Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“No,” Luis said, as reasonable as anything. “I’m being cautious.”
Francesca raised her right hand and shook it. The white rope whipped between them. “I’m not a damn flight risk, asshole!”
“That remains to be proven.”
Glaring at him, she gritted through her teeth, “You — never — said — I — shouldn’t — leave.”
Luis adjusted the knot on his left wrist. “It was implied.”
“This is wildly unnecessary,” she protested. “And how am I even supposed to get in the car? You want me to climb across the console like an animal?”
“Firstly, it is necessary. You don’t have any bite marks and no one knows you’re considered an Amauri yet.
I’ll send word to Marietta so she can get the gossip train going, and Felix said he’d work on getting the message across that you’re not to be touched.
But until I can be certain that you won’t wander off and that no one will try to snatch you away from under my nose, this is how we’re doing things. ”
He gave the rope a playful little tug to reel her in. “And secondly… no. I’d never put you in an undignified position, kitten. I’ll untie my end after I help you into your seat.”
Francesca squinted up at him. Still flushed and buzzing and a little off-kilter from what happened in her apartment, she had to work hard to hold onto her outrage. “You just like having me tied up, don’t you?”
That signature shit-eating grin crossed his too-handsome face. “What can I say? This rope holds some very fond memories for me now.”
Tangling their fingers together, he grabbed her suitcase off the floor and guided her out into the hallway.
Francesca couldn’t help but stare at his profile as they walked down the stairs hand in hand.
A part of her was fairly certain she’d hit her head at some point and was currently in the grips of a deeply confusing but pleasurable coma delusion.
Maybe in a rush to finish a house cleaning she’d slipped on a wet floor and bashed her head on something.
That seemed a lot more plausible than Luis saying he loved her.
She didn’t have any good reason to not believe him, but it was difficult to wrap her head around. As was the fact that if she agreed to a relationship — a real one, not just sex and not just what was contractually obligated — then her entire life would look different.
Amongst the dozens of practical lifestyle changes that came with being a vampire’s anchor, by far the biggest difference was that she wouldn’t be on her own anymore.
She’d be forced to rely on someone else and trust that they’d be there.
It sounded like the sweetest relief but also the single scariest thing she could imagine.
Her grip tightened a little on Luis’s hand, an unconscious response to the fear that he might just disappear — which was really silly, since he’d tied them together.
Francesca gave the rope a narrow-eyed look as they stepped out onto the cracked sidewalk. She couldn’t deny that she enjoyed it when Luis tied her up, but it seemed like overkill to extend it past the bounds of their bedroom.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, watching him open the passenger door of his fancy black car for her. Francesca slid into the leather seat, holding her wrist out so she didn’t drag him in with her.
Taking the opportunity to kiss her knuckles, he murmured, “Humor me.”
She had no idea what magic he used on the knot, because when she tried undoing it, nothing happened, but all it took was a swift tug for him.
His end of the rope unraveled from his wrist. Gently placing the excess in her lap, he closed the door and rounded the car to load her suitcase into the trunk.
Her fingers found the length of it. They traced the finely braided bumps and silky material.
The muscles of her stomach clenched as she recalled the feeling of it wrapped around her wrists.
It made her helpless, but in a strange sense it also freed her.
She couldn’t go anywhere or do anything besides lay there and feel whatever it was Luis wanted her to.
The driver’s side door opening startled her out of her reverie. Francesca looked up at Luis as he climbed into the car, her cheeks heating like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.
If asked, Francesca wouldn’t have said she was particularly sexually expressive nor repressed.
She fell somewhere in the middle, where the average person with too many worries and not enough time in the day found themselves.
Sex was nice and she’d had a good time with it once or twice, but in general it was an extracurricular activity she didn’t have the luxury of exploring as often as she might’ve liked.
But with Luis she felt… unburdened, maybe. Like that weight that pressed down on her every second of every day lifted, allowing her to take a breath. To just be.
A warm hand settled on her knee.
She glanced away from the spot she’d been staring blankly at in the middle distance to find Luis watching the road, the lines of his face softened with contentment.
“How are you feeling?”
Francesca nearly shrugged and offered her standard avoidant answer, but one swift, cutting look from him changed her course. “I’m a little overwhelmed,” she admitted, finding his hand with her own. “My brain and body haven’t had a chance to really catch up with everything, I think.”
He made a knowing sound in the back of his throat. “When have they ever? You need to rest, Frankie. Really rest.”
She could only nod. He was right. A terminal sort of exhaustion had been settling into her bones for a long time, maybe even before she did the most selfish thing she’d ever done and moved to United Washington.
She’d worked since she was sixteen to help support her parents.
She’d worked all through college, too, and lived at home to help out even more.
And then one day she just… couldn’t do that anymore.
Thoughts of Billie had plagued her for years — nightmares about horrible things that could’ve happened to her, passing daydreams about what she’d say if she were around, and the ever-present guilt over being adopted before her — but one day she’d simply decided it was time.
Looking at it from a distance, she realized that she had been running in the only way she could allow herself. But it hadn’t fixed anything.
Francesca eased back into her seat with a heavy exhale. “I don’t think I know how to do that,” she admitted.
He gave her thigh a gentle squeeze. “That’s why you have me. What you don’t have, I do. And what I don’t have, you do. We fit.”
The light in the car changed when they pulled into the parking garage below Luis’s apartment building. She gazed at him thoughtfully, watching the overhead light flash over his proud features.
In a soft voice she replied, “We do, don’t we?”
Luis pulled into his parking spot and cut the engine. Leaning over the console to give her a slow kiss, he whispered, “Now you’re getting it, kitten.”
She could feel the smile forming on his lips a moment before he pulled back. Butterflies filled her stomach when he gestured for her to wait in the car. Luis hopped out and circled around to open her door for her.
Offering her his hand, he helped her out. “I know you don’t like the penthouse, but if you give me a week, I can find us—”
The high-pitched whine of a bolt gun was all the warning they had before a hole melted in the passenger window.
The squeal of tires echoing off the concrete walls was shockingly loud. A dark van skidded to a halt next to them, partially blocking their car in.
Luis shoved her down to the gritty concrete floor. She dropped to her hands and knees between the car and the opened door as he whipped a gun she hadn’t even known he carried out from behind his back.
He took aim at the van just as a man sprang from the back and began to fire wildly. Luis cursed, ducking to avoid a wide shot, and fired back.
Francesca huddled on the floor, unconsciously clutching the white rope. The smell of ozone, melted rubber, and metal filled the air. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t bear to look away from Luis’s feet — her only indication of where he was and if he remained unharmed.
She watched him stalk forward, his gun whining with every white-hot pulse of plasma, and so completely missed the other pair of feet heading her way.
While Luis chased the shooter around the van, another man grabbed her shoulders and wrenched her backward.
Francesca screamed. She kicked backward blindly, her fingers clutching at whatever she could grab of the car door.
The brushed concrete floor scraped her knees and elbows as she was wrenched backward.
A meaty hand snatched her arm hard enough to make her squeal in pain. Acting on instinct, she dropped her head to sink her teeth into the thick, tattooed forearm attached to the hand.
Blood filled her mouth, but she didn’t let go. She tossed her head from side to side like an animal, tearing through flesh with enough force that she felt something come loose.
She would’ve kept going but a blow to the side of her head sent her reeling. Francesca released the arm. Blood dripped from her mouth and white lights danced in front of her eyes as she listed into the side of the car. Fingers twisted into her hair.
And then they let go.
The man dropped to the ground next to her. The scent of cauterized flesh singed her nose. She stared at him, uncomprehending, and at the smoking hole in his back. A ring had been burned through his clothing around the wound, exposing just enough undamaged skin to see the twisting body of a snake.
The squeal of the van’s tires made her jump. Francesca’s head swiveled. She watched as the black van, its back door still open, peeled away from the scene at a reckless speed.
Luis stood by the trunk of his car, his feet braced shoulder-width apart, and fired at the back of it until the van disappeared from view. As soon as it rounded a corner, his attention snapped back to her. He’d looked perfectly calm during the attack, but now…
Luis dropped his gun on the ground and dove for her. His eyes were wide as saucers as he knelt beside her, and his hands were everywhere, patting, rubbing, and searching for wounds that didn’t exist.
In a panicked voice, he demanded, “Where are you hurt? Were you shot?”
Francesca opened her mouth to assure him that she was pretty much fine, actually, only to realize that there was something in the way. Gagging, she spat out what could only be a chunk of her attacker’s forearm.
Luis’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline. “What—”
“Not mine,” she wheezed, horrified.
His gaze bounced between her and the dead man. Finally seeing the bloody hole in his outstretched arm, a visible wave of relief crashed over him. “Oh, that’s all. Good. Okay. Anything else?”
“I hit my head, I think?” she answered, too shocked to cry or scream or vomit quite yet. “Not too bad. Just a bruise, probably.”
“Thank fuck.” He grasped the back of her neck to bring her in for a hard kiss to her forehead. Helping her up onto shaky legs, he ushered her back into the car.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she asked, “Where are we going?”
“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” he answered, slamming her door shut. Completely ignoring the body on the ground, he jogged to the driver’s side and slid in.
Whatever contentment she’d seen before vanished. He gripped the wheel tightly enough to bleach his knuckles white.
Still tasting blood in her mouth, she whispered, “Was that Malachi?”
“I’d bet everything I have on it, yeah,” he answered.
Her stomach fell. In an instant, she understood why Luis had been so upset that she left the house. If she’d been on her own when that happened, there wasn’t a chance she could’ve escaped.
Nausea rolled in her stomach. This time, she was the one to reach across the console. Wordlessly, she tied the loose end of the rope around his wrist. Only when there was a double knot in place did she shrink back into her seat.