Chapter 3
Julie
Warmth wakes me in the middle of the night.
Something solid is pressed along my back. Heat wraps around me from behind. A hand rests low on my stomach, broad and heavy through the blanket, and every breath I take catches on the hard line of a chest against my shoulder blades.
For one thick second, I do not move.
My body knows before I do.
A man. Big. Too close.
My eyes open into dark.
The room is wrong. Strange ceiling. Gray wall. A weak stripe of parking lot light bleeding around cheap curtains. The hum of an air conditioner rattling somewhere near the window.
Not home.
My heart gives one hard, painful kick.
I go still.
The hand on my stomach is warm. The arm around me is heavy enough that I can feel the strength in it even half asleep. Whoever is behind me feels massive in a way that crowds every inch of space around me.
My throat closes.
A flash cuts through the fog in my head.
Red velvet. Bright lights. Men watching.
Sold.
Fear slams into me so hard it burns.
No.
Oh God. No.
I lurch forward with a sound tearing out of me before I know I’m making it.
The arm around me tightens on instinct, and panic detonates in my chest. I twist hard, kicking free of the sheets, scrambling across the bed in a tangle of blanket and bare legs, trying to get away from the body behind me before he can pull me back.
He sits up fast.
“Hey.”
His voice is rough with sleep, low and deep enough that it goes through me like a pulse.
Not the smooth, smiling voice from the stage.
Not one of the guards who dragged girls around like packages.
That only scares me more because I still do not know who he is.
My hand closes around the lamp on the bedside table. I snatch it up with both hands and swing as I turn.
He catches it before it can hit him.
His hand closes around the base in one clean movement. The cord jerks. The shade tilts sideways. My arms shake with the force of it, but the lamp does not move.
I freeze.
He is right there.
For one wild second, all I can do is stare.
Dark hair, sleep-rough and falling over his forehead.
A face too hard and masculine to be called pretty, but still unfair enough to make my pulse trip for an entirely different reason.
Strong nose. Sharp cheekbones. A mouth cut in a stern line that somehow only makes him look better.
Dark stubble shadowing his jaw. Eyes so pale they almost glow in the dim room, silver with a tint of blue that catches the weak light and holds it.
His black T-shirt clings to a chest so broad it makes the motel bed look too small for him.
His shoulders are huge. His forearm, where it grips the lamp, is corded with muscle and marked with faint scars that catch my eye before I can stop myself.
Even half awake, even sitting there with one knee bent in the rumpled sheets, he looks dangerous in that blunt, devastating way some men do. Like violence fits him too easily.
My stomach drops.
Did they take me to the buyer?
Did they hand me over and leave?
Did he touch me?
Bile rises in my throat.
“Get away from me.”
The words scrape out thin and raw.
He lets go of the lamp at once and lifts both hands where I can see them. Then he shifts back on the mattress, giving me space.
“I am.”
His voice is quiet now. Careful.
I clutch the lamp tighter against my chest and drag myself farther away until my shoulders hit the headboard. The silky chemise sticks to my skin. Thin straps dig into my shoulders. I hate it. Hate how little it covers. Hate that I woke up in it with a stranger in bed with me.
He sees my gaze drop to it. Sees the panic sharpen in me.
“You’re still wearing what they put you in.”
The words land heavy.
They.
Another flash.
A microphone.
A clipboard.
Hands gripping my arms backstage.
Cold air.
Trees.
A cabin.
Blood.
I blink at him.
Blood on his knuckles.
A black suit.
His jacket over my shoulders.
An engine vibrating under me while I drifted in and out of dark.
My breath catches.
I know him.
Not really. Not enough. But enough.
He sees it happen on my face.
“There it is,” he says softly.
“You were there.”
It comes out like a whisper.
“Yes.”
“At the club.”
“Yes.”
The lamp trembles in my hands.
I stare at him and try to fit the pieces together. That room. That stage. Men with money in their eyes. Then the cabin and a body on the floor and this man standing over it like something old and merciless.
You took me.
You bought me.
You saved me.
My mind cannot settle on which one is true.
He watches me for one beat too long.
“I took you out of there.”
My throat closes.
“That cabin,” I say.
His jaw tightens once. “You remember some of it.”
Not enough. Just broken pieces that cut when I touch them.
My eyes flick to the bed between us. The dent in the pillow. The rumpled blanket. Him bare-armed and broad-shouldered and devastatingly male in the dark.
Panic floods back so hard I nearly choke on it.
“You were in bed with me.”
His face does not change.
“Yes.”
I laugh once, sharp and ugly. “Jesus. Did you…? Did we…?”
“No. You were freezing.”
I stare at him.
“You don’t get to say that like it explains anything.”
His pale eyes hold mine. Steady. Unblinking.
“You were shaking so hard I thought your teeth would crack. The drugs were wearing off. I couldn’t get you warm, so I got in bed and held you still.” His voice stays level. “That is all I did.”
Heat surges into my face, hot and humiliating.
I hate that some part of me already knows he is telling the truth.
I remember fragments. The dark. The cold. Trembling so violently it hurt. Something warm and firm around me, dragging me back from the edge.
I hate that my body remembers the comfort before it remembers the fear.
“You could be lying.”
“I could.”
The answer hits me harder than if he denied it.
No pretty promises. No offended act.
Just truth.
“But I’m not.”
The air conditioner rattles in the silence.
I grip the lamp until my fingers ache.
He glances at it once, then back at me. “You planning to swing again?”
“I might.”
One corner of his mouth shifts.
Not a smile exactly. Something rougher. More tired.
“I believe that.”
My pulse stumbles.
It makes no sense. None. I should be scared and only scared.
Instead, I am scared and furious and painfully aware that even rumpled from sleep, even with me threatening him with a motel lamp, he is the kind of man women write stupid songs about.
Big and scarred and broad enough to block out half the room.
The kind of face that looks better for being a little broken.
The kind of eyes that should belong to a saint in a painting and somehow ended up in the head of a man who looks like he kills people for a living.
I hate that I notice any of it.
“What is this?” I point at the room with the lamp. “Why did you bring me here?”
His gaze flicks once around the motel room, then back to me. “Because after I took you out of that cabin, we needed somewhere nobody would think to look right away.”
Something cold slides through me.
“So we’re hiding.”
“Yes.”
“From who?”
“The men connected to the one who bought you.”
Slowly, carefully, he swings his legs off the bed and stands.
I suck in a breath and raise the lamp higher.
He stops instantly.
Then he bends, moving in plain sight, and picks up a pillow from the bed. Then the folded blanket near the foot. He crosses to the far wall and drops both on the carpet.
“I’ll sleep there.”
I blink at him.
“You take the bed.”
I still have the lamp raised.
He looks at me for a long second. “If you need me farther away than that, say it.”
The words catch me wrong.
Because the awful truth is, I do not.
I do not want him close enough to touch me. I do not want him in the bed. I do not want to wake with a strange man wrapped around me ever again.
But some weak, traitorous part of me does not want him gone either.
For that half second before panic hit, the room had felt less sharp with him at my back. Less cold. Less empty. My body softened before my mind woke up enough to be terrified, and now I hate myself a little for missing that half second.
I say nothing.
His gaze moves over my face once, calm and knowing in a way I do not like.
“Thought so.”
He lowers himself to the floor by the wall like it costs him nothing. One arm behind his head. Body too big for the cheap space. Even lying down, he does not look relaxed. He looks contained. Like sleep only happens because he allows it.
I stare at him.
He stares back for one second, then closes his eyes.
Trusting me not to smash the lamp into his face after all.
That should not hit me the way it does.
I set the lamp back on the dresser with hands that tremble.
Then I crawl under the blanket and pull it up to my chin.
The room feels bigger now.
Colder too.
That bothers me more than it should.
I turn onto my side and stare at the wall. Sleep does not come easy. Every time I close my eyes, pieces of memory slide loose. Travis handing me orange juice. Earl watching over the neck of a bottle. The room going soft around the edges. Red walls. Gold light. Men clapping.
Then colder memories. Trees. A cabin. Blood on the floor. Blood on his hand. His dark suit jacket wrapped around my shoulders. Being carried against a chest hard as carved stone while the world tipped in and out around me.
Across the room, his breathing evens out.
Slow. Steady. Deep.
I do not realize I am listening for it until I stop shaking enough to sleep.
When I wake, gray light has filled the room.
For one awful second, I only know one thing.
He is gone.
The floor by the wall is empty. Pillow gone. Blanket gone.
Ice shoots through me.
I sit bolt upright just as the door opens.
I jerk toward it.
He steps inside carrying a cardboard coffee tray in one hand, a white paper bag in the other, and a plastic store bag hanging from his wrist. Cool morning air slips in around him before the door shuts.
He is dressed differently now. Dark jeans.
Black Henley stretched over that broad chest and those impossible shoulders.
His cut sits over it all, black leather worn soft in places, a club patch stark against it.
His hair is still slightly damp at the temples, like he washed his face and ran wet fingers through it.
Stubble shadows his jaw harder in the morning light. He looks cleaner. Meaner. Better.
Which feels deeply unfair.
His pale eyes find mine at once.
The panic on my face must show because something in him eases.
“Easy,” he says.
I press a hand to my chest.
He shuts the door with his foot. “Went downstairs.”
I stare at what he is carrying.
Coffee. Food. Another bag.
The room smells like cold air and sugar all at once.
My stomach growls loud enough to make me flinch.
His gaze drops to my middle, then lifts back to my face.
“I figured.”
He sets everything on the table by the window and opens the white bag. Warm sweetness spills into the room.
Donuts.
My mouth floods.
I hate how fast hunger pushes past everything else.
He takes one out and sets it on a napkin without coming too close. Then another.
“Eat.”
I hesitate for maybe half a second.
Then I take it and bite in.
Sugar hits my tongue so fast it almost hurts. Soft dough. Sweet glaze. My whole body seems to wake up around the taste of it.
I eat too fast. I know I do. Three desperate bites and half of it is gone before I remember he is there watching me.
Heat crawls up my neck.
“Sorry.”
His face goes still.
“For what?”
I look down at the donut in my hand, powdered sugar on my fingers.
For being hungry like this. For taking something without waiting to be told how much it costs. For looking like I have not eaten properly in years.
“For… nothing,” I mutter.
His voice drops lower.
“You don’t ever have to apologize for anything in front of me.”
Something twists low and sharp in my chest.
I say nothing.
Just take another bite and try not to feel how much those words matter.
He looks away first, gives me that mercy, and opens the other bag.
Black leggings. Gray long-sleeved shirt. Socks. Underwear still in the package. A toothbrush. A hair tie.
I stare at them.
“I didn’t know your size,” he says. “Did my best.”
Nobody has bought me anything in a long time without making sure I knew I would pay for it later.
My throat tightens.
“Thank you.”
He nods once like it is nothing.
Then he lifts his coffee.
“We need to move soon.”
The sweetness in my mouth turns thin.
“Why?”
“Because the man who bought you is dead.”
I stare at him.
He says it like weather. Like fact. No pride. No apology.
“And men like that usually belong to other men,” he adds. “So we don’t stay put.”
I lick sugar off my thumb because my hands need something to do.
“Where are we going?”
His eyes hold mine.
“On the bike.”
Fear moves through me first.
Then memory.
The dark road. The engine under me. My arms wrapped around him because there was nothing else to hold on to. His body in front of mine, broad enough to block the whole world.
My pulse kicks once.
He sees the uncertainty on my face.
“You can ride with me,” he says, “or I can strap you to me and listen to you cuss me out for the next hundred miles.”
A startled sound slips out of me.
Not really a laugh.
Close enough that his mouth shifts again.
That same rough almost-smile.
Warm for half a second. Gone too fast.
“I’ll ride,” I say.
He nods once.
“Thought you might.”
And against all reason, against every smart instinct I have left, the thought of climbing onto that bike behind him does not feel like the worst thing in the world.