “Do you still want to get something to eat? I’ll go with you.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m just going to try to sleep.”

“Alright. Look, I’m sorry I scared you. But if you try to run, I will stop you. That hasn’t changed. I just need you to be clear that, no matter what happens, I’m not going to hurt you. You know that, right?”

With a frustrated exhale, she rolled her eyes and put us on much more familiar ground. “Oh, my God. Yes. I know. Stop making such a big deal out of everything. I’m not going to run. I just want to go back to bed.”

I nodded, then reached out and gently took one of her arms, tugging her closer. I didn’t think it through before I did it. Like always, I acted on instinct. I needed her to trust me with what I was going to have to pull, and that couldn’t happen if there was even a chance that she was still scared of my touch. I was pleased when she came without resistance, and I leaned down a bit as I spoke to her, my voice as quiet as if we were sharing dirty secrets in the dead of night. “Tell me something. Why’d you run away?” I dropped my hand from her arm, but not before I let my thumb trail across her skin. She visibly shivered and I cursed myself. Okay, that had probably been too much.

“If you even have to ask that,” she said, “then you wouldn’t understand.”

“So explain it to me.”

“Where are you from?” she asked then, turning the focus around so suddenly that I blinked in surprise. Still, I answered the question.

“Chicago.”

“When did you move to New York?”

“When I was nineteen.”

“And were you running away?”

I nodded, understanding what she was getting at. “No. More like, I was getting away. I was moving toward something else.”

She nodded, looking pleased at my choice of phrasing. “That’s what I was doing, too.”

“Okay, I get that. But there’s a slight difference between you and me. I didn’t have anything back home. I had nowhere to go but up. You, on the other hand, have everything.” Hearing myself say it, I realized how true that actually was to me. She had everything, without having to work for any of it. It wasn’t often I felt the pangs of being born poor, but occasionally, at times like this, it hit me how lucky some people truly were. I honestly couldn’t imagine what the hell she thought she had to get away from.

“Yeah,” she said flatly. “Everything.”

“Maybe not everything, but more than most people have. You’re getting a good education and you’ll never have to worry about money. You’re pretty. You’re healthy. Yeah, your dad’s a little overprotective but, I mean…at least he gives a shit about you.”

Stone-faced, she looked away. “Fine. I get it. A lot of people have it worse, so I shouldn’t complain. Point taken.”

I sighed, watching her pull the covers back on the bed so she could climb in. “That’s not exactly what I meant.” Except, it pretty much was, if I was being honest. And, yeah, I recognized that it was a dickish, completely unhelpful point of view, but it was still there. “Alright, forget I said anything. I always talk bullshit that I don’t really think through.”

“No shit,” she said, flashing me a lopsided, phony smile.

I watched as she got comfortable in bed, hating what I was going to do but having no real choice. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure she’d been trying to escape just now, but she had definitely escaped earlier that day, and I couldn’t take the chances of it happening again. This was what I should have done in the first place. “Leah, I want you to know that I really don’t want to do this. But I need to get you on that plane in the morning, and you haven’t given me any reason to believe you won’t run the first chance you get.” The look on her face was wary and confused until she saw me casually grab the handcuffs from the table beside the bed, and then anger wiped everything else out. She wrenched up on her knees and tried to pull out of the covers, but by then I already had her tiny wrist in my hand, and I clicked the cuff closed around it.

“No!” She tried to pull away, to no avail. “You can’t do this! I can’t sleep like this. I won’t. I mean it, let me go.”

“I’m done playing around, okay? It was cute at first, but now I’m tired. If you hadn’t given me so much trouble, it wouldn’t have to be like this, so if you want to point blame somewhere, point it at yourself.” Then I clicked the other cuff around my own wrist, because there wasn’t anywhere else near the bed to cuff her to, and if possible, she looked even more outraged.

“You’re cuffing me to you? You can’t! You’re sleeping on the floor, there’s no way – ”

“Yeah, about that. It looks like my accommodations have been upgraded. Scoot over.”

Now she merely looked horrified, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I nudged her over and climbed in next to her. The bed was fucking small, and I kind of took up a lot of space, but it was the only option left. I was done taking any chances with her. I moved to get comfortable on my back, which wasn’t too easy with my hand cuffed to hers inside the limited space, and I switched off the lamp with my free hand. Even as my eyes adjusted to the dark I could tell she was still sitting up, apparently frozen.

“Lay down, Leah. It’ll be okay. Go to sleep.”

“You can’t sleep in my bed,” she whispered, her voice still full of angry disbelief. I could feel the pull from the cuff around my wrist as she tried to inch herself away as much as possible.

I rolled my eyes. “Not exactly my deepest wish, either. But it’s where we are, so accept it and go to sleep.”

“You’re my bodyguard, this is so inappropriate...”

“Tell me, princess. What part of our acquaintance so far has been appropriate? No need to break precedence now. Stop pulling at the cuffs and go to sleep.”

As if finally realizing I wasn’t going to budge, she threw herself into the pillows with an exhale of frustration. My right arm was folded up in the space between us, my hand in a relaxed fist next to my pillow. This meant her left arm also had to be positioned like that, and every time her fingers accidentally brushed mine, she quickly curled them away. I waited for her to settle down, felt the rocking of the bed as she tossed and turned and listened to her angry little expels of air.

“I won’t be able to sleep like this,” she said.

“Lay still and close your eyes. You’ll get to sleep, I promise.” If I said it like it was easy, that’s only because it was. I fell asleep easily under normal circumstances, and I fell asleep almost as easily now. As soon as she stopped moving around so much, even though I knew she was still awake, I gave into my exhaustion from the events of the day, and I was out.

 

 

Coming awake, my mind and my body were aware of two very different things. My mind was focused on the fact that it was early morning and time to get checked out of the hotel and haul ass to the airport. My body, however, was focused on only one thing: the woman sleeping inches away from me, so close I could feel the warmth of her breath on my wrist and smell the hotel shampoo she’d used. She was facing me on her side, dark waves of hair covering a portion of her face, and she was soft and unguarded in a way she definitely hadn’t been the night before. In her sleep, she wasn’t trying to pull away from me anymore. If anything, she’d inched closer throughout the night, to where she was right at the edge of her pillow beside our linked arms. My arm was cramped from being in the same position for so long, my wrist sore where the metal of the cuff pressed into it, and maybe she’d been having the same issue. Because at some point her arm had come to lay across mine, easing the pressure from the cuff, and her hand was lightly curled up right next to my face. The heat from her bare forearm lay against mine from almost elbow to wrist. And my body reacted, swiftly and mindlessly. It didn’t care who she was or how off-limits she was to me. My dick had tunnel vision, and it knew only one thing: there was a soft, warm female body lying inches away, and it wanted her.

This sleeping arrangement had been a colossal bad idea.

I dug the key from the pocket of my jeans and quickly unlocked us. Needing to get up and moving so I could forget about my unwanted reaction to her, I got out of bed and put my shirt on. She was now starting to wake up, rolling onto her back and moaning as she lazily stretched her arms up over her head. Chancing a look back at her, I saw that her eyes were still closed and her face still clouded over from sleep. Obviously, she did not wake up as quickly or as easily as I always did. I tried not to find it adorable, and this was helped when she opened her eyes and saw me standing there and any traces of softness disappeared. Bolting upright, she pulled the covers around her waist and fisted the edges of them, all while glaring at me.

“Get up, princess. Time to get moving.”

We were out within fifteen minutes, and I guided her with a hand on her lower back as we walked, cautious of her trying to escape once we reached the lobby. She twisted her body out of my grasp.

“You don’t have my permission to touch me like that. Keep your hands to yourself, dick.”

“Fair enough,” I said as we came to the elevators. “But that agreement is void the second you try to run away.”

“I’m not going to run,” she said moodily. “Where would I even go?”

“There’s nowhere for you to go, so just try to remember that. You seem the type to act first and think things through later.”

“Oh, fuck off. Like you know anything about me.”

She clearly wasn’t a morning person, or else she still hadn’t let the cuffing incident go. But she checked out at the front desk without acting like anything was out of the ordinary, and then got into my rental car without a fight. As I pulled out of the hotel lot, I said, “Listen, I know you don’t want to go home. But I need to know that you don’t plan on pulling any shit once we get to the airport. I have papers from Thomas that I’m going to have you sign, but I want to hear it from you. Are you going to pull any shit, or are you going to get on the plane without a fuss?”

“Define fuss.”

I sighed impatiently. “A fuss would be acting like I’m boarding you against your will and getting me detained by TSA. You can call me all the names you want, that doesn’t actually bother me, as long as you willingly get on the plane. I know you don’t like me, but the airport is not the place to act on that.”

After a pause, she looked out the window and said, “Despite what you clearly think, I’m not stupid. I mean, I wouldn’t at all mind watching you get roughed up by TSA, but I wouldn’t do that to my dad. So you’re safe. I just want to get home and away from you at this point.”

“Something we can both agree on.” After a few minutes, because I never really liked silence while in the company of someone else, I asked, “Are you sorry you came to L.A.?”

“No. Why would I be?”

“I don’t know. You could have gone to Costa Rica or somewhere and lived it up a little before I came to get you.”

“I went to L.A. to see my mom,” she said quietly.

“Was that the first time you’ve been out there?”

She glanced at me warily, like she was weighing whether or not she wanted to talk to me. “Of course it was. My dad never let me go see her, that’s why I had to run away. He’s never wanted her to be a part of my life.”

“How old were you when they split up?”

“What’s with all the questions? You and I aren’t friends, despite how familiar you think you can be with me.”

“Just trying to make the time go by a little easier,” I replied, unbothered. “If you want to go back into uppity princess mode, that’s fine with me.” I’d already seen more to her, specifically when we were talking in the room before I cuffed her to me. But today she seemed determined to erase it all. That was probably for the best.

“You’re unbelievable. What are your parents like? Are they still together? In Chicago?”

If she thought she would make me uncomfortable by turning the questions around on me, that just showed how little she knew me. “My mom’s in Chicago with my brother Lucas and my little sister Cory. She’s a bartender, but you can usually find her at the bar on her off hours, too. And, no, she’s not with my father.” I laughed shortly, amused by that notion. “I never even met the guy. Never met Lucas’ dad, either. Cory’s the only one whose dad is still in the picture. He’s an okay guy. He pays child support, at least.” I glanced at her and she was staring at me with a bit of surprise, maybe even interest, though she was trying hard to keep her face blank so it didn’t show.

“You never met your dad?”

“No.”

“So, you should understand. Why I had to go see her, I mean.”

“Not really. I never gave a shit about finding him.” Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There’d been a few times when I was a teenager, usually after fighting with my mom, that I’d wished he was around. Well, not him, specifically. Just…a dad. “Why would you want to see someone who walked out on you?”

“She walked out on my dad. Not me.”

“And your dad made her move all the way out to California?”

“No. She had gotten a bunch of her art placed in this big show out there. But where she lived didn’t exactly matter when my father wouldn’t let her anywhere near me. The only time he let her see me was when I was fifteen, after…you know. And even that shocked me, honestly. I remember getting excited, like maybe he was going to let her start coming around more. But after she went home, it was just like before. He wouldn’t even let me mention her.”

I remembered the aftermath of the party I had walked into, and the words that had been exchanged between Leah and her mother, and I thought he probably had a good reason for trying to keep the woman away. But I knew Leah wouldn’t appreciate that suggestion, so instead I said, “Well, you finally saw her. And again I ask, are you sorry you came?”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. When I glanced at her she was staring out the passenger window, a somber expression on her face. Finally, all she said was, “No.”

That was pretty much the end of any real conversation between us. She didn’t give me any trouble at the airport, and she read an entire book on the flight back, a suspense novel she’d picked up at the airport bookstore. After we landed, I drove to her house in Scarsdale, a residence I’d never been to, and I tried not to gape at the sheer size of it as I pulled into the long wraparound driveway. When I grabbed her suitcase out of my trunk, I felt a wave of annoyance at the way she merely walked on past me, like she just assumed I would carry her shit. Thomas met us just inside the foyer of the house.

“Leah,” he said, with an almost paternal tone I’d never heard from him before. She came into his arms with no hesitation, hugging him like he was some kind of emotional anchor. “Why don’t you take a few minutes before going in to see your father, hmm?”

She nodded, pulling away from him with reluctance. She didn’t say anything to me, but as she turned to walk toward the long stairway that probably led to her bedroom and about eighteen others, she met my eyes and I couldn’t decipher the exact range of emotions in them. It looked a little like resentment, resignation, and clear disappointment.