Page 6 of In Death's Hands
Twice? Ah, right. He pushed me away from the moving car and took care of me when I hurt my head. Good graces, I must have fainted in his arms. Ridiculous. But there’s no way this big-ass alpha male is going to tell me what to do with myself. I don’t bother answering him, I simply throw him a smile that usually drives people up the wall and sidestep him to walk away from this crazy day. Night. Whatever.
At least that’s what I intend. I only make it a step before his arm wraps around my middle, stopping me from an unpleasant encounter with his hardwood flooring.
I suck in a breath, inhaling a clean, sharp smell that reminds me of a crisp winter night and cedar embers. I’m not a petite woman, but he towers over me. My eyes travel up and up until they meet his piercing dark ones.
“If you refuse to take care of yourself, I will have to do it for you.”
His hold like velvet steel around me, he takes me back to bed. I don’t have the energy to ask myself why I don’t fight him.
I end up taking the damn pill and lying back down in the soft, soft bed. I argue with myself and decide to make smarter decisions, but only after being more rested. He saved me, after all, and apart from bringing me to his place and forcing me to rest, Nathan hasn’t hurt me. So I’ll reserve judgement on him being a potential women-kidnapping psycho until I know more.
My eyes close of their own accord, and I wake up to light glaring in my face once more. Only this time the light is coming from the sun, rather than the bedside lamp. Figures. The one time I’d like to sleep in, London decides to have one of its elusive sunny days.
I feel better. Now that my brain doesn’t feel so foggy, however, it decides to fully freak out about my current situation. I take in my surroundings, noticing the same things I did earlier. At least I wasn’t so out of it to hallucinate everything, though I wince as I replay my pathetic attempt to walk away. I blame that on the concussion.
Fuck. That’s what he said, isn’t it? I have a mild concussion.
From previous experience, I know I need to drink lots of water, eat healthily for a while and forego any kind of hard training. Shit.
That also explains the new pill I’m now convinced is ibuprofen and the full glass of water next to the lamp.
He really is trying to take care of me. I frown, a weird feeling spreading inside me. I don’t know how to react to that.
I have to get out of here. The guy probably wants his bed back.
The bedroom door is slightly ajar in front of me, beckoning, but my attention quickly turns to the closed one to my left. I may be a coward, but after making such a fuss last night when the man has been nothing butdecent, I choose the bathroom first.
The sliding door is silent as I open it, and my breath catches at what it unveils. I could live in this bathroom. The walls and floor are a dark material I don’t know. All except the left side of the room, which is entirely made of glass behind the shower overlooking the bustling city. Horror spreads when I think of people seeing everything happening inside that shower, but reason is quick to follow. I’m sure the window is one-sided. Or Nathan is a lot kinkier than I thought. Not that I’ve thought about him and kinks. Not at all.
The furniture is half made of the same dark material and half dark wood. Everything is sleek and hard angles, but strangely warm.
My gaze stops on the big mirror and a groan escapes my lips. I look like shit. No, really. I’m paler than ever, my long white hair looks like a bird has made its nest in it, and under my pale blue eyes are bags darker than a black hole.
I used to have brown hair—I think. I don’t have any pictures frombefore, but I’m pretty sure I remember playing with it in the back of that car and wrapping the brown strands around my finger so tight it would turn the tip white. At least, that’s if you trust my childhood memories, which, I quickly learned, no one does. In any case, my hair is now as white as snow. Never mind that I’m only twenty-four. I tell people I bleach it to make things easier when, in truth, I’d love to look a little more alive than I do, but the dyes I use never last more than a week. My pale eyes don’t help with the overall look, honestly. At least I’m pretty sure those didn’t change because ofhim.After all, who ever heard of eyes changing colour?
I try to smooth my hair down now but curse when my hand touches a bump on the back of my head, awakening a sharp pain that has my heart going wild.
He clearly wasn’t lying about that concussion. Deciding there’s nothing I can do about that right now, I go back to my snooping. The big walk-in shower has many heads that must send people to heaven and a little stone bench on one side that I hadn’t noticed at first. I’m not sure why one would need such a thing. Right outside the shower there’s a wooden ladder that doubles as a towel rack and next to it a stool, on top of which are a thick, clean towel and clothes.
Are they for me? I check them further and discover a big white shirt and grey sweatpants. I feel uncertain for a second butrealise that I prefer stealing clothes that may not have been put out for me to going out there with dirty, rumpled clothes and the worst case of bad hair day I’ve seen in a while. Anticipation runs through me as I eye the many shower heads longingly. I just have to figure out how they work.
Once my old clothes are in a tidy pile on the floor, I enter the shower as I would a mysterious, heavenly lagoon in which a big-ass water monster could come at me at any second. I try not to look at the streets below; I’m almost certain no one can see me, but it’s still rather unnerving. One water jet nearly takes my eye out before I manage to have a somewhat normal shower. The no-nonsense shampoo I find in an alcove stings like a bitch against my wound, but I power through, knowing there’s no better feeling than a clean head.
I take my time, enjoying the jets against my back, and then the feeling of the fluffy towel wrapped around me. I even enjoy the soft fabric of the clothes I put on. I refuse to think of them as Nathan’s, it’s too weird. But they’re clearly of a higher standard than the ones I buy in charity shops.
I find a hairdryer under the sink, the only item in the drawer. I feel like I’m in a hotel. A fancy one, mind you, but a hotel nonetheless. It’s all too neat, too clean, without any personal belongings. Maybe he just moved here, or it’s a secondary house for when he’s in town for business. That would make sense; he looks like he could be a fancy lawyer or some kind of financial businessman with a job title no one ever understands.
After making the bed, there is literally nothing else for me to stall with. Taking a steadying breath, I open the bedroom door fully and enter the rest of the flat.
I stop short, unable to take it all in.
It’shuge. The bay of windows that was in the bedroom keeps going, and the entire wall of the living room shows off the roofs of London. There’s no one above us.
In the centre of the room, an enormous L-shaped couch faces a beautiful fireplace with a TV hanging on the wall above. For some reason that shocks me more than the rest. I blame the concussion. In all fairness, a TV above flames doesn’t seem like the smartest idea, but what do I know?
In the far back I notice two closed doors, and on my left is the open kitchen, the space separated only by a breakfast counter and high stools.
Like the rest of the flat, the kitchen seems brand new, like no one’s ever cooked in it. Further to my left is what looks like the front door.
