because I’m not a mess doesn’t mean I’m okay.” Which was true. “Only being with you has stopped the whole thing from sinking in and ripping at my insides.” Which was also true.
His eyes widened that fraction that told her something major was going on inside him. This was the moment she had to seize, when he was teetering on the verge of relenting, before he talked himself out of softening.
She did. “Let me stay with you. Please, Rashid.”
Her insides were quivering for his verdict when he suddenly let out a long breath.
Before she could gauge if that was exasperation or capitulation, he turned and walked away.
As she struggled with worry, he threw her a cool glance over his shoulder. “One thing for sure, princess. Your mother and aunt were clueless about you. You could influence the dead.”
She hurried after him, needing confirmation. “And since you’re very much alive, this means I can stay?”
“At your peril, princess.”
Talk about false advertisement.
Despite Rashid’s thrilling warning about her spending the night, nothing had happened.
In fact, what she’d feared most had occurred. He’d treated her like an inapproachable charge in his custody.
This gigantic residence turned out to have separate areas, even though none had any doors since the place was made for one person’s privacy. One area was in the mezzanine, behind a partitioning wall, which was used as his bedroom suite. This was the space he’d given her for the night.
The huge room was even sparser than the rest of the place, with only a skylight, a built-in wardrobe and a nine-by-nine-foot mattress spread in dark sheets on the floor. But to her delight, the connecting bathroom was decadent. It was good to know that although his living and sleeping quarters were a throwback to his life as a survivalist, where hygiene was involved, Rashid had succumbed to state-of-the-art luxury.
He’d offered her some of his clean clothes to wear. But since he had nothing to replace her stilettos, he’d encouraged her to go barefoot, assuring her he kept the floors spotless. Then, without so much as a good-night, he’d left her.
And here she was, sitting on his “bed,” flooded to the knee in his sweatshirt and unable to sleep.
Not because he’d let her stay the night with him, but not really with him at all. But because now that she’d had time to think, she realized the real reason behind her earlier desperation to stay. She’d sensed something was very wrong. With him.
She had felt it, heard it and seen it while he’d been ripping her attackers apart. That volcanic rage that had incinerated his reason. Far beyond anything an ordinary man would feel about scum who preyed on a helpless female. Something uncontrollable, consuming. Damaging. Terrible.
The effort she’d felt him exert to bring his violence under control, the volatility she’d felt him struggle with so he could appear stable under her scrutiny, had singed her with its intensity. This hadn’t been a new reaction ignited by tonight’s events. This was old. And immense. She could not begin to imagine what had spawned it. But she knew whatever it was continued to prey on him. That demon she’d felt possessing him, body and mind, was just beneath the surface.
And even before she’d analyzed all that consciously, she hadn’t been able to let that demon consume the man she loved any further, not when it had manifested in full force this time on her account.
Oh, yes. Love. There was no use calling what she felt for him anything else.
So what if he was no longer the same man she’d had a crush on all her life? He was now far more than anything she’d ever imagined. Darker, larger-than-life, more complex and intriguing than anyone she’d ever met. Even under normal circumstances, she would have been disturbed at the prospect of allowing herself any emotional involvement with this highly upgraded Rashid. But she saw no reason for caution or trepidation now when she never had before. She wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of emotions that would no doubt remain unrequited. Rashid was driven, self-contained and off-limits. He had no place in his life for a woman or in his heart for love.
But it didn’t matter. It brought her peace to accept her emotions, even revel in them. To know the one man she could love existed, and why exactly she loved him, and would never be with another.
It wasn’t as pathetic or melodramatic as it sounded. She’d even call it wise, since that was learning from others’ experiences and mistakes. She’d seen too many marriages that had been made without love and how disastrously they’d ended, or worse, continued. She also had the example of those marriages that had flourished because they’d been based on the kind of love that came once in a lifetime, and thrived against all odds. That kind of love she’d feel only for Rashid. It was unwise, even self-destructive, settling for less. But what were the odds he’d reciprocate her emotions? Negligible, really.
He might have let her “influence” him tonight, but only as an extension of his chivalry. Maybe the old times he’d discounted did count for a man afflicted by a gargantuan sense of honor. After all, he’d once gone to unimaginable lengths to pay the debts of a man who’d abused him, to repay that man for the shelter he’d given him when the already motherless Rashid had become a complete orphan.
Suddenly, that familiar chill moved through her.
She now knew the feeling was a Rashid proximity alert. Could he be approaching? If he was, would it be because he…?
She wished. He must be coming to check up on her after she’d misled him about the nature of her turmoil. But what if…
Reality check, moron. He probably just wanted something from the bedroom she occupied.
Breath bated, she expected him to walk in any moment.
He didn’t. Had she imagined it?
No. Something had intensified her awareness of him. This might mean… Something was wrong!
Who knew where that scumbag’s switchblade had been? That wound Rashid had dismissed might be starting to fester. He’d probably refused antibiotics like he had analgesics.
She shot to her feet. At the mezzanine’s railing, her streak came to a stumbling halt as if she’d slammed into an invisible force field. From the far end of the hangar-sized space, something reverberated in her ears, her bones. It felt and sounded like the erratic, furious pounding of a distant, gigantic heart.
She hadn’t heard the sound in the sequestered bedroom area. But it must have been what had sent anxiety skewering through her.
She ran down the stairs, almost slipping on the slick stone. Once her feet touched rougher floor, her dash resumed. The force of the sounds ratcheted up with every step as she approached a wall partition at the far end of the loft. Beyond it, the pounding felt as if it would bruise her insides.
Her own heart thundering in response, she walked around the wall. And she saw the sound’s origin. Rashid.
Stripped
