Page 11 of Bad Guys Need Love Too

Instead of answering, he walked over to the floor-to-ceiling bookcase beside the fireplace. It held an eclectic collection of books. Everything from Dr. Suess to Tolstoy was there. There were even a handful of romance novels. Interesting.

But his book collection was a lot less interesting than what happened next.

Ren tipped a copy ofOh, The Places You’ll Gotoward him off the shelf, and like magic, the entire bookcase popped open, revealing a set of steps.

Steps that went down, not up.

He held a hand out to her. “Take my hand. There’s no light until we hit the bottom of the steps.”

Her heart started beating double time. She could barely take a breath as fear choked off her air supply. She shook her head violently. No way in hell was she going to let herself be dragged into a murder basement. “I’m not going down there.”

Ren’s brow furrowed, but realization seemed to dawn when he took in her near-hysterical state. He held his hands up in supplication. “I swear, there’s nothing down there that can hurt you.”

She let out a hysterical snort.

She saw it on his face the second he realized thathewas the thing in the basement that could hurt her. “OK, fine, that’s not true,” he admitted. “But there’s nothing down there thatwillhurt you. Would you feel better if you had a weapon?”

“Duh!”

He looked so pleased to offer her comfort that she was instantly thrown off her game. She wondered if he was as good at throwing other people off their game as he was at throwingheroff her game. Somehow, she doubted it.

But she didn’t have time to ponder that. She was too distracted by the giant stone he’d just removed from the hearth. Behind that stone, was a lever. And when he pulled the lever, the entire façade of the fireplace shifted to reveal a mini arsenal. Weaponry of all kinds was hanging neatly on the kind of pegboard normal people used in their garages for tools.

He yanked a wicked-looking hunting knife off the board and handed it to her. “That’s a good one,” he said when she hesitantly took it. “Nice balance. But if you’re going to use it, stab in and up—never down. You have a much better chance of disabling someone before they can overpower you that way.”

Lark frowned at him. “I’m guessing you could just take this from me whenever you want. Right?”

His expression was so crestfallen she almost felt bad for questioning him. He looked like he’d offered her a bouquet of roses and she’d turned her nose up at them and told him she was allergic. But he recovered quickly, turning back to his hidden arsenal. “Here’s some Mace,” he said, thrusting the canister into her other hand. “Just flip the top and spray. But make sure you’re downwind, or else it’ll hit you. And it’d be nearly impossible for me to take that from you before you were able to spray me in the face.”

This was, without a doubt, the strangest conversation she’d ever been a part of. “What about a gun?”

She expected an immediate no. Instead, his face lit up like they’d just found a common interest. “I have a really nice Smith & Wesson M&P 380 here. 9mm. Hardly any recoil.”

She had no idea how to use a gun. But he didn’t need to know that. So, she slid the knife under the back waistband of her jeans, tucked the canister of Mace under her armpit, and took the “really nice” gun from him.

“You feel better now?” he asked.

“I…don’t know.”

He scratched his head as he glanced back at his arsenal, then back at her. “What if my hands were cuffed? Would that help?”

Ren Solace was either the worst kidnapper in the world, or he actually was sincere in his vow tonothurt her. She looked him up and down, taking his measure. He certainly didn’t look like a guy who was bad at anything, other than communicating clearly. “Yeah, that’d help.”

He didn’t hesitate to grab a set of metal cuffs from the weapons hide-y hole and lock one of them around his thick wrist.Shedidn’t hesitate to wrap it around his other wrist and lock them together. It took an inordinate amount of control to ignore how sexy he looked handcuffed for her pleasure. Er, comfort. For hercomfort.

Ren held up his cuffed hands. “Do you feel more comfortable now?”

Weirdly enough, she did. Surely, if he had any intention of hurting her, he wouldn’t hand her so many weapons and cuff his own hands…right? And he had, after all, saved her life back at the flower shop.

Lark sighed. “I do. Lead me to your murder basement, I guess.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up as he replaced the stone, covering up his hidden treasure trove of weaponry. “Ipromiseyou it’s not a murder basement. I’ll go down the stairs first. Just hang onto the back of my shirt so you don’t fall.”

The heat of his skin under her fingers wasn’t atallpleasant as she followed him down the steps. And shedefinitelywasn’t enjoying the flex of his back muscles. Because those would be weird things for her to think about in this scenario.

That was her story, and she was damn well sticking to it.

CHAPTER 7

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