As soon as the last cuff was undone, I did just that, yanking my pants up and taking a step away from the bench.
“I told you to stop,” I said to the man.
“Silas?”
My name again, but this time from behind me. From the man who’d saved me.
My brain connected the memories before I’d finished turning toward him, before I even saw him.
“Marshall,” I muttered his name, wanting to dig a hole under the club and bury myself there.
A thousand thoughts raced across his face, half of them clear as day, but he finally settled on asking, “Are you all right?”
All things considered, it was the best thing he could have asked, but the one with the most complicated answer.
“I’m fine,” I said, which tasted like a lie, but it was real.
I was free. I was unharmed. And I was protected.
Marshall’s expression morphed from concern to fury, all of the latter directed at the man who’d just had his hands on me.
“What part of stop wasn’t clear to you?” he asked, voice barely louder than whatever dance beat the DJ was spinning.
“I didn’t think he meant it,” he tried to say dismissively, and my body bowed forward, overcome with the need to vomit all over my feet.
“Do you know him?” Marshall asked, the question traveling over my head, so I assumed it was directed at Lincoln.
“Yeah.”
“Then help him,” Marshall ordered. I heard the sound of his shoes clicking against the concrete—he was still dressed for work, still dressed from our meeting—and then the other guy gasped, and something slammed into the wall.
Lincoln helped me right myself in time to see Marshall fist the other guy's shirt and shove him so hard into the drywall I worried they’d have to patch the wall. Marshall whispered something into his ear that turned the other man a sickly shade of green, and then they were both on their way out of the room.
“Sit, Silas,” Marshall called out to me over his shoulder, and there was no argument to be had about it. Maybe another day or another time, but not now. “I’ll be right back.”
And then the room was quiet.
The other couple was gone. Riot was gone. It was just me and Lincoln, and Lincoln helping me around the room untilthe backs of my legs connected with the couch and I sank down into the cushions.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, grabbing my face and tilting my head all around to inspect me.
“It’s not your fault.”
He angled my chin up to check my throat, but what he couldn’t see was my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, the tang of someone else’s dried sweat seeping into my tastebuds.
“I picked him.”
“You’re not my Dom.” I grabbed Lincoln’s desperate hands to bring him to a stop. “You didn’t do this. And it could have been worse. I’m really fine.”
“He was going to assault you.” Lincoln pressed the issue. “Right in front of me, and I?—”
I covered his mouth with one of my hands before the words could get out of his mouth.
“I’m begging you to not make this about you.”
He swallowed hard and nodded, and I dropped my hand into my lap.
I could still feel the cuffs around my wrists.
