Chapter 20 Krista #2
He eyed my hand warily, then shifted away. Had I done something to offend him? Why didn’t he want to shake my hand? Oh, God, did I smell that bad? It had been a while since I’d gotten a shower.
“Don’t take it personally,” Kate grinned. “He doesn’t shake anyone’s hand.”
“Really?” I asked, looking back at him as she led me up the stairs to the house. “Like some sort of an affliction?”
“Something like that. So, how are you feeling?”
“Good.”
Stopping, she faced me. “I need real answers. If I’m going to help you, I need you to be honest about everything.”
“So, no niceties.”
“Afraid not.”
“Well, my head still hurts.”
“How bad is the pain?”
“Not as bad as when I woke up. I’d say it’s like a dull annoyance that keeps rearing its ugly head.”
“Well, that’s good. It’s not getting any worse?”
“Nope.”
“Aches and pains?”
“Pretty much my whole body.”
She nodded and continued inside. “I would expect that after taking unknown drugs. It’s impossible to tell what they’ve laced them with.”
“Oh, I didn’t take them,” I clarified. “They were more forced into my body.”
I was getting lost as we wound our way through the house, down a short set of stairs to an elevator. She hit a button and the shiny doors opened.
“Knight filled me in. I’ll take some blood samples and see what I can find out. Hopefully, we’ll have you feeling better soon.”
I was extremely grateful for that, but it still didn’t solve the main problem. We still had men after us, and apparently, they thought I stole something from them.
Double doors slid open and we walked into the most sparkling white room I’d ever seen. This lab was like something out of a movie.
And it was here.
In the basement of a mansion.
“Your husband must really love you.”
Chuckling, she led me over to a gurney and patted it. “He loves me, and he knows I always need a place to take our teams when they’re injured. He did all this in the last year,” she said, smiling as she looked around.
“Do your teams get injured often?”
She thought about it a moment. “More often than the average person.”
An uneasy feeling spread through my gut at her words. “Does Rob get injured often?”
She shot me a knowing look as she prepared everything to draw my blood. “Actually, he’s not in the field as often as everyone else. He’s mostly a tech genius.”
“So, he’s behind computers all day.”
“Yeah, for the most part.” As she wrapped a band around my arm, she continued. “Though he was on the last job, and I hear it was a doozy.”
“In what way?”
“That’s literally all I heard.”
“Oh, that’s not much to go on.”
Smiling, she started to draw my blood. “No, but I prefer it that way.”
“Why?”
“Because I once was taken by some men who were after my husband. Trust me, it’s better if you don’t know anything.”
Shivers skittered down my spine at her words. Not because I was afraid, but because of the sincerity in her tone. I wondered what she had been through, but it didn’t seem polite to ask.
“All done,” she said, unwrapping the band from around my arm.
After putting gauze over my site, she carried the vials over to a counter, clearly labeling them.
“So, what now?”
“Now, I get samples from Rob, and you wait for answers, which is the part that really sucks,” she said, turning back to me.
“Anything fun to do around here?” I asked, only half-laughing.
“Well, if the other ladies were here, I’m sure you’d find plenty to do. As it is, I’ll take you back upstairs, because trust me, you won’t have any fun down here.”
With nothing else to do now that I had given over a pint of blood, I wandered around the house, looking at the pictures and pretending to care about any of it.
But my nerves were on edge. What I needed was a distraction, and the first thing that came to mind was a good tangle in the sheets with Rob. Somehow, that didn’t seem like a wise choice. Not when everything was already so messy between us.
“Want a shower?”
I spun around, surprised when I was no longer alone. I didn’t even know where I had wandered to, but I definitely wasn’t anywhere near where we entered.
Rob was fully dressed, but his hair was still wet. Yet, even fully clothed, I couldn’t stop the internal moan as I remembered what he looked like without a single thing on.
Thick muscles, cheese grater abs, a tiny strip of hair that ran from his belly button to his thick cock…
“Um…yeah, I should probably do that,” I said, swallowing hard.
At least in there I could get off.
“You also might want to call your family.”
Like a dip in the ocean in the middle of winter, all the heat that had built up in just ten seconds fled.
“Um…yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I don’t want to be yelled at. I don’t want my brothers demanding to know my location.” I pretended to think about it. “Uh…let’s see. Oh, right, I don’t need my dad telling me what a disappointment I am. That’s a pretty big one,” I chuckled.
“Why would you be a disappointment?”
“Well, I’ve been one all my life, so I’m pretty sure the trend will continue.”
His head slowly cocked to the side as he studied me. Those eyes wandered over me curiously, reading me and gathering information.
I hated it.
I knew exactly what he saw. Poor, sad girl who didn’t have daddy’s approval. He probably thought I was a baby, whining over not getting my way. Then again, there were a lot of assumptions that ran rampant through town, each of them with just a kernel of truth to them.
“You seem pretty level-headed to me,” he said, taking me by surprise.
“Um…” I didn’t know what to say to that.
“You had the forethought to fight back when you were attacked.”
“That’s just instinct.”
“You’ve listened to me every step of the way. You have no idea how little that happens.”
“Well, I do value my life.”
“So, tell me what makes you such a disappointment.”
I glanced around, at the wide open space where anyone could walk in and hear this conversation. “Here?”
“Why not?” he shrugged.
“This seems like one of those intimate, very private moments that couples have.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners, and again, I got lost in checking him out. He had this lightness to him, yet he was so sure of himself. It was very attractive.
“Well, we are married.”
“That’s true,” I chuckled.
“And I think as your husband, I should know these things.”
“Except then you’d run away and the marriage would be over.” I meant for it to have a teasing tone, for him to laugh at my self-deprecating joke, but instead, he stepped forward, his face turning somber.
“I don’t give up on people that quickly.”
Now was the moment where I could lay it all on the line, tell him all my darkest secrets. I’d know once and for all if a man like him could ever want to be with someone like me. But as the silence grew, so did the distance between us.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t see yet another person look at me like I was nothing. So, I did what I always did and played it off with sex.
Sauntering forward, I ran my finger down his chest and winked at him. “I can think of so many more fun things to do besides talk about myself.”
Biting my lower lip, I looked up at him through my lashes. “I’ll be in the shower if you want to join me.”
I added in a wink for good measure, then headed toward the only room in this direction, pulling my shirt over my head in the process. I was barely through the door when I felt his heat at my back.
Warm hands slid around my stomach, spinning me around. Thick, heated lips melded over mine as he boxed me in against the wall, his hands roaming down my sides, then skimming back up until he was cupping my breasts.
This was what I needed— to feel wanted, to have a man touch me and think of only how much he had to have me. I let my eyes fall shut as his lips trailed up my neck, leaving love bites in their wake.
His teeth nipped at my ear. “You’re gonna need your eyes open for what I have in mind.”
Then he took my hand and yanked me toward the shower.