Page 25 of The Auction
“Could you put on a shirt?” I said, as soon as I stepped into the kitchen.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need to see all that,” I made a motion with my hand in the direction of his hairless chest with wide aureoles surrounding his hard nipples. “Before I’ve had my coffee.”
“We’re married. You’re going to have to get used to seeing me naked eventually.”
I pulled my favorite mug down from the cabinet and filled it with coffee. Creed liked it strong, which was fine with me because I added all the milk and sugar I could to it.
“Not if you kill me in your sleep first,” I said as I sat across from him, one leg bent with my heel on the edge of the chair.
No point in beating around the bush.
“In my defense. I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was trying to protect you.”
That was true. But it didn’t make me feel any safer. What if he decided I was thetheycoming to take what was his?
“What are we going to do?” I asked him, and thought it was weird to hear the wordwecome out of my mouth. We weren’t awe. We were a me and him and one of us wanted out of this situation before she ended up dead. “My offer still stands. You give me the fifty thousand and let me walk.”
He looked at me then.
I was still wearing the same oversized shirt from last night. Although I’d put on a bra because I’d caught him looking at my breasts on more than one occasion and didn’t need to provide any more titillation (pun intended), and a pair of plaid flannel pajama bottoms. My hair was pulled up into a messy top bun and, obviously, I wore no makeup. I didn’t even own any. Just a lip balm that had some pink in it.
I had to look incredibly young to him, because right now he seemed at least ten years older than I knew him to be.
“I thought we’d moved beyond that,” he said, like I’d disappointed him.
“I’m never going to want to be in this marriage,” I told him. As honestly as I knew how. “So that’s the baseline. Add to that, the man I’m sharing space with is armed and has sleepwalking nightmares where he thinks someone is out to kill him.”
“When you say it that way, it sounds bad,” he said dryly.
“Let me go.”
But he was shaking his head. “No, I do that and you’ll regret it. Losing the house, the farm. You think walking away from everything you’ve ever known is going to be easy? It’s not.”
“I would rather try than get shot.”
He grimaced then. “I’m not going to shoot you. When I pull the trigger I know what I’m fucking shooting at. Awakeor asleep. You weren’t in any danger last night. I just scared you.”
“Understatement,” I said, then sipped my coffee.
He folded his arms over his chest and I watched his pec muscles bulge as he sat up. There was a small charm that dangled from the chain around his neck. I don’t know why, but I assumed it would be his military tags. It wasn’t. Definitely some kind of symbol.
“I’ll buy a safe,” he said, breaking my concentration on his chest. “Keep the gun locked in there. If it happens again, I’ll have to get through my locked door and through the safe. I always wake up.”
“Always,” I said. “How many times has this happened?”
“Since being here?” he asked, then shrugged. “Last night was only the second time. I don’t do well waking up in strange places. You usually wake me up and tell me to go to bed if I fall asleep on the couch.”
“Oh no, we are not putting this on me.”
He instantly backed down. “I don’t want last night to ruin the progress we were making.”
“What fucking progress?” I asked, astonished by where his head was. “Dude, newsflash. Just because I’m not trying to light your insides on fire on the daily, doesn’t mean I’m not still plotting my way out. To be clear. This is a jail. I am a prisoner. And I will escape.”
He smiled then. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
