by Rose, Callie
His striking eyes search mine for answers to questions I’ll never know. He leans close and whispers in my ear, and just like I do every time, I strain to understand his words.
What is he saying? What does he want so desperately for me to know?
But the sounds travel into my mind without taking root. All I’m aware of is the feel of him speaking—the deep rumble of his voice and the way his breath stirs my hair.
He pulls back a little, and his expression shifts, a sliver of vulnerability rising to the surface, changing everything about his appearance.
When he lowers his head and claims a kiss, my whole body jolts at the warm sensation of his rough lips on mine.
The kiss begins slow like a waltz, but it quickly turns into a desperate race for something deeper. Harder.
The taste of copper fills my mouth as he slides two fingers across my bruised lips. In vain, I try to move my hips, needing something I can’t even name. Each press of his fingertips feels like an electric shock, painful and sweet at the same time.
He moans as his hand slips down my body, tracing every curve until he’s claimed all of me.
And as blood continues to pulse from my wounds in time to the fluttering beat of my heart, he thrusts inside me, splitting me open.
* * *
I wake with a jerk, sitting up so fast it makes me dizzy. Cold sweat drips down my back as I take in my surroundings. The room is dimly lit, but familiar. I’m back in my bed, in my apartment, in the shitty little complex on the west side of Halston.
Far away from that awful night so long ago.
So why the fuck doesn’t it feel like it?
Why does it feel like the past is in this fucking room with me, breathing down my neck?
My skin goes cold, and I clutch my covers to my chest, wrapping them around my body with my good arm. I drag my lower lip between my teeth, half-expecting my lips to feel bruised and swollen from kisses that aren’t even real.
Fuck.
It’s not the first time I’ve dreamed of the night I got shot. It happens all the fucking time, although sometimes the dreams are so ephemeral that I barely remember them. But it was more vivid last night than it’s been in months. I swear I could feel the weight of the stranger as he settled into the cradle of my body. I could feel his hands on my skin. I could practically breathe in the scent of him, and it filled me with a strange ache.
Attraction and revulsion.
Pleasure and pain.
Desire and fear.
My dreams of that night are always a confusing mix of polar opposites, as if I somehow crave the very thing I’m trying to flee from.
Ignoring the goose bumps that rise on my skin, I throw the covers off and pad to the bathroom. The dark ink of my tattoo stands out starkly against my pale skin, catching my gaze in the mirror as I wait for the water to heat up in the shower. I got it done almost a year ago, a month after I started working at Duke’s. The image popped into my mind fully formed, but I’m a shit artist, so I described it to the guy at the tattoo parlor and he sketched it out for me.
But he captured what was in my head perfectly. The ink covers my entire right arm—what’s left of it, anyway. Brilliant, deep red roses bloom on my skin, their petals shiny and smooth. Their stems bend delicately and gracefully, as if a wind stirs them, and a dark gray-blue ink fills the background of the image, growing lighter as it moves toward my shoulder.
The tattoo artist said it was one of the best pieces he’d ever done, but when he asked me why I picked it and where I came up with the image, I couldn’t tell him.
Just that I needed it.
Just that it felt necessary.
Steam starts to creep across the edges of the mirror, and I slip into the shower, letting hot water pelt my skin.
A face flashes in my mind as I lather my body with soap and begin to shampoo my hair. This can’t be the first time the man with mesmerizing eyes and I have crossed paths. It’s too much of a fucking coincidence that he and his friends were there to step in before the meth-head could hurt me last night.
How could they have known I needed help?
There’ve been moments over the last couple years where my skin has prickled oddly, where I’ve had the strange sensation of being watched. But the skin of my damaged arm often prickles where the nerves never healed quite right, and paranoia has been a constant companion as I’ve tried to overcome the lingering PTSD symptoms that followed in the wake of almost dying.
So I never took those odd feelings seriously. I always assumed they were products of my messed up mind, just another thing I would need to eventually overcome if I wanted to live a semi-normal life one day.
But what if it wasn’t all in my head?
What if that wasn’t the first time my path and the men from the club’s have crossed again?
What if last night was only the first time I knew about it?
* * *
The next few days are a blur as I stick to my routine: library, work, and then home. Despite my best attempt at pretending everything is fine, I can’t help but jump at every odd noise or any footsteps that seem to follow too closely. And I’m burning through money faster than I should by taking cabs to and from work and to the library.
I don’t want to be alone on the street, although it’s not a mugger I’m afraid of encountering.
It’s the man with the strange eyes.
But several more days pass, and I don’t see any sign of him or the two others who were with him. Slowly, I begin to relax back into my daily life, convincing myself that I’m probably wrong about what I think I saw. It must’ve been a trick of the light that turned the man’s eyes into the strange multi-colored ones I remember from the night I was shot.
It’s not the same guy. It can’t be.
A week after my attempted mugging, I’m back to taking the bus, ready to put the whole fucking thing behind me. I work a temp job in a wealthy neighborhood on the north side of town on Sunday, and by the time I get home, I’m exhausted.
As I walk the couple blocks to my apartment from the bus stop, I tug off my blazer and then undo the harness that secures my prosthetic arm to my body. I’ve been wearing the damn thing for hours, and taking it off feels better than taking a bra off at the end of the day.
I drape the blazer over the crook of my elbow and hold the soft silicone of my prosthesis in my hand, letting the arm dangle from my grip as I approach my building.
As I near it, I notice Natalie coming down the sidewalk from the other direction. Her strawberry blonde hair reflects the waning sunlight in gold highlights, but her sour expression when she catches sight of me ruins the effect.
She’s pretty, but only on the outside.
“Can’t you at least wear that thing like you’re supposed to?” She casts a disparaging look at the fake arm as we both head up the walkway toward our building. “Cover up your stump so the rest of us don’t have to see it?”
I roll my eyes. “Sorry if my debilitating injury makes you uncomfortable.”
She gives an irritated little huff.
I’ve known Natalie for years, since we were in our early teens. We both grew up in the foster system, and our paths crossed periodically as we went in and out of different homes. She moved into the building a little over a year ago, when she started school at the University of Halston. Somehow, she convinced her last foster family to pay for her education, and she’s taken great pleasure in rubbing it in my face ever since.
When we reach the short set of steps leading up to the front entrance of our apartment building, I glance over at her and find her grinning smugly at me.
“Where were you today?” she asks. “The library again?”
“No. Work.”
“Huh.” She laughs lightly. “Which one? The bar or the shitty temp job?”
Irritation burns inside me. “Why do you care?”
She shrugs. “I don’t. I’m just wondering what kind of career you expect to ever have with a resume that lists
a diploma from a public library and previous work experience as pouring beers for frat boys and filing papers.”
My teeth grind together. Truthfully, she’s not saying anything I haven’t thought of before on my own, but I don’t want to hear this shit from her. She’s not asking out of concern, or even out of genuine curiosity. She’s asking because she wants to get a rise out of me. She wants to make me feel small so that she can feel bigger.
“I dunno, Nat.” I stop with one foot on the base of the short stairs, turning to face her. “Maybe I’ll get a job banging your mom.”
It’s a stupid fucking joke. Neither of us know who our moms even are, which is how we both ended up in the foster system in the first place. But she annoys me enough that I don’t even care about the quality of my comeback. I just want to get her out of my face so that I can go inside and relax.
Her lip curls in annoyance and disgust as she sucks in a scandalized breath. I turn to head up the stairs, but as I lift my back foot, Natalie reaches out with hers and hooks my ankle, throwing me off balance.
My single hand is already full, and I can’t catch myself on my amputated one, so I go down awkwardly on the stairs, the blazer slipping off my arm as I let out a pained grunt.
The fall didn’t even hurt that bad, but my heart beats harder anyway, anger making my cheeks grow hot. I look back over my shoulder to see Natalie grinning down at me, a cruel glint in her green eyes.
“Ouch. Are you okay, Ayla?” I could almost believe the false concern in her voice if she hadn’t been the one to trip me. “These stairs can be really dangerous. Especially for the disabled.”
All right. That’s e-fucking-nough.
I press away from the stairs, regaining my balance on the cement walkway as my grip tightens on the smooth forearm of my prosthesis. When Natalie steps forward to walk around me, I pivot in place, swinging the silicone arm up in a wide arc. It smacks against the left side of her face—hard—and she stumbles sideways, letting out a yelp of pain and shock.
By the time she regains her equilibrium and turns back to me, I’m standing straight and tall, my prosthesis dangling harmlessly from my loose grip.
There’s a bright red mark across her cheek, and I smile calmly at her as she stares at me with wrath in her eyes.
“That’s the thing about the disabled,” I drawl. “Sometimes you gotta watch the fake hand, not the real one.”
“You—you—” She sputters, obviously more picky about her comebacks than I am, since she doesn’t seem to be able to come up with an appropriate word to call me.
She finally gives up, pressing her lips together in a straight line and glaring at me before turning and stomping up the stairs and into the building. I watch the door slam shut behind her, a small, satisfied smile creeping across my lips.
Yeah, that might’ve been a little petty. But it was satisfying as fuck. Natalie has hated me ever since we were fourteen, when I got chosen by the foster parents she’d been hoping would pick her. They were rich and well-connected. Even back then, she was obsessed with getting powerful people on her side, with moving up in the world any way she could.
Joke’s on you, Nat. Those were the worst fucking years of my life.
She’ll never know the bullet she dodged. And she’ll always resent me for something I wish had never happened to me.
Shoving away the memories, I gather my shit and trudge up the short set of stairs after her. On the landing at the front entrance of the building, I set my stuff down to dig in my back pocket for my keys. But as my hand closes around the cool metal, my gaze flicks up—and I freeze.
A man is standing across the street, leaning casually against a car with one foot braced against the tire. He’s not moving. His face is impassive.
But he’s staring right at me.
Chapter 3
My stomach dips.
It’s not the man with the mis-matched eyes. I can tell that much even from this distance. This man’s hair is darker and cut shorter, his frame a little more broad. It’s not the same man.
It’s one of his friends.
The guy must’ve noticed me staring at him, since I’m not being subtle about it at all, but he doesn’t react in any way. He doesn’t turn his gaze away as if chagrined at being caught. Nor does he push away from the car to walk toward me.
He just… waits.
And watches.
His focus on me is so intense that I feel it like a brand on my skin, and fear churns inside me. But instead of making me shrink away or dart inside the building and hide, it makes me puff up.
I spent a large part of my life thinking it was better to stay off the radar, to make myself seem as unimportant and inconspicuous as possible as a way of avoiding unwanted trouble. But experience has taught me that strategy doesn’t always work, and that sometimes it can even have the opposite effect. It can make predators think you’re weak.
My jacket slips from my arm again, and the prosthesis lands on top of it with a light thunk. My pulse races as I walk quickly back down the steps and march across the road, barely looking to make sure no cars are coming. The stranger watches me approach, the same indiscernible expression remaining on his face—as if he’s a statue come to life, solid stone that only looks like warm flesh.
When I’m several feet away from him, I raise my voice, still moving quickly across the road. “What the hell are you doing here? What do you want?”
He doesn’t answer until I get closer, and even then, his only reply is a silent shrug of his shoulders.
“I’m serious.” My voice is hard. I feel a little like a chihuahua yapping at a bigger dog, and I work hard to keep my voice level and strong as I speak. I may be afraid, but it’ll be worse for me if he knows that. “What the fuck are you doing here? Were you in that alley the other night? Did that man die? The one you attacked?”
“You mean, the one who attacked you?” The man tosses my words back at me, and I hesitate for a moment. His voice is deep and gruff, infused with a gravel that makes him sound older than he probably is—early twenties, I’m guessing.
“Is he dead?” I ask, my voice catching a little on the last word. He was so still when they finally dragged him away.
“No.”
His voice is clipped and curt, and the single-word answer doesn’t reassure me at all.
The guy must read the expression on my face, because his eyes narrow a little, anger sparking in their hazel depths. “He’s not. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to though. I don’t give a fuck.”
That, I definitely believe. This man seems almost angry at me, as if I’ve done something to offend him somehow, even though I’ve never met him before in my life.
He’s well-dressed in stylish slacks and a jacket over a crisp white shirt. Tattoos peek out from the top of his collar and the ends of his sleeves, swirling multi-colored ink that draws my gaze. It seems so incongruous with the rest of his appearance, a rough edge around a manicured package.
“What are you doing here?” I ask again, standing a little taller.
His jaw muscles ripple slightly as if he’s clenching his teeth together. His jacket stretches over his broad shoulders when he crosses his arms. “Marcus can’t watch out for you all the time. So we pick up the slack when he can’t.”
My head jerks back. I blink up at him, trying to absorb the meaning of his words. Marcus can’t watch out for you all the time.
So the man with the strangely beautiful eyes has been watching me. Following me. And not only that, but he’s recruited other people to help him. This guy said “we.” How many people does that mean? What do they want with me?
“Oh yeah?” I lift my chin. “And what’s your name?”
I try to inject a sense of threat into my voice as if I’m gathering information on him to report him to the police. Whatever the hell has these guys following me around, maybe I can scare them out of it.
But the burly man with the short-cropped hair doesn’t even blink. Doesn’t eve
n hesitate. “Ryland Bennett.”
His hard features are still radiating anger. I swear I can feel it in every line of his tense muscles, and it makes my heart beat harder, fear and an answering anger rising up inside me. He’s acting like I did something to him, like we’ve got a years-old grudge between us that I never knew about. But I don’t know this man. What could he possibly hate me for?
“Were you there that night?” I ask suddenly. “Outside Club 47?”
I know he was. I’d bet every last penny in my pitiful savings account that he was. But I want to hear him confirm it. I want to prove to myself that I’m not crazy—that I should’ve been more paranoid over the past several days, not less.
The man named Ryland stiffens. His hazel eyes go even colder, which I wouldn’t have thought was possible. He uncrosses his arms, one hand actually clenching into a fist, and I draw back as a sudden memory of the meth-head’s fate pops into my head.
Ryland notices my reaction. His lips curl back in something like annoyance or frustration, and he deliberately shakes his hand out, letting the fingers loosen. “I’m not gonna fucking hurt you.”
“Then what do you want?”
His eyes glitter. “From you? Nothing.”
“So why are you here?”
“I told you.”
“Because that guy Marcus told you to?”
One of his muscled shoulders lifts in a half-shrug, and he doesn’t look away from my eyes.
Worry and confusion spin through my head as I gaze back at him, my head tilted up to meet his stare. He’s beautiful. His features are broad and heavy, but perfectly proportioned so that they complement each other well. There’s a small scar above his left eyebrow, a little lighter than the rest of his olive skin. If he smiled, I have a feeling it would be devastating—but I also can’t quite imagine him smiling. The firm set of his mouth suggests that it doesn’t happen often.
“Were you following me the other night?” I press. “Is that how you were in the right place at exactly the right time?”
