Chapter Thirteen
WATERY LIGHT FILTERED in through the plastic white blinds. Nightmares filled my head—the tang of blood, the taste of fear. I buried my face in the pillow, waiting for the memories to fade. It had been years now, but the dreams still came.
Except as I became fully awake, I realized this wasn’t a dream.
Last night. Philip. That really happened.
The bed was empty. I bolted upright and scanned the room. He wasn’t here. Then I heard the water running. The bathroom door was closed. He must have been in there. Even knowing that, even with the logical answer clear in my head, I knew a moment of pure panic. Someone was in my room, and I couldn’t be sure it was him.
Fear gripped my throat, making it hard to breathe. One day I’d been a sarcastic teenager, my biggest problems in life what lipstick to wear and passing my precalc test. Then men had dragged me out of the back of a club, and just like that, I wasn’t a little girl anymore.
I wasn’t quite a woman either. I had been collateral then.
And I wasn’t sure that had really changed.
Only the courage and kindness of a call girl saved me that day. She took me to the one man who could keep me safe from anyone, from anything. Because every dangerous, bad man in Chicago knew that he was worse.
So who could have hurt a man as powerful as him?
What had happened to him last night?
Shelly had kept in touch with me—with more than anonymous post cards. She had left the life for good and worked with a shelter helping other women do the same. And sometimes she would tell me about her time with Philip. Nothing dirty. The unexpectedly sweet parts. His love for his family. His loyalty. Things I fantasized about almost as much as his hard-packed body.
The bathroom door opened, and I tensed. I hadn’t been able to fully relax for years.
Except for last night, when he held me.
All that strength, wrapped around me. A shield. A shelter.
And so very temporary.
Philip still had his shirt off, exposing broad shoulders and muscled arms to the morning light. That sweeping tattoo across his chest was a gritty counterpoint to the sharp, tailored clothes he usually wore. It was like a secret, this tattoo—something buried beneath the surface of his suits and his guns, something only I could see.
My eyes drank in the secret, the black lines embedded in rough flesh. A strange rhythm beat through my veins—mine. As possessive of his body as his hands had been on me.
His attention was on the towel he still held to his side. When he pulled it away, I winced at the spill of bright red. The strange and unsettling arousal faded away, leaving only urgent concern.
“You need stitches,” I said, already crossing the room.
He reached for the first-aid kit on the counter. “I’m fine. I just need you to do the bandages again so I stop bleeding.”
It was a foreign pleasure that anyone would need me, that this man would need me. Even for something as ridiculous as applying bandages. “They’re not going to help. Not for long.”
“I don’t need them to last long,” he said. “Just until I can get home.”
“You keep a doctor on staff?”
“Still with the attitude, kitten? I thought you’d grown out of that.”
Indignation burned deep in my stomach, eclipsing my concern for him. “You don’t know a damn thing about me or the woman I’ve grown into.”
Heat flared in his dark eyes, and his gaze traveled low, past the neckline of my tank top and the strip of skin exposed at my waist, to the private place between my legs, the one that still throbbed just from looking at him. A pleased light entered his eyes that told me that, despite his pain and delirium, he remembered what had happened last night.
“I know how you sound when you come,” he murmured.
A moan escaped me, half protest, half desire. It probably sounded just like when I came.
“And I know what your hot pussy feels like when it rides my cock.” He paused, his gaze challenging me to deny it. “Or did I just dream that last night?”
I pressed my lips together. My cheeks burned hot. “You were the one who grabbed me. I didn’t want to hurt you by fighting you off. Now of course I see that you would have deserved it.”
“Probably,” he said, bending his head so we were close—so close. “Dreaming never felt that good. And I have dreamed about you, kitten. Don’t doubt that.”
Surprise flared in my chest—along with a kind of panic. From the first moment we met there had been a connection, a wild recognition from one animal to another. It didn’t need words. We both felt it, even when I was too young to actually do anything about it.
And I was still too young for him.
He was still too dangerous for me.
Nothing could happen between us beyond a rough grope in the dark.
“What’s that from?” I asked, pointing to the necklace.
“None of your business,” he said without missing a beat, stone cold.
I didn’t flinch. I was proud of that much, at least. Of course I knew he didn’t owe me an answer, but a few hours ago he had been hard between my legs—it was a chilling reminder how little that meant in the world.
I took the first-aid box and pulled out the last few butterfly bandages. The task was just a distraction. I didn’t meet his eyes while I smoothed the tiny strips of white into place over gashed, bloodstained skin.
“Will you be safe?” I asked softly, still looking at the wound.
“Of course,” he said, sounding surprised. Though I wasn’t sure if he was surprised because I cared or because I had ever doubted his ability to defend himself. There was a time I wouldn’t have doubted it. As a scared teenage girl on the run, he had seemed like some kind of god, invincible and capricious.
He hadn’t been a god last night.
He had been raw and wild and vulnerable. A man.
I already knew I would never forget the fear I’d felt for him, finding him leaning against my door and bleeding. I would never forget how he made me feel with his hands on my hips and his cock a hot pulsing presence against my sex. He made me feel like a woman.
A woman strong enough to ask the question we’d been avoiding. I straightened and forced myself to meet his cold, challenging gaze. “If it’s safe there, why did you come here?”
His eyes were an unfathomable well, too deep and dark to see beneath the surface. “I’m always here. Wherever you go, I follow. Watching you, waiting for you. Wanting you. The only difference is last night—I didn’t leave.”