Page 8 of Assassin's Mark
Chapter Five
The sheets were soft, a second skin wrapping around my body. I’d expected arms holding me when I woke, but I must’ve slept longer than I meant to. Levi had probably gone to shower or something.
Opening my eyes confirmed that the sun sat higher in the sky than I’d anticipated, just peeking over the lip of the high windows I faced. Unfamiliar windows, about twelve feet up, sanscurtains. The sunlight spilled in unfettered, gracing smooth walls painted a cool gray, not the generic tan of the hotel room last night.
Because this wasn’t the hotel room from last night.
What the—
I shot up a little too fast. The room, right or not, spun sickeningly around me, and I clenched my hands in the sheets, trying to anchor myself to something solid. A minute, maybe two passed beforeI could open my eyes and not feel like I would throw up, and a thousand questions whirled in my brain in that time. First and foremost, why did I feel like this?
Every story I’d ever heard through high school and college about girls partying and being drugged ran through my head, and my heartbeat surged to a gallop. No, I didn’t feel right, but surely Levi…he wouldn’t. He’d been too good to melast night, even tender afterward. I remembered that; I remembered everything. I wouldn’t have those memories if I’d been drugged, would I?
As if I needed more questions. This room definitely wasn’t the hotel—it was bare of anything but a bed, a chest of drawers in one corner, and two doors in the wall opposite. No lamps, no nightstand, no pictures, nothing. Where the hell was I?
And where wasLevi?
Gingerly placing my feet on the floor, I discovered that I could, in fact, stand, if shakily. I was dressed in the clothes I’d worn last night, but I’d been naked when I fell asleep. Had Levi dressed me? How had I slept through that? The last thing I remembered was drinking the water he’d given me, then drifting off wrapped in his arms—at the hotel, not here, wherever “here” was. The metallictaste in my mouth wasn’t morning-after breath; it was fear, and before it got the better of me, I needed answers.
The first door I opened was a bathroom, pristine white, the shower and toilet only accompanied by toilet paper, a packaged toothbrush, and a tube of toothpaste. While I was there, I made use of all three. My body ached in places I didn’t want to acknowledge, not now, not with a lotof crazy things running through my head. I tried to blank it all out, but one look in the mirror made that impossible. The fact that I’d had sex last night stared back at me—wild hair, swollen lips, stubble burn around my mouth and on my neck. I didn’t want to think what my breasts must look like, the aching spots on my hips where Levi’s fingers had dug in as he held me and—
No, don’t think aboutthat now. There has to be an explanation. After that, then you can think about sex.
Maybe.
I ran my fingers through my dark auburn hair, taming it as best I could, made sure my clothes were on straight, then returned to the bedroom. My fingers shook as I reached for the doorknob, but I forced them to function anyway. To grasp, twist, pull.
And look, damn it! You can’t meet this head-on if youreyes are closed.
“I know very well where I’m at, Eli. I don’t need you to tell me.”
The voice checked my step into the room. Levi’s voice, but…not. Last night it had been a low, sexy rumble. Now? The words were all steel and ice. And who was Eli?
I forced my legs to move. My bare feet chilled, the concrete cold beneath them. The room looked like a warehouse, or what used to be one—the insidehad been finished, at least until about twelve feet up, just as it had in the bedroom. Clean gray walls. Long rows of windows up too high to see anything but the sky. A metal roof towered above me, giving a sense of vast openness that made me want to wrap my arms around myself and squeeze down tight. Instead I focused on Levi’s back where he sat at a desk halfway across the space. The sight of hisbare skin drew me forward.
“You’ve always been a bastard, Levi.” The voice sounded small, tinny—was mystery man Eli on speakerphone? “Not this time. Remi needs you, so get your ass down to the hospital. I can’t leave him long enough to force you.”
“Remi doesn’t need me; he needs you.”
“Levi, he could’ve died—”
“I know that!”
The barked words jerked me to a stop nearly halfway to the desk.A squeak escaped. Levi swung around, his gaze narrowing on me. The lack of emotion there chilled more than my feet; it froze my heart. My foot slid back without conscious thought, driven by a sudden instinctive need to flee.
Levi stood. My mouth went desert dry.
“Look, you don’t have to worry, little brother,” Levi said, his tone absent, attention never wavering from me. “You take care of Remiyour way. Rest assured I’m taking care of him mine.”
A long pause. My anxious breath roared in and out, a white-water rush in my ears.
“What have you done?” Eli finally asked. Levi’s brother, he’d said. Somehow I couldn’t imagine the man standing in front of me, watching me like a panther stalking its prey, having a brother. The Levi from last night, yes, but…
But the Levi from last night haddisappeared, obviously. Or had he? Was I misreading that expression? Surely this was all a misunderstanding. Maybe he was simply upset about whatever had happened to this Remi. Hadn’t Eli mentioned a hospital?
I needed to know. “Levi?”
My voice came out as hesitant as my steps forward, too shaky in the massive space, but it was the best I could manage. Loud enough for Eli to hear it over thespeaker, though.
