When the man walked back in she looked at him with hate in her heart. “Are you ready to be reasonable yet and let me go?” She demanded of him. God, he was huge. His body was scrumptious, and god bless all that was holy, she felt her pussy getting wet and her nipples getting hard. “Because that’s the only way that you are going to live right now, is by letting me go.”
He capped the water again and set it on the floor. Flipping open the laptop he gave her a sidelong look, shrugged, and then tapped the spacebar. Instantly it came to life with a shot in the forest. From what she could see it appeared to be a farm but until the camera zoomed in and steadied she had no idea what kind. Then she saw her father, several years younger, talking with a man who was gesturing wildly. Gabbie barely noticed her captor stepping back and away from her as the video progressed to showing her father pulling a gun and blowing a hole in the man’s head. Instantly it changed to a room cloaked in shadows where a man was begging for his life from where he dangled by his wrists from the rafters.
Gabbie turned her head and closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch this. “That can’t be my father.” She sobbed. “My father wouldn’t do that. Yes, I know that he does drug trafficking but there is no way in hell that he would kill people, not like that.” She felt her stomach churning and knew that she had very little time left before she puked. She heard a child then and her eyes opened automatically. What she saw immediately laid to waste any plans she had not to vomit. She couldn’t stop it. Not with what she saw. “God no.” She cried, tears rolling down her face as she cried. It couldn’t be. Her father wouldn’t do that. Her father would never kill a child. That wasn’t the father that had taught her to ride a pony, that wasn’t the man who helped her with her homework, who nursed her when she was ill. It couldn’t be.
The next scene had her gorge rising again. It was another child, this one a girl around ten or eleven, stripped naked and held down. Her father, no! Squeezing her eyes closed she fought to cover her ears from the sounds coming from the laptop. The sounds stopped suddenly. Opening her eyes, she saw the image was frozen showing the horrific act her father was in the midst of. “Do you believe us now?” the man asked. Again, he was holding out the water bottle to her, offering up a drink.
She took a drink of the water that was offered to her. She swished her mouth out and spat the water on the wooden flooring. She was crying but didn’t care. “There is no way that he would do that. Seriously. That’s not my father.” She only prayed she was right. She prayed this was some sort of nightmare. “My daddy taught me to ride a bike, protected me, kept me safe. He wouldn’t do that to a child, right?” She begged the man to tell her that it was all false.
He moved the table and set the bottle down on it. Gently he undid her bindings before tugging off the hood he wore. “They are the same man,” he said. His real voice was deep but smooth sounding, not guttural like he’d been making it sound before. “He’s a sociopath, Gabriella. A power hungry one at that. He enjoys hurting people, and loves to have it taped so he can watch it at his leisure over, and over again. The face he presents to you is not the one that he presents to the world. To the world, he is a monster that needs to die. It’s why we’re here, to end his reign of terror and save other little girls from that same treatment.”
“I just thought he was a drug dealer. I could live with that.” She looked at the man now, really looked at him. His hair was white blond, cut short and, if she wasn’t mistaken, in a military cut. So, he was possibly military, American from the way he spoke. His eyes though, they drew her to him. They were dark brown and she had thought she had seen green in them but she wasn’t certain. God damn her for getting horny when she had just seen what she had. She had to be sick. There was no other way to see it. She must be as depraved as her father if she was getting horny just looking at this man who was standing so close to her. “How long?” She asked, “Has he been doing this? Did my mother know?” Oh god, she could only pray that her mother didn’t know.
“From what we could uncover he’s been doing this since before you were born. We don’t believe that your mother ever knew. He seemed to keep her in the dark like he has with you.” He brushed a finger to her cheek, drying away the tears there. “Come on, you can clean up in the bathroom and brush your teeth. The folks with guns downstairs I wasn’t kidding about. If you were still thinking about running, that is.”
“He will come for me and when he does he will kill you.” She whispered and god damn her hide but she leaned into his hand when he touched her cheek. “I really should go and clean up, shouldn’t I?” What in the hell was wrong with her? She was leaning into this man instead of moving away from him. She had to be crazy. That was it. This draw to him was her insanity. It just was easier to think of this attraction she felt, then what she had just learned about her loving father. “Plus, I assume we are on a second floor and since I don’t like heights I don’t plan on going out the window.” Thus, why her father’s home was a single floor. She was terrified of heights and always had been.
He stood up and pulled her up from the chair. Leading her to the bathroom, she’d been right about it being on the second floor, and turned on the lights. “I’ll be downstairs when you are done. Come down and I’ll get you something to help settle your stomach. There won’t be anyone else down there so you needn’t worry.”
“Thank you.” Why was she thanking a contract killer? A man who was going to kill her father What was going on with her that she was acting like this? “I can’t let you kill him.” She told him. “He’s my father. Yes, for what he did on those video’s he deserves justice but it’s justice that he should get. I can’t watch you kill him.” Why that was important to her she didn’t know and she didn’t want to delve into it either. “I also can’t be the reason my dad dies.”
“Meet me downstairs and we’ll discuss it, Gabriella. But don’t think you’ll be able to change my mind or the mind of my clients easily. I’ll let you plead your case but you will need to read all the charges lined up against him. They’re compiled so it’s a relatively short list. The counts are huge.” Tugging the door shut behind him she heard him head down the stairs a minute later.
She walked into the bathroom and cleaned her face up. She looked at herself and pulled the rubber band from her wrist and pulled her hair back. It was time for her to put seriousness back on the plate and she couldn’t do that with her hair around her face the way she liked it. No, it was time for her to instead be serious for a moment. After she was cleaned off she walked down the stairs and took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m ready for you to show me this list that you have together for the charges against my father. I knew about the drugs, I knew about all that part but I didn’t know about this part of it all. Please, please god tell me that what you showed me was all that he did over the years?”
He shook his head slowly and handed her a file. “No pictures are included. Given your reaction upstairs I pulled them all out. These are just the charges against him along with the various bounties on his head, and the various government approved authorizations for his termination. Including but not limited to three from the US, six from Columbia, and two from Mexico. I have some broth warming up, it should help to ease your stomach and not be too heavy for it. Tea is on the table and you should be able to pour some any time now.”
“Thank you.” She was over her head with this man and knew it. “Why are you being so nice to me? With what my father has done, why? With knowing that I knew about his drug running why are you still being so kind to me? I’m a bit confused by your behavior.” She poured herself a cup of tea and held the mug in her hands. “He’s coming for me. I activated a transponder in my shoes when I was tied up upstairs. Either he or his men will come for me.”
“They aren’t coming. At least not until we turn off the signal jammer we have in place. We figured he’d be the sort that was super paranoid given that fortress he built. We planned for something you’d be wearing or be able to activate.” He set a bowl of clear beef broth before her and then settled into the chair opposite her. “You are neither responsible for your father’s transgressions nor anything he has ever perpetrated against another individual. While you know about his drug business you haven’t participated, and I’m sure if it had ever come up where he was arrested you would have ensured he’d done the time. Only now it’s gone beyond that into territory you’re only just now discovering. You have a choice to make, Gabriella. Help us, willingly bring him to us, or we’ll do it our way and he’ll still die.”
“I don’t know what to do.” She was confused and the way that he was treating her made her even more confused. She expected anger, outrage, or something but not this. Not this, well, kindness. She also never in a million years expected to be attracted to a man that had kidnapped her. “I also don’t know what I would have done had he been caught. I don’t think that I’m as good as you seem to think that I am.” She hesitated. “What do I call you?”
For a split second he seemed to hesitate, like he was deciding what to tell her. “Tobias, my name’s Tobias Casey. Don’t call me Toby,” he added with a look that had her striking the name from all memory banks. “No one is one hundred percent good, it’s impossible. Everyone has a balance between good and evil. The majority happen to be one way or the other, even perfect balance between the two is nearly impossible. There are also those, like myself and my team, who have certain limits we’ll go to but no further. For his crimes, we’re willing to go a long damn way, but we won’t hurt an innocent if it’s at all possible to avoid. Which is why we haven’t nuked his compound. Yet.”
“From what I saw I don’t think even a nuclear bomb would harm him. The entire house has been changed inside. He’s literally living inside of a multiple feet thick bulletproof glass home. It’s as if he destroyed half of the inside of the home to build that monstrosity of a fortress that he’s living in. I knew that things had been changed the second I entered the door and the foyer that was at one time massive, is now a small enclosure that, if I were to guess, has scanners built into the walls.”
Tobias refilled her cup from the teapot on the table. Then he reached out for the laptop he had to one side, flipped up the lid, tapped on a few keys and then turned it her way. “These are the schematics best we can figure out. Took several people to get pieces of the information for a contact to construct this. While he’s definitely built it to withstand a lot, there’s always a way to knock someone from their pedestal if you look long and hard enough.”
She looked at the diagrams and shook her head. “Whoever did this is wrong.” She told him and looked at him. “Daddy’s had the basement built into the rooms he’s living in. It’s lead lined, the flooring is. It also looks completely seamless but it’s larger than you have here. He’s knocked out the kitchen, dining room, and the den that was my mother’s music room. He’s taken over all but my rooms, my study, the living room, and bathrooms. The scanner that he used to open the door is only on his side. I don’t know how someone would get inside of it if they weren’t inside of the room. Does that make sense?”
“Makes complete sense. These were cobbled together with whatever people could get to us, before he had them killed. We couldn’t find out anything beyond what you see here. We think he threatened their families, maybe even held them during the renovation completion.” He picked up a stylus and passed it to her. Tugging on the laptop he flipped the screen around to make it into a tablet and handed it over. “Will you make the alterations so it’s accurate? If we fail, whoever comes next needs every leg up they can get.” Gabbie had the distinct impression Tobias wasn’t a man who failed at much, if anything.
She looked at Tobias and then the laptop there in front of her for a moment. She was so confused. She realized that if she did what was right, she would be breaking her own heart. She didn’t know what to say, what to do. Finally, however, she nodded. “You know if I help you I’m dead, right? There will be others that will come up and they will take over his operations and either I would become a prize or they would just simply outright kill me.” She was trembling as she spoke, part of her didn’t want to give in but part did.
“From what we’ve heard you’re about to be sold off to the highest bidder whether you like it or not. Besides which, by this point he knows you’re gone and knows you left of your own volition. There’s no way for anyone to break into the place, but they didn’t really design it well enough to keep someone that knows how from breaking out. Either way, I doubt you have more than a few months to live whether under your father’s thumb or whatever husband he marries you off to with or without your permission. And yes, in this country, he has the power to get a disagreeable marriage enforced. You’re property to him and nothing more. A tool to be used until you’re no longer useful. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.”
“Oh, well, isn’t that fun.” She tapped the pen a couple of more times while she tried to work out in her own mind what she should do. She had always hated being corralled and told what to do, it chafed at her to be penned in, so to speak, but it seemed that was just what she was. She was effectively trapped. “Well then, I have no choice, do I?” She still didn’t want to give up on her father. She didn’t believe that he would just marry her off without her consent, her father loved her more than that. “You might as well shoot me after I do this, it would be far kinder.” She whispered and began to draw on the face of the laptop the proper schematics of the house. “The side that wasn’t touched had the windows upgraded but my window should still be bypassed.” She wanted to puke, she was telling them how to get to her father. She was a monster and knew it.
His hand covered hers and he squeezed. “I’m an asshole, I’m a dick, and a few other extremely colorful adjectives but I never meant to make you feel you had no choice in this.” Tobias tipped his head to the tablet. “We’ll use your shoe to draw him out and you won’t even have to be in the vicinity. It’ll be better that way, honestly, since we know for a fact he’ll send his kill squad to wipe us out and rescue you if it’s viable. Drink your tea,” he said. Tugging the stylus from her fingers he took the tablet and tossed everything to the side. Then he moved to get up.
Gabbie nodded and sipped at the tea. “This is my favorite tea, I know it’s a fairly common one but Earl Grey has always been my favorite tea when I’m not feeling well.” And right now, she wasn’t feeling well. Right now, she felt like she was going to puke her guts out and simply die. She still couldn’t believe she had given them the way to get to her father, the way to kill him and she hadn’t even battled against them. She was as much of a monster as her father was it seemed.
Tobias paused by the door to give her a look. “I’ll be a minute. Try to eat the broth too, you need something in your stomach.” Pulling the door open he slipped through to what appeared to be a hallway. She couldn’t hear him moving away or anything at all. The place was eerily silent.
She took the bowl with the broth in it and began to sip at it, she didn’t use a spoon because broth like this was meant to be drank like tea not eaten like soup. She was leaning against the counter instead of sitting in a chair. She honestly should sit down because of how woozy she was still feeling but she was afraid if she moved she would fall apart at the seams. She was barely holding her shit together as it was, one wrong move and she would be lost and knew it.
Tobias came back into the space looking to where he’d left her before his gaze found her in her new spot. Coming toward her he stopped. “I’ll need your shoe. We’re arranging to have you shipped out of the country to a location that’s low key with new papers. From there you can go anywhere you’d like so long as it’s nowhere you’ve ever been, or anywhere your father might think to look for you.”
She snorted in derision and wiped the tears that were falling from her eyes. “You really, really don’t get it, do you?” She shook her head and watched him. “I’ve been all around the world, I’ve had watchers in practically every single city on the map. I’m known to the types of people he would hire to come after me. I’m known to all of them and even ones I don’t know because they all wanted to be inside of his inner circle and used me to do it. That’s what really sucks. No matter what or where I go there is no hope.” She shrugged and tugged off her shoes to give to him. “Thank you for showing me the truth. I should hate you, I really should, but I’m not so sure that I can and that makes me hate myself even more.”
Taking her shoes, he set them aside and then advanced. Tobias was close enough now she could practically count his eyelashes. “For a fighter, you have a rather defeatist attitude, Gabriella Moreno. You’ve already given up without even trying. Which means you’ll be dead before the plane leaves the ground. You are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, setting yourself up to fail by accepting that failure is your only option. If that’s how you truly feel then you may as well walk out that door right now. I give you six blocks before your reported, another two before your picked up and three days, tops, to live. An hour if Quan gets you first and takes you to the shed for his special torture techniques.” Stepping to the side he waved a hand in the direction of the door before crossing his arms over his chest to stare at her.
“Who the hell is this Quan you keep talking about? I’ve never heard that name before I met you.” She was frustrated, and starting to become pissed off. “I’m not a defeatist, I’m a realist, you asshole. As for being a fighter, you know nothing about me. Absolutely nothing.” She wanted to reach out and punch him. God help her, but she wanted to put her fist into his freaking far too damn smug face and make him hurt as much as she was hurting right now.
“Tran Quan is your father’s new head of security. He’s ex-Special Forces and has ties to the Yakuza. His specialty was getting information from less than obliging individuals in ways not sanctioned by the UN. He ended up getting kicked out with a dishonorable discharge and barely managed to avoid Leavenworth. Exactly the sort your father wanted to keep his people in line.” Tobias moved toward her again, stalking her, it felt like. “Hit me. I know you want to, I can see it in your eyes. Do it, but you only get one free shot. Maybe it’ll help get you fired up enough to survive.”
“That was the big man that was leading my guards, wasn’t it?” She was fisting and unfisting her hands. “How the hell do you know so much about my family’s home? How can you possibly know anything about what is going on behind those walls?” She then did something she had wanted to do since she was taken, she lifted a fist and foot both, foot coming down on the inside of his knee and fist hitting him in the side of the neck instead of his head. He was far too fucking hard for her to hit anywhere else. “I shouldn’t even have been here.” She shouted at him when his knees buckled only a small bit, she would give him that. “I was supposed to remain in Ireland for another six fucking months. What if I hadn’t come home when I did?” She was shouting at him now. She was pissed, and sadly she was taking it out on him. “Would you have freaking waited all that time to get to him? What would you have done if I hadn’t been so fucking stupid as to sneak out that last night? Tell me, he who knows all, come on, tell me.”
He caught her hands when she went to beat on him again, making her angrier. Gabbie struggled while screaming incoherent words at him. In a quick move, he flipped her around to put her back to his chest with her arms crossed over her body to hold her tight against him. “We had other plans but nothing had yet panned out. We could have figured something out in time but you provided the perfect opportunity. Not a one of us even thought for a second you’d be sneaking out your first night home. Fucking hell, woman, quit fighting, you’re just exhausting yourself. We weren’t even sure it was possible to sneak out of that place given what’s happened to others who tried to break free from his hold.”
“Yeah, but I grew up in that place. I know every single nook and cranny. I know the interior walls, the hidden tunnels, all of it. I could slip in and out of that place and no one would ever know. Christ, I even know where all of the hidden thermal cameras and landmines are.” She stopped talking then. Holy fuck, had she just told him all of that in one breath? Jesus, he really had her pissed. Then again, she was feeling something else as well, something that wasn’t anger. She felt the rigid erection that he had pressed against her upper ass and lower back, felt the hard muscle of the man holding her, and fuck her sideways if she didn’t get wet from knowing that he was as affected by her as she was by him.
“You may have grown up in the house, but not in that fortress, Gabriella,” he said while she processed what was going on within herself. “You may have gotten lucky with the window and path out, but I’m betting that luck wouldn’t hold for long. Quan has overseen all security for a while now and we know from previous teams’ attempts he’s moved everything around on the inside. We haven’t yet spent enough nights watching the place to get the exact patterns down but we know there are areas they completely avoid moving through after certain times and that changes when the shifts change. It’s now a moveable maze.” Tobias loosened his hold slightly before cautiously letting her wrists go. He didn’t completely release her but she wasn’t being pressed up tight to his body any longer.
She took a breath and nodded. “You need someone that can get you in safely.” She whispered the words even as she looked down. She hadn’t moved, she liked his heat and that scared her. “Someone who can get into the security office and disable all of the alarms, someone that knows everyone in that house and knows that all of them would likely kill for her. Well, except for that Quan guy.” She then turned in his loose arms and looked up at him. “You need me.” She admitted. “You need me to be found and be in bad shape. You need for me to get you in there. You know it’s the safest route just as much as I do.”
His hands settled on her hips as he shook his head. “No. Not happening, not now, not ever. I hear you, but no,” he said in a tone that most likely would have obeyed. “Quan isn’t your father, he won’t be blinded by the ties of blood. He is a cold-blooded, murdering, psychopath. Your father at least holds some love for you because you are his child, Quan doesn’t have that dilemma. No matter what we do you’ll have to explain how you ended up outside the walls. The moment you tell them you slipped out to see your friend they’ll start hunting her, and they’ll close off your only avenue of escape. If, and that’s a big fucking if, your father keeps Quan from killing you, you’ll never leave again. Ever. You will be inside that compound until the day he marries you off to someone he wants something from, let’s them use you in whatever deranged ways they might wish, and then you’ll be shackled to that man until the day you die, held in another gilded cage like your father’s house. Not happening on my watch, Gabriella. There are other ways and we will find it. I would like your help in understanding the compound better, but that’s it and only if you are willing. You also need to know that we will not be allowing your father, Quan, or any of his other goons to live, we can’t. The rest is up to us and we’re damn fucking good at our jobs.”
She sighed and nodded. “Have you found the caves under the house? I don’t think daddy knows about them. I actually found them with Carla, they were our secret. If nothing’s shifted, there should be a way to get into the security room via the caverns.” She was still trying to help him, even knowing that he was going to kill her father. “And I’m not leaving yet. If I leave the country now someone will see me. If they catch me it will be like you said, they will marry me just to take over daddy’s empire. I’m not stupid.” She was just trying to stay alive. “Do you have any sonar equipment or even maybe a metal detector? If so, we could use it where I think that the security office might be. I say that because I know that the floor of it has a two to three feet wide metal footing because of the servers for the computers that are housed down there.”
“If we don’t have it we can get it.” He was staring at her with an expression she couldn’t decipher. “Are you sure you want to help us, Gabriella? We all will understand if you don’t, this is your father we’re talking about, after all. And we will be killing him, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Can you accept that whatever help you provide will help us to achieve that goal? If not, then I’ll get you set up upstairs where you can stay safe and off the grid until we’re done with our mission.”
She had tears falling from her eyes, but she still nodded. “Are you sure that he did what you said that he did? Positive that he’s done all these horrible things?” The scenes she was shown didn’t look to be falsified but she wasn’t certain. When he nodded, she sighed, “Okay, I will help you. The only thing I ask is that you please ensure that I’m able to disappear after? I don’t know where I could possibly go that I wouldn’t be found. So, you can help me disappear after this is all over and done with. Keep me safe, or at least as safe as I can possibly be, being who I am.”
“I swear on whatever good is in still inside me that I will keep you safe, ensure you remain that way, and have a life to live when this is all over. It’s not much but it’s what I can give you right now, since you don’t know me.” He brushed a thumb over her cheek, wiping at the wetness there. “You’ve had a lousy night slash day so far, why don’t I show you to a room and you catch some sleep. The team and I need to go over some things before a couple head back out for their watch on the compound. Once they’re gone, I’ll come wake you up, we’ll feed you, and start wherever you are comfortable, at whatever pace you want, on figuring out how to breach the compound.”
“I will need hiking boots instead of my Mary Janes. If you have my pack, I should change clothes.” She took him for his word. He might be a mercenary, and she knew he was, but he was also a man of his word. How she knew that, she wasn’t certain, but she knew it deep in her soul. “I have had a shitty night and I’m asking that you please don’t put me back in that room with the chair that’s bolted to the floor.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Actual bedroom this time, promise. And your pack is already up there tucked safely away. Come on, I’ll show you.” He dropped his hand to her lower back to urge her up the stairs again. This time he pushed through a door that opened into a long hallway. Tobias then took her to the end and pushed open the last door. Instantly she knew whose room it was by the scent in the air. He pointed to her bag resting on the chair by the small dresser where a large duffel was also set. “Bathroom’s through there. It’s small but it has a shower, and so long as you aren’t attempting any aerobics, it’s not too bad. Sleep if you can, you look ready to collapse.”
She frowned and looked back at him. “Why are you putting me in your room?” She asked after reaching out and grabbing his massive forearm. “I don’t want to put you out.” She looked around and frowned. “I know this place. This is the old Rodriguez place, isn’t it? How did you get the mansion?” Well, only part of it was still standing, most of it had been blown apart in a blast from an RPG.
“We have our ways of getting many things,” he told her. “You are also not putting me out. I sleep on average four hours a night. It’s the middle of the day and I have work to attend to. When I need to sleep, we’ll reevaluate where you might sleep at that time. There are only a limited number of rooms still inhabitable around here, one reason we’re using it because everyone knows it’s ready to fall. We shored it up on the inside to ensure we all won’t die in a cave in, but from the outside it still looks abandoned and ready to collapse. But we have power and running water, again don’t ask. Somethings we do are likely better left an unanswered question.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that I want to ask.” She looked around the room and nodded. “Well, tonight when you need to sleep I can take the couch there. I’m about a foot shorter than you are and would fit that far better than you.” She hesitated and then gave his arm a small squeeze. “Thank you for this. You don’t have any reason to believe me, but thank you for listening and trusting me.” And she was also trusting him, massively.
“You’ve given me no reason to not trust you, Gabriella. That you’re trusting me though has me perplexed. I’ve given you absolutely no reason at all to trust anything I tell you. The fact you are showing me this trust,” he paused. Shaking his head, he touched her cheek with a finger. “There are extra towels in the bathroom, and a couple spare toothbrushes. If you want something to sleep in feel free to root through my bag instead of wearing your limited clothing options.”
“You are willing to let me go through your personal belongings?” She was stunned. “You are not like any mercenary that I’ve ever met before. Not even some of the men that I’ve met in my life have been half as decent and kind as you are. It’s unreal to me just how good you are being to me. Someone that you don’t know.” But oddly enough, in the pits of her heart and soul she felt as if she knew him. It was so weird, she felt a connection to this unknown man and it was driving her to distraction because she couldn’t place why or how.
“There’s nothing in there but clothing and some cash. All things I can live without, if need be. Besides, I did threaten you more than once with the use of violence and with a weapon so I figure I owe you a couple. I don’t like being in anyone’s debt. I’ll check on you in a couple of hours. If you’re out I’ll wake you when dinner’s ready. Sleep if you can and if you need anything give a holler down the stairs.”
“Thank you.” She said with a smile and moved away from him. “I will try to sleep but I have a killer headache from being rolled around inside of the trunk. I think I hit my head there. I likely have a black eye as well.” She grumbled good naturedly at him. “I’m teasing you. I hope I don't have black eyes because that would just be the cherry on a shitty day, wouldn’t it?”
“No black eye,” he said. “There might be some aspirin or ibuprofen in the med kit that’s in the bathroom. It should be all up to date but confirm before you take it. A cold compress will help too. Run the water until it’s super cold, wet a cloth and lay it over the back of your neck for a few minutes. Do it after you have your shower though, not before.”
“You’re very sweet but this isn’t my first injury and likely it won’t be my last. Thank you though, didn’t know about the cold compress so that will be an added benefit.” She then did something she was surprised she would ever do, she reached out and put her hand on his cheek, her thumb moving over his full lower lip for only a moment before she pulled back. She didn’t know who was more surprised, her or him.
“Right, well I’ll leave you to it.” Stepping back, he moved out of the door, pulling it closed behind him. “Turn the hot water on for about two minutes before adding in any cold unless you prefer icy showers. The hot doesn’t seem to kick in unless you give it a head start. A lesson we have all learned at one time or another. Sleep well,” he added before he shut the door.
She smiled then. She couldn’t help it. She was in a horrible situation, she was in a place that should be tumbling to the ground and yet here she was smiling at the door of a room that a man who had kidnapped her had closed on her. He had kidnapped her and here she was lusting after him. She was losing her mind and knew it but the way that it felt when she was in his arms felt right, it felt good and she liked it. Far more than she likely should.