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“Forest Bluff.” He wet his lips and stepped around her to open a drawer in a smooth, dark-stained wooden dresser. “Shower or don’t.” He tossed a large swath of black fabric onto the bed. “Drink some water. I’ll see you this afternoon.” He turned to leave, and something inside her snapped.
“Hey!” Her fingers closed around the back of his shirt.
Violet swore she’d barely moved, barely blinked, barely thought of what she would say next when he’d whipped around and was facing her again. Her arm was caught around him now, tugging her close to him. Calloused fingers on her chin held her in place before she could step back.
She swallowed and felt her throat move against the heel of his hand, felt his breath, warm on her cheek, and the tension that had dropped over them when he’d turned around. His green eyes studied her, flicked down her cheeks, to her lips, then suddenly she was moved away from him. Strong hands around her arms pushed her back and sat her on the edge of the bed while he left the room too fast for her to follow. The lock snicked on the door, and Violet beat her fist on the mattress in rage.
THE SKY WASdark outside the window when she woke. It took a long minute to understand where she was, why her ribs screamed when she sat up, and why she was wrapped in an unfamiliar blue comforter. As she looked around the room, her gaze fell to the handle on the window, but it was locked; she’d tried that yesterday—earlier—time had become difficult to hold onto since she’d left the club.
She’d beat the door for what felt like hours after he’d disappeared, yelling her demands through the crack in the frame, and rattling the handle. When it refused to give, and he’d not come back, (Mikel,she reminded herself), she’d tried the windows and rifled through his drawers for anything that might help. When she found nothing but clothes, she’d finally relented. The hot shower had hurt. Violet had sat under the spray until it started to turn cold and dressed herself back in her ruined jeans and the T-shirt he’d left, before sitting down at the foot of the bed to think.
She searched the darkness. The water and two white pills on the nightstand confirmed he’d been in the room while she was sleeping, and he’d probably moved her to the bed. The thought made her insides squirm with discomfort. She ignored the offering, half out of spite and half out of distrust.
Awake now, Violet left the bed, not bothering to remake it, to pace the room and look for things she’d missed earlier when she was exhausted. Before felt like a dream, Mikel telling her to shower felt like a dream, all of it did, yet she’d woken up still here and not back at the mansion. The room wasn’t telling. The furniture was all wooden, solid, and dark stained, beautiful in its simplicity. She reached out to run her fingers over the open drawers of the dresser. Nothing more than clothes inside, three pairs of boots at the foot.
The normalcy of it scared her. Knives and guns andThe Serial Killer Handbook, she’d understand. She could make sense of that but not this.
Surprisingly quickly she was tired, a painful growl from her stomach reminding her she hadn’t eaten since yesterday, maybe the day before—time had turned blurry since she’d stepped out of the club to smoke. She slid down the back of the door and banged her fist on it a few times.
“Hey!” All her earlier yelling had proved fruitless, and she had a feeling this would too, but it beat sitting there, waiting to starve. “Hey, psycho!” She banged it again, putting her weight behind her hand until it started to hurt.
A yelp of surprise left her when the door she was leaning against gave way, and she fell forward, catching herself on hard leather. She looked down at the pair of boots under her hands, then up into familiar green eyes.
“Hungry?” he asked, something that could have been humor just barely touching his face. “Come on.”
He extracted his boots and disappeared back down the hall, and Violet took a minute to collect herself before she got to her feet and followed. She only passed one door that was closed. Then, she was stepping out into what looked like his living space—a sofa and television and two high bookshelves that touched the ceiling and sagged under the weight of the tomes stacked and piled on them. She stopped to search for a phone, a computer, anything she could use to call the police, when his voice came again.
“In here,” he said, and she went to stand in the doorway of his kitchen.
It was stunning with dark wood and darker granite, and glass from floor to ceiling on one wall with the forest whispering just outside.
“Omelet?” he asked her gruffly, back to her, already pouring eggs into a sizzling pan. Violet glared at him in disbelief. Her lips parted to say something quick and sarcastic, but the eggs smelled amazing, and her stomach gnawed painfully at itself.
“Okay,” she said instead and glowered when he shot her half a smile over his shoulder.
“Ham, cheese, spinach, green onion?” he asked.
“Fine,” she ground out.
Violet watched his back while he cooked, studied this clean, pleasant, open space he kept, and tried to match it in her head with the man who’d found her getting the snot beat out of her in the forest late at night, the one who’d dragged her back to town, the one who’d tumbled her and held her tight against him and come up clutching the arrow in his hand she knew was meant for her back.
“Tell me where I am?” she asked, and for the first time, it was a question, not a demand.
He reached up into a cabinet, and when he turned around, he had an omelet, folded crookedly onto a plate in his hand.
“Forest Bluff.” He gestured to a stool at the counter before he slid the plate to the place there. A knife and fork slid across the granite next.
Despite herself, Violet went to the stool, pulled it out, and hopped up. The knife and fork were in her hands, and she was cutting her first bite when she stopped, torn. This got his attention. He looked between her and the plate before he seemed to understand. Her heart picked up as he walked around the bar, came to a stop calmly beside her, and took the utensils from her hands. He cut a piece off the corner and ate it without preamble. The utensils hit the counter again, and he nodded.
“Could use pepper,” he said to her or himself.
It didn’t matter, Violet was already tearing into the food. She cut off a big bite and shoved it unceremoniously into her mouth. When she was on bite number three, she looked up to find him doing that stupid crooked smile at her again. She glared but said nothing, deciding to finish the food before she tried to go any further with getting out of her predicament.
When the plate was clean, she finally turned her gaze back to him, scowling at his stupid smile.
“Another?” he said, and she hated that he seemed to think this was funny or he was charming, like this was all some game. She stared, letting her eyes burn him, taking in the size of him, the cut of his jaw and his ease with all this.
“Fine,” she finally said because, god, she was hungry.
