Page 43 of Homebound
“What do you want from me?” he asked quietly.
She stilled. “From you? Nothing.”
“Then why do you care if I live?”
Gemma slowly turned and gazed into his reflective eyes.
“I don’t know,” she told him the truth, implicitly admitting that she did care.
Nursing this odd creature who was as prickly as a cactus had become her mission in life. But she wasn’t prepared to let him know how special she found him to be, how important.
“It matters,” she said simply. “You matter. I couldn’t see you suffer alone.”
“I wasn’t suffering.”
Okay, that statement was arguable. “I thought you might be. I wanted to make a difference for you.”
“You don’t know me.”
She straightened her spine. “I take it you don’t approve of people who care.”
“There’s always a reason. What is yours? Why do you put yourself at risk?”
“I’m not risking anything.” Except for her stupid heart.
They faced off. A frisson of sensation made her skin tight. Was it fear? Or something else?
His huge eyes didn’t seem so vacant when he trained them on her.
“You come into my cell,” he pointed out.
“I hate to be the one to tell you, but it’s hardly unusual. To work here, I have to go into the cells. I deal with inmates every day, even with dangerous ones like Perali who always look to snag you in some way. And you aren’t high risk at the moment, if you know what I mean.”
“You think Perali are dangerous because one scared you last night.”
“Scared? Yes, I was scared.” His blatant dismissal of her last night’s ordeal rankled. “What do you think he would’ve done if he caught me?”
He made a little motion with his head. “He wanted to kill you, for sure. Maybe rape you, I don’t know. But a single Perali is easy to handle.”
Gemma peered at Simon. Did he even realize who he was talking to?
“And how do I ‘handle’ a grown Perali? With what? My mad jiu-jitsu skillz? Oh, wait. Don’t have any. Have a crooked foot though. Maybe I could stick it in his butt and make it hurt that way.”
“You have a weapon,” he countered.
“I check it out at the door.”
That gave him pause. “Who takes you home at night?”
Was he serious? “My friend the North Wind.”
“You are funny.”
“Yeah, I’m a clown.”
He didn’t reply. Then his shoulders slumped as if the discussion exhausted him.
“You have no defenses,” he said.
