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‘I know that.’
‘So what the fuck are we waiting for? Waiting around to die?’
‘I don’t know, you tell me.’
He looked at the floor. ‘When I got home, Juliette was gone. He’d picked her up and taken her back to his place to fix him up. But really, to get at me.’
My stomach roiled at that knowledge. Dornan had taken John’s teenage daughter, at night, without asking him, as a warning?
‘Is she okay?’
John waved his hand dismissively, but there was hurt in his eyes. Anger. ‘I picked her up, took her for a drive. She’s at home now, hopefully asleep.’
I exhaled a sigh of relief.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Hawaii. Miami . . . Fuck, Australia. I know people. Good people who’ll help us.’
I looked around my empty apartment. ‘Where were you when you were fighting?’
John looked at the floor again.
‘I called him,’ I said, eyeing off the vodka again. My head felt like it was going to split in half, and my mouth was unbearably dry. ‘Dornan told me he was at the clubhouse, but last time I checked, you don’t play stripping music there.’
‘He was at the strip club,’ John confirmed. ‘We were supposed to be having a meeting.’ He gestured to his face. ‘I don’t think he liked what I had to say.’
‘Was he high? He sounded high.’
John nodded. ‘He’s developing quite the taste for his daddy’s product.’
I scrunched my face up. ‘That sounds disgusting.’
John laughed. ‘You should have seen him snorting it. Itwasdisgusting. That stuff’ll make your nose bleed like a goddamn faucet.’
‘Like your head?’ As if on cue, the split on his forehead was open again, blood streaming down his face. ‘Shit,’ he muttered, and before I could think to get up and get a towel, he’d taken his T-shirt off and had balled it up, pressing it to his bleeding forehead. I swallowed, my eyes drifting down his chest, past chiselled abs and a smooth, tattooed chest. His jeans were slung low around his narrow waist, and I found myself staring at the top button of his fly, almost like I could use the force to unbutton it from three feet away.
He gave me an odd look, and I tore my gaze away from the clothing I would have liked him to remove, motioning for him to move the T-shirt from his forehead. The cut continued to bleed heavily.
‘Let me help you,’ I said, hearing my words as they came out a little thicker than normal, muffled by exhaustion and too much alcohol. I was dying for a drink of water, but I needed some steri-strips first. ‘Wait there,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a first aid kit somewhere around here.’
I rummaged in a few kitchen cabinets, finally finding the kit under the sink. I grabbed it and turned back to John, noticing where his eyes had been – squarely on my ass. It was nice to feel wanted without any strings attached. Nice to feel desired. I tried to push that away, my nipples hard enough to cut glassas I thought of the last time John and I had been together. The way he’d made me cry out beneath him.
Jesus, woman. Get a grip. He’ll have bled to death from this cut by the time you get your shit together.
‘Sit down,’ I said, patting the stool. ‘So I can reach better.’
He did, and I got to work, washing my hands with alcohol sanitiser, before setting up my tools – gauze, steri-strips, cotton balls and alcohol solution. The strip club was dirty. If you shone one of those luma-lights down there, it’d light up like a fucking Christmas tree in Times Square, all body fluids and blood from old fights.
‘I’m not used to people helping me,’ John said, keeping perfectly still as I dabbed the alcohol solution around his cut.
‘This is deep, John,’ I said, trying to focus but suddenly aware that if I was just a tiny bit closer, I could rub one of my nipples against his lips. Stop. Fix him first, and then figure out a way to screw him without getting killed.
‘That’s what she said.’ That glint in his eye, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
‘I’m serious. You need stitches.’I’m serious. Deep sounds exactly like what I’ll say when you ask me how I want it.
‘No time for stitches,’ he said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘Unless you’ve got a needle and thread?’
‘A needle and thread,’ I repeated, taking a steri-strip and closing his wound as best I could. ‘You’ll have a scar on your head the size of Tennessee. I mean, I’ll love you anyway, even if you’re horribly disfigured.’
