“Do you want me to be there to catch you?” Hendrick stalks forward, chasing me as I retreat. I shake my head in the negative but everything I do says otherwise. “Do you want me to stop you from hurting yourself, Adora? How many times?” His hands are on my arms, his thumbs running up and down along my smooth skin.
I close my eyes, forcing my breaths to be even.I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine?—
He hands droop to my waist, those same thumbs tugging up my borrowed shirt, baring skin he shouldn’t seek. He doesn’t look when I’m naked, cold air brushing my skin as he holds my eyes only. Not searching because we both know what he will find as he traces over my ribs with those same thumbs, and then lower to rest on my hips. I gasp, pulling away.
“Wait–”
But his fingertips, rough already, discover the scarred patch of skin, even on both sides. The shirt is released, and the material falls loose over his hands that still reset on my hips. Where I’m bare beneath his shirt.
“Adora,” he murmurs, stepping in close. “Does no one else know?”
I pant, shaking my head. “No one.”No one but you. No one has ever thought to check.
It’s why I cut myself there. Because I can hide the scars beneath long dresses and skirts. And no one else can see.
No one knows.
Until now.
“Will you stop, while you’re with me? Please,” he murmurs, still speaking in that low, hypnotic voice.
I nod, and his thumbs stroke my scars in reward.
“Good, Adora. That’s good.”
Breath flows into me as I close my eyes. “I’m sorry.” I don’t know why I’m apologizing to this man. He doesn’t know me. He is no one to me. Nothing.
He saved my life.
But I don’t feel like I owe him anything. He’s just…here.
“It’s okay, love. Let it out. Let go with me.” Those thumbs keep rubbing gently over my scars, treating me tenderly, but carefully. Like I’m a real person not a toy or a doll for display..
“I want to sleep,” I whisper. “I don’t want to be afraid.”
His breath shudders a fraction as he drops his hands from my hops and finds my hand instead. “You can sleep here safely,” he promises. “Let me take you to your room.”
But at the door to my room, when he pauses, I shake my head. “Your room.” I’m back to single syllables. Hendrick hesitates as I squeeze his hand. “Not with you. Just… I feel safer."
He nods, and leads me further along the corridor and then across, opening a darker wooden door. I step inside a blue carpeted room. The bed is covered with a black quilt that marches him perfectly. He leads me inside, and pulls the covers back, just enough for me to slide between them. A question wars across his face as I curl into the space he’s offered me, my head on his pillow.
He leans down and gently kisses the covering of my lips. Then the contact is gone.
“Sleep, Adora,” he murmurs, and covers me. Fingers stroke my hair as my eyes drift shut. “I’ll be here."
I close my eyes, and know I’m safe. And I sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
HENDRICK
Our peace is shot to shit the moment her team arrives. Adora slept—really slept—for hours. I don’t think she’s started to stir when the four wheel drive careens across the landscape toward the house.
It’s one of the reasons I brought her out here.
The house is damn hard to creep up on, and I know the lay of the land well with several exit paths should her rabid fan follow her out here. Which he shouldn’t be able to do.
I stare through a pair of binoculars at the incoming vehicle that I swear isn’t going to make it. The small truck slews around large rocks, misses a ditch that would have up ended the mud colored thing, and pulls up in a mini tornado of dust out the front of the house.
