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Maybe. At this point she didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. She could hear the sound of the shower running, smell the soap and shaving cream and the faint, teasing scent of the cologne he wore. She hadn’t been able to identify the components—they were subtle, nagging, almost…erotic. She didn’t like men who wore scent.
The shower stopped, and a moment later the door opened. She looked up to see Bastien walk into the room without any clothes, not even a towel wrapped around his waist. She jerked her head to the side, closing her eyes, and heard him laugh.
“Do men’s bodies make you uncomfortable, Chloe?” he said. She ignored him, keeping her eyes tightly shut as she listened to the rustle of clothing, the sound of drawers and doors being opened. She was almost asleep, miraculously enough, when she felt the bed sag beside her, and despite herself her eyes shot open.
He wasn’t wearing much, but at least he was decent. He’d put on a pair of trousers, and his shirt was open around his chest. Odd. She’d had sex with him before she even knew whether he had hair on his chest.
He didn’t—his skin was smooth, golden, and she closed her eyes again, trying to shut him out.
He tucked the sheet around her. “Sleep, Chloe. You need to keep that stuff on for another four hours and then you can wash it off, but in the meantime you need to just lie there and let the medicine do its job.”
She considered ignoring him, then couldn’t resist answering him. “There’s no medicine in the world that can heal what Hakim did to me that quickly.”
“Maybe not. But the physical pain will be gone. It’s up to you whether you want to let it scar you emotionally.”
“Up to me?” She tried to sit up, but he pushed her back down on the bed, not gently.
“Up to you,” he repeated firmly. “You’re young, you’re strong and you’re smart, despite the mess you managed to walk into. If you have the sense I think you do you’ll put it behind you.”
“So sensitive,” she mocked him.
“Practical,” he said. “He cut you. He burned you. He didn’t rape you.”
“No, that was you.”
He swore then, words she shouldn’t know, even with her command of languages, but she did. “Whatever you want to tell yourself,” he said after a moment. “I must have had momentary deafness. I don’t seem to remember you ever saying no.”
She hadn’t, and they both knew it. She said nothing, and a moment later she felt him move from the bed. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath, half expecting him to touch her again, and she let it out as he moved away from her. “I’ll be back in a couple hours. Don’t answer the door, don’t answer the phone, don’t go near the windows. I don’t think anyone knows about this place, but you can’t be too certain, and a lot of people are going to be looking for you.”
She turned her head away, ignoring him. She just wanted him gone, out of there—if he said one more thing to her she’d scream.
She heard the sound of the front door closing, the click of the automatic lock,
and she opened her eyes in the dimly lit apartment, to find herself alone. Finally. In his bed.
She sat up, slowly, wary of her wounds, but there was no pain. Whatever that green gunk was, it had managed to stop the pain, at least for now. She touched her arm, gingerly. The stuff had formed an almost waxlike coating over each stripe, sealing it, but it moved with her, and when she pushed the sheet off her body and stood up there wasn’t even a twinge, or a pinch.
It was probably some kind of radioactive poison—it had hurt enough when he’d painted it on her, and she didn’t trust him for even a moment. But she felt stronger, rather than weaker, so she could probably acquit him of that. Strong enough to get the hell out of there before he came back.
Her clothes were a shredded mess—there was no way she could walk out in public in them. She would have rather left stark naked than to put on his clothes, but she had at least an ounce of self-preservation left. If wearing Bastien Toussaint’s clothes meant she wouldn’t have to see him again, then so be it.
All his clothes were black. Of course—he was as dramatic as he was monstrous. It didn’t help that the only pair of trousers she could wear were a loose pair of silk pajama bottoms. Like most men, particularly the French, he had no hips, and she had at least her fair share.
Except that he wasn’t French. She wasn’t sure how she knew that—his accent was perfect, his manner, everything about him proclaimed him to be exactly what she’d discovered on the Internet. The son of an arms manufacturer from Marseilles—it was no wonder he’d gotten into the business of shipping them. It would have been a short move from legal armaments to illegal weaponry.
The married son of an arms manufacturer, she reminded herself, pulling his silk shirt over her arms, wincing in anticipation. The whisper-thin fabric barely touched her skin, and there was that inexplicable absence of pain. She moved to the window and peered outside. It was cold and rainy—it almost looked as if it might turn to flurries before long. It was a little too early for snow, but then, the world seemed to have turned sideways. She could no longer count on anything being normal.
There was no money—she searched the place thoroughly. She found a small cache of what was presumably cocaine or heroin—she didn’t give a damn which, but not cash. Not a cent to get her to the opposite side of Paris. It was easy enough to orient herself, with the Eiffel Tower to her left, the Seine snaking its way through the shadowy city. It would be a hike through the back streets and alleys to her apartment in the Marais, but anything was preferable to staying here. She grabbed his coat—a long, black cashmere trench that felt butter-soft in her hands. The faint trace of his scent teased her, enough so that she almost threw it down again, rather than wrap herself in the smell and feel of him.
But now was not the time for dramatic gestures. She ran a hand through her hair, feeling the uneven lengths, the scorched ends. There was nothing she could do about it now, but when she made it back to her apartment she could get Sylvia to fix it.
He’d told her it was too dangerous to go back to her apartment, but then he’d told her a great many lies, and he was the only recognizably dangerous thing in her life. Besides, no one knew where she lived. Sylvia sublet the tiny apartment from one of her former lovers, and neither of them were on record as tenants. Chloe’s mail arrived at the Frères Laurent, her cell phone was billed to the United States and there was really no way they could find her without trying very hard indeed. And she didn’t think they’d consider her worth the effort.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t going home to America. She didn’t trust Bastien for one moment, but she’d seen enough in the past twenty-four hours to know that she’d inadvertently gotten mixed up with some very dangerous people, and if he was one of the good guys she really didn’t want to see the bad ones. The safest place for her was back in the mountains of North Carolina, surrounded by her overprotective family. For some reason Paris and the surrounding countryside had lost its allure.
Slogging through the cold, wet street, head down, with Bastien’s coat wrapped around her, didn’t do much to improve her mood. Her feet were numb from the cold, but at least the shoes fit. Funny that he’d stop long enough to buy her a pair of shoes on their escape back to Paris. She couldn’t even begin to understand what went through his mind, and she didn’t want to try. All she wanted to do was get far enough away from him and the others that no one could find her.
She was hungry—starving, in fact, and even remembering Hakim wasn’t enough to distract her. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d eaten, and there was only so long she could go on nervous energy. There’d be food at her apartment, food and a warm bed. Tomorrow she’d fly home, on the first plane she could get. And maybe next time she’d listen to her family when they told her to stay put.
