Page 50 of Bully

He shook his head and shrugged slightly, “Because I want you to.”

“You’ll tell me what happened?” I reiterated, hoping he’d play nicely.

“Yes.” He nodded, but held his finger up a second later. “But I don’t want you to think that it’s going to reveal some big super-secret answer to the inner workings of my brain if I do. Because it won’t. Hell, you’ll probably just be more confused.”

Taking a step back into the bathroom, I pulled the dress up over my hips and then shimmied it up off over my head. “I’ll take my chances.”

Nudity had never made me feel vulnerable before, or at least not in my adult life. It was why I was so damn good at my job.

But stripping myself bare, for Tamen, even though he had already seen most of me at one time or another, felt powerful. It didn’t make me feel powerful like being nude in front of a man usually did. But it felt like the act was powerful.

Raw.

Real.

Kicking my panties to the side, I walked into the shower until we were toe to toe, and his blue eyes traveled back up my bare skin to my face as he spoke. “Thank you.”

“For what?” I whispered, caught up in the moment.

“For staying.” He tilted his head to the side as he gently slid his fingers through mine, pulling me flush to the front of his body. “For helping me.”

“Tell me the truth now.” I said, and he smirked as he backed us up into the spray of the shower more fully. He rinsed the blood from his face as I took the cloth off the rack and poured a gallon of soap onto it. It would take more than that to clean his skin of the mess, but it was a good start.

“Well, you see what happened was,” He started, pausing to watch me as I started rubbing the cloth across his chest and stomach. “There was this girl, in a glory hole—”

Chapter 21 – Tamen

DidIblamethebullet hole in my back on Sloane? Kind of.

Was she currently wearing one of my shirts and nothing else, sitting on the kitchen island ordering room service? Also, yes.

I’d call that a win.

And a loss, because it was torture having her nearby. The best kind of torture.

She swung her legs back and forth while curling the phone cord around her finger absently as she ordered almost every plate on the menu. She insisted I needed to eat red meat to help build back the blood lost last night, and while she wasn’t wrong, I didn’t think one ribeye was going to make a big enough difference to go through the trouble.

But I didn’t tell her that; having her taking care of me was reason enough to go through with it. And I was so bloody tired. It was only two in the afternoon, and I was desperate to crawl into bed and sleep until the next sunrise. That’s what my body needed to recoup.

Not steak.

As she hung up the phone, she stayed on the counter, staring at me silently. Any other day, the silence would have led me to make some snarky comment or insult. Today, though, I simply didn’t have the energy.

So, we just sat in silence, staring.

Her face was washed free of any product, her hair pinned up in a simple twist and the white button up she wore added to the fresh and simple look. It was odd to see her sobare, it made her look vulnerable. Untouched by life.

“Are you in danger?” She asked after a while, breaking through my silent obsessing over the way she looked in my clothes, in my space. “Is something like what happened to you last night going to happen to you again?”

In the shower earlier, I had given her a very watered-down explanation of what had happened, leaving me with a bullet hole on the floor. I told her I had traded a job for the privilege of keeping her to myself at the private event. And that it went sideways.

“I don’t make it a habit of allowing bullets to rip through my body, if that’s what you’re asking.” I replied, in avoidance.

“Do you take jobs like that often?”

“I used to.” I admitted. “It used to be my whole way of life. Now it’s more of a recreational sport. A stress reliever.”

“Killing people.” She stated, not quite asking, though I never spoke of life and death. “You kill people, don’t you, Tamen?”

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