“I know you’re awake,” a voice spoke from next to the bed—a voice I’d never heard before. It was clear and deep, with the faintest hint of an accent—though I couldn’t place what kind. It definitely wasn’t either of the men I’d been expecting.
I resisted the urge to open my eyes. Yes, I’d probably been busted, and it seemed like there was little point in keeping up the charade. But it was possible it was a trick, that he was just trying to find out if I was awake.
So caught up in thought, I wasn’t prepared for it when a finger brushed across my lips. I hadn’t been expecting it. His touch was gentle and fleeting, not like the way the other men had mauled at me.
My eyes flew open and I gasped. This was certainly not what I’d been expecting, though it rather lined up with the scent of him. The man was beautiful. Well, maybe that was a poor choice of words since there wasn’t anything feminine about him. But handsome was just too weak a word to describe the man hovering above me. Dark hair, vivid blue eyes, perfectly balanced features, a strong jaw…the list went on, but the eyes kept drawing me back. For the briefest of moments, they even put me at ease, as if I knew somehow they were a comfort, not a danger.
But then logic won out and I scurried off the bed, away from him, dragging the covers from the bed with me as I went. There was no one standing in the doorway to block my exit, but the door was closed. I hadn’t heard him close it, and I could only hope he hadn’t had the sense to lock it.
I dashed to the door, but the handle wouldn’t budge. I kept trying it anyway, expecting to feel his hands latch on me from behind at any moment, but they didn’t.
Abandoning the door, I spun around to fight him off, but he was still standing next to the bed, though he wore an amused expression now and his vivid eyes were filled with heat.
I spotted another door out the corner of my eye, and I ran for it, hoping it might lead me to an escape before the cocky man came after me. But it was a bathroom, I realized once I’d made it through the door uninhibited. An enormous walk-in shower and giant bathtub…but, not a single door or window.
It made sense now why he hadn’t bothered wasting his energy coming after me—there was nowhere for me to go. I stayed in the bathroom with the bedcover wrapped around me, huddled in one corner as if I could will the wall to swallow me up.
It didn’t.
His footsteps sounded quietly across the carpet, and I pressed my body harder against the wall. He stopped at the doorway, wearing the same amused grin. If I wasn’t terrified, I would have wanted to slap that cocky expression right off his too-handsome face. As it was though, I had no intentions of coming out of my corner—maybe ever.
After a moment he turned away and walked over to the bathroom sink. I wished I’d picked a corner in the other room because even though the bathroom was bigger than any I’d seen, it was still too small. His presence seemed to take up too much of the precious space between us.
He picked up a plastic cup sitting next to the facet, turned on the sink and filled it up. A strange time to stop for a drink, wasn’t it?
But when he turned off the facet, he started toward me and I pressed back so hard against the wall that it felt like the tile on the wall behind me was digging into my bones.
He stopped maybe two feet away and extended the hand holding the cup. He was giving me water? Why? And then he extended his other hand and opened it up. There was a pill in it—ibuprofen, I recognized. Again, why?
“I imagine you must have quite the headache,” he said and extended both hands a little further.
Confused, but recognizing the truth in what he said, I clenched the blanket tighter against me with one hand and took the proffered pill with the other. I popped it into my mouth and reached for the glass, sipping just enough to swallow the pill. Since he’d brought it up, I’d become much more aware of the pain throbbing at the back of my head, and was hopeful the pill would provide some relief. It was difficult to think clearly the way it was pounding. Every beat reverberated through my head.
I handed the glass back and doubled up my grip on the blanket. He took the cup and placed it back on the sink and then returned to where he’d been standing in front of me. He didn’t make any move to touch me. He just stood there. The silence stretched out, winding its way through our frozen tableau and making me feel even jumpier than I’d been.