Page 39 of Not Your Hero

“I’ve reinforced the windows, doors, locks. Anything you can think of has been reinforced,” he assures me as he sits in the chair, staring at me. The same way he’s been staring at me for hours. This is the first time he’s spoken to me in those hours.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“So you know you can’t escape.”

“And if I try?” I ask.

“You won’t succeed, and I’ll be forced to chain you to the bed again,” he responds calmly.

“So I’m your prisoner?” I sneer at him. A dark smirk crosses his face as he nods his head.

“Exactly like that.”

“What do you plan on doing with me?”

“That’s a loaded question, Em. A part of me wants to make you fall in love with me.”

“And the other part?”

“I don’t want you to see that part,” he says.

“You think I could love you? After what you’ve done to me?”

“What exactly have I done to you, Em? I saved you.”

“So you’re my hero now?” I snap at him. He shakes his head.

“I’m not your hero.”

“Then what are you?”

“I’m the man who is so fucked up by his past he can never see a future, and yet, when he saw you, that’s all he wanted. He wants a future, and he wants it with you.”

“But you drugged me instead of getting to know me,” I remind him. He doesn’t make any sense. If he wanted to get to know me he could have just spoken to me like any other man.

“I drugged you for the sex,” he tells me.

“Then how is that getting to know me?”

“It isn’t. It’s getting a chance to be with you without you seeing the real me.”

“You keep saying that, but you don’t elaborate. Who is the real you, Gannix?” His eyes flash when I say his name for the first time. His hands tighten around the comforter on his bed until his knuckles turn white. Do I really have this effect on him? How is that possible?

“And for now, I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t, Emerson!” He snaps, shoving to his feet and walking across the room and back to the chair. He sits down and watches me but doesn’t say anything, and I can’t seem to think of anything else to ask him. I want to know what’s so wrong with him. I want to know why he thinks the way he does or why he feels that way and what those women did to him who hurt him so badly. Because he’s hurt, wounded, and I can see that. Someone has hurt him badly.

“What do you do? Can you tell me that?”

“I have companies, security companies. I also own nightclubs,” he tells me.

“Charlie’s,” I whisper. He nods his head, and it all makes sense. That’s how he drugged me. He owns the fucking club. He could have done anything he wanted to me.

“You’re understanding,” he adds.

“Yeah. I am. But I don’t understand why. Why me?”

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