Page 16 of Caged By the Ruthless Thief

“Eros.” I chase after him, but with his quick steps, he keeps ahead of me. He doesn’t close the glass door behind himself.

“Sunshine,” he says as he turns the water on. His dick juts out, hard.

I shake off my mermaid desire. Darn it, if I let my inner self have her way, I’ll be riding him. Holy Harold, I’d never be out of bed. Or off the sofa or the shower wall.

“Are you okay?” He lathers up his shoulders.

Focus, Annabelle.“Why aren’t you letting me go back to Glyden? It’s obvious I like you too. I mean, you’re being a dick, but I still...”

He wiggles his eyebrows at me. “You still what, Sunshine?”

“Ugh, Eros. You’re so frustrating.” I drop my hands to the side. He’s right. I can’t just waltz over to Glyden and pretend I found my way back. Questions will be asked. And I don’t have answers for them.

“Yes, people have been telling me that my whole life. I can’t take you back to Glyden because you’re not safe there. They also don’t know you’re back in the city.”

Now it’s my eyes that are wide with disbelief. “Hello, I’m right here, so pick up your block and tell them.” I wave my hands at him. I want to see Holter and Castor, too.

He laughs deeply and richly. “Why yes, you are. But you’re not here. If I was here all day, and yesterday, how did you, who are clearly here, get back to the Veiled City?”

“I... I... fudge, I don’t know.”

“Exactly. I can’t drop you off like a misdelivered package. We need a plan. And until then, you have to stay right here because no one can know I was in the chasm with Nico. There can’t be any connection between you getting back and me.”

“Well, for how long?” I think I understand Eros’s rationale. Because if people know I was gone, I need to stay gone, and if they don’t, I can’t appear with Eros. That’s the part that feels like he’s not telling me everything. But as a card-carrying member of the I’ve Been Kidnapped by a Possessive Dorian Male club... I realize that sometimes waiting things out and coming up with a plan is better than getting eaten by a shark.

“Until we have a strategy for your safety. They will know soon enough that you didn’t make it home to Boston. Let me get some sleep, and we can come up with the details when I wake up.”

Somehow, I don’t buy that he doesn’t have a plan and the details aren’t already worked out. “I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t ask you to like it. There’s plenty in life that we have to accept and do, yet don’t like.”

“Now you sound like my aunt.” She said the same thing to me when she asked me to run away with her and Marlee. To leave my dad alone with Uncle Russell. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave him alone. I guess I have now. But I plan to buy the mortgage from the bank, and I hope to all hopes that my uncle takes the money I offer him to vanish from our family forever.

“And is that a good thing?”

“Yes.” As much as I’d like to fault my aunt for not protecting my cousin and myself enough from my uncle, she did the best she could.

As comfy as his shower was, I didn’t spent much time in it. I was too worried about Nico and Eros. Holter and Alder too. I’ve never been one to stew in worry about things I can’t change. But not today, I guess. Plus, there were books to look at.

“Please tell me about Nico. What did he look like swimming into the chasm?”

Eros turns around, putting his back to me. He lets the water slosh down the front of his chest.

“Eros.” I walk closer to the water. “Please tell me what you know.” As he turns, a fragrance envelops me—a unique blend of weathered wood mixed with the crispness of a salty ocean breeze. It’s unmistakably the scent of driftwood. “Please, Eros.”

He leans his head back, then turns off the water. “Sunshine, I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

I scrunch up my forehead. The tension in my neck is back. “But you went to the chasm.”

“I did.”

“And you saw Nico in the chasm?”

“I did.”

“And you saw Nico come out of the chasm?”

“I did not. But let me get dried off, and I can turn on my block. We can figure out what’s going on. Okay?” He brushes a strand of hair away from my forehead. I can’t help wondering if he knows how to braid hair. Because I can’t go out in public with my hair down. I know that well enough now. And while I know how to braid hair, I don’t know the complex styles of the Veiled City. My hair needs help, and it needs braids. The tornado of the drying machine in thesolohas convinced me of that.

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