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“Should’ve let you starve,” I scoff under my breath. “Now you’re getting soft.” He just whines low in his throat and nudges my leg. “Yeah, yeah,” I mutter. “Fuck off.”
I brush him off and go inside. At this hour, most of the people who live here are either too strung out from the night before to be up yet, or they’re all crashing hard after nights like mine, so the hall is quiet. There’s no one to see me take the stairs two at a time until I get to my apartment.
I let myself in and sigh with relief before crossing to the fridge and rummaging through it. There are some leftovers from a couple nights ago, and I toss it out the window to Dog, who waits below.
He yips with excitement and pounces on the food with joy, and I roll my eyes and slam the window closed.
Kicking my shoes off feels good, and I take a second to enjoy the cool feeling of the scuffed and pitted wood floor of my bedroom under my bare feet.
I want to shower the night off me and then maybe sleep for a week, so I head to the bathroom, flipping on the light and making a face at my reflection in the mirror.
It’s not a pretty sight.
My dress from the night is torn in more than one place, showing off a lot of tattooed skin. My face is bruised all to hell, and there are marks around my neck from where that asshole tried to choke me out.
I look like shit, and I smell like shit from being locked in a room that smelled like blood and fear all night.
But I made it out of there, and that’s all that matters. I’ve gone through worse before, and after a shower and some sleep, I can get this experience off me and move onto the next one. Because there’s always a next one.
I peel the dress off, letting it fall in a heap on the bathroom floor. I sit on the toilet with the lid closed and rummage in the cabinet under the sink for my box of nail polish.
The black polish I did the other day is chipped and ruined from last night’s mess, so I take it off, careful to get every smudge of black from around the cuticles.
There’s something relaxing about changing the color of my polish after a rough few nights. Like a reset, in a way. I choose a bright ass red this time, painting it over my nails like streaks of blood.
I fan my hands out while my nails dry, blowing on them until it’s good enough that I can shower without fucking them up.
The hot water burns as it hits the cuts and scrapes I’ve got from fighting with assholes all night. Bloody water runs over my body and swirls down the drain, and I roll my shoulders and let the heat wash away the last of the tension in my body.
I stand there until the water runs clean, streaming over my breasts and down my stomach to my legs. It runs down my tattooed thigh and makes the scars on my legs look rippled, instead of the neat lines they’re actually in.
I soak my hair and let it run down my back and then reach for the soap and the shampoo.
I don’t leave the shower until I’m clean and refreshed, and I take the time to dry myself off before walking naked into the main room of my shitty little studio.
It was definitely empty when I came home, but now Wild Eyes is standing in the middle of the room. Knox, I think they called him.
He grins when he sees me and doesn’t even hide the fact that he’s ogling me, letting his eyes drag over my body from head to toe and then back up again.
I freeze, caught in his gaze and the surprise of seeing someone standing in my fucking apartment.
“Well damn, River,” he says. “This is a hell of a welcome.”
How the fuck does he know my name? The only one I gave him and the other men was Ghost. Dammit. He probably went through my shit while I was showering, and the thought of him pawing through my things makes my blood boil. Should’ve known them letting me go was too good to be true.
The spell breaks when he says that, and I lunge for the side table where I keep my weapons. I just need to get my hands on a gun, a knife, anything I can use to defend myself and take this asshole out.
But he’s quick for someone so big, and he grabs me before I can reach anything, dragging me back to the center of the room.
For the third time in the last few hours, I’m being grappled by some dick, and I growl my frustration, trying to break his hold. Being naked puts me at a disadvantage, and even though I’m doing my level best to kick his fucking ass, I’m also way too aware of his body pressing against mine.
I can feel the hardness of his muscles and the heat of him through his clothes. He yanks me back against his chest, and my ass is right at his crotch. I don’t linger long enough to see if he’s hard from this or not, instead elbowing him in the side so he has to let me go.
“You’re slippery,” he grunts. I whirl on him, ready to punch him in the face, but he catches my hand easily, twisting my arm back down. I narrow my eyes and lash out with the other hand, managing to slap him across the face.
It doesn’t even seem to faze him very much, and he goes to grab for me again, but this time I’m too quick.
I dart out of the tattooed man’s path and use my leg to sweep his own legs out from under him, sending him toppling to the floor. The people who live under me aren’t going to be impressed with that, but fuck them.
