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Twenty minutes later we were outside the city limits of Desolation and pulling into an underground garage. He parked, climbed out, and walked around the front to open the passenger door before I could do it myself. For a second I just stared up at him, my breath stalling at the cold, detached look on his face.
“Come on, Lina.” His tone was hard and sharp. It was dangerous.
I slipped my hand in his and repressed a shiver, but I didn’t know if it was one of disgust because of what I’d seen him do, or because I liked the feel of his slightly callused hand wrapping tightly around mine and helping me out of his car.
I followed him toward an elevator, and he passed a silver key card across a sensor. The doors opened immediately. And then we were enclosed together as it ascended.
I should have been freaking out. I should have been demanding he take me to my apartment. I shouldn’t have been staring down at my hands as I curled them even tighter around the straps of my backpack and watched them shake. I shouldn’t have kept my mouth shut and let my gaze trail over my dress that I now noticed was covered in pin-sized dark spots.
Blood… blood covered me.
I didn’t know anything about Arlo except for his name and what he ate at the diner every time he came in. His expression was always so stone-cold, as if he was so untouchable by everything and everyone that he couldn’t bother to care. And as I glanced at him, his profile severe and cut in masculine lines and strong features, I couldn’t find the words to say anything. I couldn't find my voice to tell him to take me back to my apartment, even though that was the last place I wanted to go.Because I don’t want to be alone.
I was rattled and shaken, not sure what the hell just happened. He’d beat a man, pulverized his hands, all because of what? The man had groped me, yeah, but Arlo had acted out of such rage I was having a hard time breathing now just thinking about it.
Maybe all of this was some personal vendetta between the two men, because surely I would have no bearing on what Arlo did or didn’t do. Before my thoughts could get even more tangled, the elevator stopped, and the doors opened. He stepped out first, and for a moment I just stood there, unsure if I should follow.
A part of me felt like I was stepping through the gates of hell itself. But I found myself moving on my own accord, the elevator closing silently behind me. I smelled lemon cleaning products right away, and with the lights completely off, the only things I could make out were what the city lights touched coming through the massive windows.
Oh. Wow.
My gaze was riveted to those windows, ones that took up one entire wall of his apartment, the city and sky stretching out for as far as you could see. It looked like it could have been cut from a postcard, how perfect it all seemed, how clean and docile… so not dangerous.
I focused on Arlo again, telling myself I probably shouldn’t turn my attention from him. With the shadows and light that shone through the large windows making up one entire wall, I could make out certain parts of his home. Large couch to the left. A massive TV on the wall across from the furniture. The kitchen was to the right, all dark, smooth counters and sleek stainless-steel appliances.
I expected him to turn my way, to say something now that we were in his domain, but he still said nothing, just walked ahead of me, the soft sound of his shoes hitting the floor seeming louder than it probably should.
“Are you okay?” I finally asked, although it felt so stupid to ask a question like that.
He braced his hands on the bar and hung his head for a second before he let out a low, short, humorless laugh. “You’re the one who was sexually assaulted tonight, and you’re askingmeif I’m okay?” He turned just his head so he could look at me, the shadows from the dark apartment and figments of light coming through all the windows from the city right behind the glass making him seem almost sinister.
“Yeah. I guess I am.” We stared at each other for so long it started to become uncomfortable. My body shouldn’t be feeling hot, so hot that I felt a trickle of sweat trail down between my breasts.
His eyes were hard, dark. Intense. “You’re in shock.”
Maybe I was. But I had never felt as clearheaded as I did right now.
And me feeling like I was burning alive had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the man standing just feet from me.
“Why did you bring me here?” I was fidgeting as I ran my hands up and down my thighs, picked at an invisible thread atthe hem of the dress, and kept shifting on my feet, theclack-clackof my heels sounding deafening.
He didn’t respond as he turned and poured himself a drink. He held his arm out and tipped the bottle in my direction, and I found myself nodding before clearing my throat and asking him for a drink too, even though alcohol was the last thing I needed right now.
Once the glass was filled, he turned and walked back to me, holding it out, our fingers brushing as I took it with a shaky hand. I didn’t miss how his eyes tracked the movement as I tightened my fingers around the smoothness of the glass in hopes I could gather my control. He didn’t stop following my movements with his eyes as I brought the rim to my mouth and took a long drink.
That numbness faded and the fear and anxiety coursed through me so forcefully I drowned in the liquor, inhaling it without realizing, the acidic burn of it settling in my belly like a stone in the pit of my stomach.
He didn’t show any emotion as he brought his own vodka to his mouth and took a long, slow drink. He swallowed it so smoothly it could have been water for all I knew. Then he turned and headed to the bar for a refill.
The silence stretched on, the loudest thing I’d ever heard. I stood there in the center of his lavish, expensive apartment, holding a glass of vodka and wearing another man’s blood on me like an accessory.
“I brought you here because it’s the only place they can’t touch you. It’s the only place you’re truly safe right now.”
His words had my heart lodging in my throat. I said nothing as I finished off my alcohol, the burn already making a warm, pleasure-numbing path through my veins, my eyes watering, but I blinked it back before the tears slid down my cheeks.
He turned around to face me, drinking his second glass and watching me over the rim.
“Why would they want to hurt me?” My voice was too low, too thin. I was terrified, not just about what had happened back at that bar—with that man—but what Leonid had meant by his parting words.
