Page 25 of After The Storm

She tried to move him, grunting as she pushed against his body, but he simply shook his head. He had no intention of letting her leave to go anywhere.

Frustrated, she pushed on his chest but didn’t budge him an inch. “What do you have under that shirt? A steel shield?”

Roman couldn’t help but smile, partly at her compliment and partly at her frustration. “Just what everyone else has. Now let’s sit down and you can tell me more about your boss and this client of his.”

Her hands fell away from his chest, and her shoulders sagged in defeat. “No. Let me go.”

“Kate, I’m not letting you leave this room. You won’t be able to get by me, so you might as well just accept that fact and sit down and talk to me.”

She twisted her face into a grimace and grumbled, “Fine.”

After waiting for her to turn back toward the bed, he watched to make sure she sat down and then took a seat in the chair again. “Okay, let’s talk this out. What—”

He didn’t even get his whole thought out before she bolted toward the door, reaching it before he did. Flinging it open so it slammed against the wall, she ran out into the hallway. Roman tore across the room to reach her before she got to the elevators or worse, the stairwell.

Chasing after her, he broke into a sprint and caught her just as the elevator doors opened. She tried to get away, but he grabbed hold of her and squeezed her to him, hoping to keep her from squirming out of his grasp.

“Let me go!” she cried out so loud that he expected one of the hotel’s guests to peek their head out the door to see what was going on.

“Stop it now, Kate. I can’t let you go, so stop fighting me on this,” he said as she continued to do just that.

If she kept trying to escape, he’d have no choice but to restrain her. He didn’t want to, but she left him with no other options.

“Help! Help!” she yelled loud enough to wake the entire floor.

He hoped to God no one heard her or keeping her safe would become next to impossible.

Clamping his hand over her mouth, he whispered, “You gave me no choice here, Kate. The more you scream, the more chance that someone’s going to call the cops. Do you want them to come here and find you?”

He felt her mouth open and then a second later her teeth sunk into his middle finger. Pain shot through the rest of his hand, but he didn’t know if he could trust her not to scream again, so he stuffed his other hand into her hair and tugged hard.

Kate’s eyes filled with tears because he knew how tightly his hold on her hair was, but still she kept her teeth on his finger. Locked in a stalemate, he tried to keep calm as the pain in his hand began to migrate up his forearm.

“I can let your hair go, but only if you stop biting me, Kate. I don’t want to stand out here in the hallway with my hand over your mouth, but you can’t scream again. Do you understand me? If you scream, someone’s going to call the cops.”

She nodded and slowly opened her mouth, releasing his finger from between her teeth. Then she said something, her words all garbled by his hand covering her mouth, but he saw he’d finally gotten through to her with the combination of pain and fear. Damnit, he hated having to resort to things like threatening the person he was supposed to be protecting. Why did she have to be so difficult?

Now he just had to worry about her running away. Looking deep into her eyes, he tried to find some evidence that she wouldn’t bolt as soon as he let her go. “Do you promise not to run if I let you go? I can’t release you if you’re just going to try to get away again. I don’t want to carry you back to the room, but I will if you don’t give me a choice.”

Nothing in the way she looked at him said she wouldn’t run the second he removed his hands from her, and he couldn’t take a chance that she’d do something stupid, so he scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder. At first, she seemed stunned, so he made it halfway back to the room before she finally reacted.

“Put me down!” she said, again far too loud for the middle of the night in a hotel hallway.

At least now if someone poked their head out to see what was going on, he could pretend they were having a lover’s spat. Hopefully, a hotel guest would believe that.

“Stop making so much noise. We’ll be back to the room in a few seconds,” he said as he turned the corner and saw the door a few feet away.

Instead of yelling, she turned to punching his lower back, landing her fists on the very spot where he’d cut himself climbing out the bathroom window at the Bayou Motel. Over and over, she pounded that very spot so tender until he felt a terrible stab of pain race up his side.

He got the door to their room open and dumped her onto the bed before staggering back against the wall in agony. Although he knew what he’d find, Roman ran his hand over his side through his shirt and brought it up in front of him to see blood on his fingers.

Kate sat on the bed glaring at him until she saw him wince in pain and then saw the blood. Jumping up, she ran over to him.

“Oh, my God! You’re bleeding! What happened? Why are you bleeding? Did I do that when I punched you?” she asked in rapid fire succession, not giving him a chance to answer any of her questions.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed past her and walked into the bathroom to get a better look at his injury. It couldn’t be too bad since he hadn’t been bleeding the whole time, and when he’d checked it in the shower less than an hour before, it hadn’t looked like much at all.

Then again, he hadn’t had someone landing punches over and over on that very spot before his shower.

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