Chapter Fourteen
Annalise
She awoke the next morning distinctly uncomfortable with the situation.
It was the bed. It was too big and too comfortable. The last time Annalise had experienced such creature comforts in life, she’d been trapped by a powerful person in a house she couldn’t leave. Now she was trapped somewhere she couldn’t leave, with a powerful person she wasn’t sure she fully trusted on the inside, and a powerful person she definitely didn’t trust on the outside. It was not a good place to be.
“Annalise?”
How the hell did he know that she was awake already? Was he spying on her?
“Are you spying on me?”
“What?” the voice was muffled through the door to the bedroom.
The door to his bedroom. That was where she’d slept. In Caine’s bed. He had taken the couch. Part of her wondered if she would have said no if he’d tried to sleep in the same bed as her. Her brain hadn’t been able to turn off the memory of his kiss, of how it sent blistering heat surging through her, filling her with pent-up desire from the top of her head to the bottoms of her feet. Hairs had stood on end when he’d kissed her. The back of her neck still tingled when she thought about his hand there.
Like she’d told him, she didn’t trust herself to get comfortable with him. That didn’t mean she was dead. Annalise could feel the growing sexual tension between them. It had been there almost since the first time he’d laid those gorgeous ice-blue eyes upon her. She wondered what it would be like to stroke his short beard as he kissed her, or to feel it tickle the insides of her thighs.
Oh yes, Annalise had definitely thought about what sex with Caine would be like. How could she not? He was the walking, talking, definition of sexy. Shoulders so broad that everything he wore pulled tight. A throaty voice that spoke of hard masculinity, of his raw, primal strength, something that called to her in a way every woman secretly craved, though they didn’t always know why.
His arms were the size of her legs, and she recalled the way he’d casually lifted her thick frame from the ground as if she were little more than a sack of clothing. There hadn’t been a grunt of exertion or a tremble in his arms. He’d just simply done it, without thinking twice. That sort of strength both excited and scared her. If he used it to please her, oh, she suspected it would be raunchy and a thrilling ride unlike anything she’d experienced before.
It was the other side that worried her enough to stop her from acting on it, however. What if she opened herself up to him, if she trusted him, and he abused it? There would be no way for her to stop him if he chose to ignore her. Her strength was a breath to his hurricane winds. Nothing at all.
Caine isn’t like that. He would never do that to you.
That was the vibe she got most of the time, but occasionally his darker side shone through. Like when he’d said if Lincoln came near him again he would kill him. The calm way he’d stated that made her wonder if he’d killed before. If he was okay with it. What if, once he was done with her, he decided to kill her too?
These were the things Annalise feared, because that’s what she’d been taught to fear—that once you were no longer useful, you were simply disposed of.
“Of course not. Why would I spy on you?” Caine replied, puzzled. “I know where you are. You’re in the bedroom. I heard you stir, and I needed to talk to you. So here we are. Can I talk to you?”
“Aren’t you already doing that?”
He snorted loud enough that she could hear it through the door. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“Fine, give me a few moments to get dressed.”
She quickly freshened up in the washroom and donned some clothes. A dark-red T-shirt and black loose-fit leggings and she was as ready to go as she would ever be.
“What is it?”
“I…” Caine stopped as his eyes gave her the once-over. A second later he visibly tore his gaze away from her body and started looking at a spot over her shoulder. “I need to go talk to my brothers about some things. We need to chat.”
“Okay? Why are you telling me this? Are you going to tell them what you told me?”
He looked away. “Maybe. I’m…I’m going to try. After last night, I…” he shrugged. “I need to try. But I don’t want to do it here, with the others present. I know you aren’t going to like this, but we’re going to go to a pub around the corner.”
Her mouth dropped open. “So you’re just going to leave me here? Alone?”
“No, not alone. I made a phone call. Someone is coming here to help. She’s going to keep you safe.”
“She?” Annalise eyed him, not believing what she was hearing. “This woman is going to be my what, my bodyguard?”
Caine coughed, covering up what suspiciously sounded like laughter. “I wouldn’t refer to her as that, if I were you. Colonel Mara is more of an, overseer, if you like. I’m not sure how else to put it. Anyway, she knows who you are, though I didn’t really reveal what’s going on. She’ll be here soon, and she’ll keep you safe while I’m gone.”
“You sure are going to great lengths to have a talk with your brothers.”
He eyed her. “Well, I’m seeing what’s happened to you, and how you refuse to trust or talk to anyone, and I don’t want that to happen to me or to my brothers. I’m not sure it’ll solve anything, but I want to at least try.”
“And if you’re leading by example convinces me to open up? That’s what you’re going for really, isn’t it? Trying to show me that it’s okay?”
He shook his head. “No. I just don’t want to end up like you.”
The soft-spoken words hit her worse than any yelling or screaming at her stubbornness had in the past. Annalise felt her world rock back from the vicious and yet truthful uppercut of Caine’s statement. Was she really that bad that he feared ending up like her?
For so long she’d strived to be this way, to ensure she didn’t allow anyone close, that she’d come to believe it was the way it had to be. That it was the way the world operated and she could beat the world if she just worked with it instead of trying to maintain friendships that would only get in the way.
Yet someone as strong as Caine was afraid of what she’d become. That bore thinking. Maybe it was for the best he was leaving for a few hours. It seemed Annalise needed time to herself as well to think about what he’d said, and who it was she wanted to be. Like Caine had said, it might not fix anything, but she couldn’t just ignore that powerful of a statement as if it had had no effect on her.
“Is there at least somewhere else I can go?” she asked. “I know I can’t leave the tower, not with Lincoln still unaccounted for. But what about some fresh air at least, Caine? I’m feeling a little claustrophobic.”
He grinned, extending one hand. “I have just the place for that.”