Her soft breaths were the only sounds drifting between us. Brown eyes met mine, her expression serious with a haze of something else I couldn’t quite pinpoint. “Is that what you would have done? Came back for me?”
“Don’t flip this. I wasn’t the one faced with the decision.”
“No, but you stole this dress for me when you could have just kept walking.”
I looked down at the man’s clothes dripping off her body, and it clicked. “Is that why you did this? You thought I wasn’t coming back?”
Her eyes were on my lips. “I tried to kill you, Silas. And we’re not exactly friends. I wasn’t going just to sit here, naked ass on cement, waiting on a whim for someone who hates me just as much as I hate him.”
I held her chin, fixing her with a grin. “You don’t hate me.”
“Don’t I? Complacency will get you killed. And so will putting your trust in the wrong people—As you already know quite well. Plus, who’s to say I don’t plan on slicing your throat the moment you turn your back.”
I couldn’t hold back my laughter. “For one, you don’t have your knife…” As if my thumb had a mind of its own, I caressed the edge of her lip, where broken flesh and dried blood puckered into a minor wound. Our eyes were drawn together, my features pinched into one of concern. “And it seems you’ve filled your quota for the day.”
Whatever she’d done to escape those men had come at a cost. That was evident when I glanced down at her hands, fingers riddled with defensive wounds and bloody nail beds.
“You don’t know what my limit is. You don’t know anything about me,” she murmured with a slight shake of her head, pulling away from me and relinquishing her hold on the dress.
She was right. As I stared into the depths of her eyes, I saw so much, yet at the same time, so little. Helena was a wild card. Beautiful as she was dangerous. One moment, she was letting me touch her, the next, threatening my life.
My thoughts were suddenly assaulted by the memory of how wet and tight she was, how freely she’d given in to my advances and allowed me to explore every sweet inch of her. Fuck me, I wanted this woman. Wanted all of her. There was no denying that. She was stunning and confident, with fire in her eyes and a wall of ice around her heart. I was intrigued, mesmerized, and clearly out of my fucking mind.
“Hey, what’s the plan?” I asked, tossing the dress her way.
A grin split her face. “Plan? What makes you think I’d make any with you, let alone share them?”
Rolling my eyes, I released an exasperated breath. “Someone you and I are connected to somehow wants us dead or enslaved or whatever their plan was. I’ve done a lot of running these past couple months. The last thing I need is another bounty over my head.”
Helena let the oversized pants drop to her ankles and ripped the shirt over her head as if I wasn’t standing two feet away. Averting my gaze from her perfect tits was out of the question, and so my eyes dropped, mouth watering at the sight of those hardened nipples pierced by diamond-encrusted barbells.
“My eyes are up here, Silas.”
“I don’t care. I won’t pretend to be a gentleman because I’m far from it.” The things I would do to her. Bend her, break her…make her mine in every way imaginable.
She said nothing, smile widening as she slinked into the sundress. While probably two sizes too big, she looked exquisite.
“So, Silas, what’s the plan, then?”
If there was one thing I knew about this woman, she wasn’t relying on me for direction but merely goading an answer and assessing where my head was at—sizing me up.
“First thing’s first,” I said, eyeing our surroundings. “Let’s get the fuck out of here…whereverhereis.”
“Neither of us has money for a taxi or any other means of transportation at the moment.” She took off down the narrow alley toward the street.
“So, where are you going?”
She twisted in my direction, now walking backward, though never losing stride. “To borrow a car.”
I was about to add grand theft to my resume. We’d traveled at least an hour by train. Driving that equivalent or more alongside the same woman who’d bled on a contract for my death promised to be an interesting ride.
Twelve
SILAS
“No! I won’t go.”
I slid my gaze toward the passenger seat, where Helena was searing holes into the side of my head. Using her newly acquired cell, thanks to the naked stranger we’d left in the alley, I’d phoned Santino and laid out the events of the last twenty-four hours. We’d both agreed that returning to my hotel room wasn’t an option. He’d packed up my belongings, moved them to a new location under an alternative alias, and assured me he’d be waiting with a new phone, identification, and cash.
