My body bruised and beaten, my core throbbing, the smell of heavy, sick cologne all over me, I didn’t speak as André carried me into the elevator.
“Almost there, chica, almost there.”
The floors ticked up to the top.
The elevator pinged and the doors slid open.
“Come on, let’s get you settled.”
I didn’t know why he was bothering. I wasn’t going to be settled. I was in a dead man’s blanket, going to another man’s condo while my mother was in a hospital somewhere with a gunshot wound.
Viktor didn’t die of a gunshot wound.
André punched in the code and let us into Dane’s penthouse. The faint smell of Dane that had lingered earlier this afternoon after he’d left was gone.
“Couch, bed or do you need the restroom?” André asked.
I didn’t answer. I stared at the one window not covered by shutters.
André followed my glance. “You want the shutters open?”
I might’ve nodded.
His muscles bunched as he set me down on the couch, then he made quick work of opening all the shutters.
Moonlight danced across the waves and the lights of adjacent condos lit up the night as if life was picture perfect. If I concentrated, I could smell salt and sand and soft breezes.
I stared at the view.
A six-foot ex-marine made his way back to the couch, put his hands on his hips and looked down at me. “Talk to me, chica.”
I knew he was looking for something from me, but I was out of somethings.
“You need a doctor?”
I shook my head.
“What can I get you?”
I sunk further into the couch and pulled the blanket around me. The ghost scent of the ocean at night fell away. I was back to a dead man’s cologne mixed with desperation and sweat.
André sank to a squat. “You know what my madre always says?”
There was kindness in his eyes, but there was also something else. Something a lot like Dane. I didn’t give him an answer because I had no idea what his mother always said.
“She says God gives us tomorrows.”
I didn’t want a tomorrow. I wanted a next year.
“You know what I say, chica?”
I pulled my legs up.
He didn’t wait for a response. “I say it’s up to us how we use those tomorrows.”
Nothing was up to me. Nothing had been up to me for five long years. That’s why I’d left, but now here I was in another man’s clutches.
André continued as if we were having a two-sided conversation. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen come sunup and I can’t predict the future, but I know this—your story doesn’t end here. This is just temporary. You’re gonna get a tomorrow, you hear me?”
If someone had told me twenty-four hours ago that I was going to be getting a pep talk from an ex-marine who quoted his mother after I let my husband beat me with a paddle, then watched the stranger I’d had unprotected sex with kill my husband, I would’ve accused them of being insane.
But here I was, lucky to be alive, waiting for a promised tomorrow.
André put a hand on my shoulder. “I know you hear me, chica. I’m not gonna force you to talk, but I need to know if you’re gonna be okay for a bit by yourself so I can go handle a few things. Give me something, baby girl.”
I nodded.
His hand squeezed then let go. “Gracias. Me or Marek will be back in a bit.” He pulled a phone out and messed with it a moment, then placed it on my lap. “You got mine and Marek’s numbers in there. You need anything before one of us checks on you, call. Understand?”
I turned away from him. More than the bruises on my body, it hurt to think about Dane.
He stood. “All right, I hear you, chica. Try to get some rest. Tomorrow’s coming, I promise.” He walked out.
I waited until I heard the door shut then I slowly got up. The phone fell to the floor and I stared at it a moment. Then I stepped over it. Walking wasn’t as painful as I thought. In fact, it didn’t hurt at all like my ego hurt. Not even close. Sore, I made my way to the door and threw the dead bolt. Then I dropped Viktor’s bedspread. Refusing to look down at my naked body, I made my way back to the couch and picked up the blanket lying on the back. I wrapped it around myself then sat back down.
I stared out at the ocean.
Viktor’s blanket on the floor by the front door, Dane’s around my body, I’d traded one blanket for another.
One man for another.
Except I didn’t have the second man and the first one was dead.
I should feel something about that. But I didn’t. Not gratitude, not guilt, nothing. It was as if I’d gone numb.
I was still staring at the nighttime ocean when a quiet knock sounded on the front door. My heart leapt and I pulled the blanket that didn’t smell a thing like Dane tighter around me. You had to enter a code into the elevator to even get up to the penthouse, so I knew it could only be one of two people, but I was sure it wasn’t André.
I didn’t get up. I didn’t have to. A second later the dead bolt was unlocking and I could feel him.
I didn’t turn. I didn’t shift. I didn’t take my eyes off the ocean, because I didn’t want to see him. I couldn’t see the look on his face when he saw me.
I smelled him a second before the soft rustle of plastic bags landing on the coffee table broke the silence in the penthouse.
The couch dipped.
“Irina.”
His deep, quiet voice rumbled from his chest and spread across my skin like comfort. My heart ached, and I longed to reach for him, but I stayed perfectly still.
Gentle fingers brushed my hair aside and swept it behind one ear.
“I brought you some clothes and food.”
I wanted to cry. Gone was the rage that’d had me kicking him away from me. In its place was sorrow so profound, I didn’t understand it. I felt bonded to a man I’d known less than twenty-four hours and losing that bond was gutting me worse than anything Viktor had ever done to me.
I forced the truth past my dry mouth. “You will never unsee tonight.”
He didn’t hesitate. “I don’t need to.”
Yes, he did. He needed to never see me as I was with Viktor. That woman could never be with a warrior like him. The temptation to just lean into him and feel his warmth was so great, I had to inch away from him.
His voice dropped so low, it barely disturbed the air. “I’m sorry I failed you.”
I looked up.
Anguished storm-colored eyes stared at me with the same intensity I’d grown addicted to. “I was selfish,” he confessed. “You never should’ve been a witness to the meet. I should’ve taken you to Luna’s where you would’ve been safe.”
“He would have killed your friend and given the cops the information on Peter’s tracking device.” I saw the red dot from a laser scope on André’s forehead. I knew what it meant.
“I would’ve handled it.”
It was what he didn’t say that alarmed me. He would’ve handled a dead friend and Viktor destroying his life, but he wasn’t handling what he saw Viktor do to me. I turned back toward the ocean. “What’s done is done.”
“Is it?”
I didn’t know if he meant what Viktor had done or if he meant us, but it didn’t matter. It was the same answer. “Yes.”
He grasped my chin and turned me back to face him. “There is nothing I blame you for.”
Shame burned my cheeks. “I’ll leave tomorrow and you can have your condo back.”
He didn’t move, or even blink, but I saw the shift. Part of him shut down. “Stay here. However long you want.”
I pulled out of his grasp. I would beg my mother to take me in before I’d stay here. “I just need my suitcase from your house.” Because I was never going back to Viktor’s. I didn’t want any of the clothes I’d left behind that he’d bought me.
“There’ll be federal agents crawling around the Key Biscayne property.” The softness in his voice when he’d said my name was gone. “It’s not safe to go back there.”
His tone made my guard go up. I turned and looked at him. “Not safe for me, or not safe for you?”
“You,” he ground out.
The connection I’d felt to him last night took a major blow. I could’ve told him I was never going back there, even if I’d inherited the whole damn estate, which I knew I wouldn’t. Viktor never missed an opportunity to tell me I would get nothing if he died. I could’ve told Dane all of this. But the fact that he thought I wanted to go back there told me I had no connection to him. If he couldn’t see that I’d only gone back to save his friend and my mother, then I had nothing to say to him.
I turned away from him. “You can go now.”
“Because you’re angry with me or because I saw what he did to you?”
I hated how he picked up on the truths I wanted to hide. Subtle, obvious, it didn’t matter. He was either incredibly perceptive or I was a hell of a lot worse at hiding my emotions than I thought I was. “Does it matter?”
“Look at me,” he demanded.
Swirls of awareness crawled across my skin, and the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. Nothing about my reaction to his command felt sexual, because the mere thought made my stomach turn. But there was a power in his voice, and in his presence, that made me want to crawl onto his lap and forget who I was.
I wanted to feel his arms around me, to hear his heartbeat, to have his scent erase every memory of Viktor. It would be heaven. But to have his voice be the first and last thing I heard every single day? That would be a dream.
Except that dream was ruined.
“Just go,” I whispered.