It meant they didn’t know. It meant he was telling the truth about that.
“I mean to do a good job in protecting ye. It isn’t only the press and the police. Someone tried to kill ye. Cassie believes they’ll make a second attempt. Sorry to be blunt, but this is serious.”
“That’s why you locked me up?”
A pause. “In part.”
“I don’t know what to do with you,” I said in a rush. “You offer me safety but in a gilded cage. Believe me, I know what those are like. We have them in the brothel. Men fuck you through the bars.”
“This is not that. I’m not hiding ye away. We’re waiting, and you’ll decide when you walk back out.”
I blinked. My words stopped.
For weeks, I’d been on the run, so scared of whoever hunted me. I’d tried to join the strip club Karla had worked at then bailed when the Shithouse tracked me down. I’d begged to sleep on my mother’s couch, and she’d let me, while bitching about how adult kids shouldn’t assume they could rely on their parents. Not that she’d seen much of me since I was a young teen. All that time, I’d been running. Escaping. Evading. Never had there been a pause point where I took stock and turned the tables.
“I thought I’d never get to go back,” I whispered.
“Don’t ye miss it?”
“The warehouse? My girls? The city? Yes. The life in the clubs, the bright lights. Totally. The clients, not at all. I don’tthink I’ll ever fuck anyone again.” I watched him carefully for a reaction, then added, mostly for myself, “I miss being sexy.”
Tyler rolled a look my way, weight behind it. “You’re sexy without trying.” He checked himself. “But that doesn’t mean ye owe anyone access to ye. And now I know what ye want, I can help ye get there. In the meantime, I’m shattered. I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours.”
“Too busy abducting women?”
“Only the one. You’re enough trouble for me.”
He stretched his long arms across the sofa back. Still on my feet, I stared at where his t-shirt rucked up over his flat belly.
It shouldn’t have been hot. Somehow, the hint of a happy trail of fair hair leading under his waistband became an erotic reveal.
Tyler lumbered to his feet. “I need a shower, but I’ll sleep out here. Ye can have my bed. In the morning, we’ll talk strategy.”
“Strategy?”
“I have a team of people out there looking for ye. If ye want to lie low for a while longer, we’ll need to consider how to handle them.”
He trod past me and away to the corridor that led to the bathroom and bedroom, as I’d discovered on my self-tour earlier.
“You would lead your own people on a pointless dance?” I called after him. “I don’t know how you can sleep at night.”
“And ye flashed your tits at me. I’ll manage.”
While Tyler showered, I hid in his room but couldn’t rest. My car nap had taken the edge off.
All I could do was spin over the problem—or perhaps solution—of Tyler. I wasn’t stupid. His actions were sketchy as hell. No nice words would change the fact that he’d carried me away without asking and kept me locked up ever since. But, he’dbeen gentle about it. He was caring, and it felt like he was on my side.
He wanted me. And I’d already vowed to myself to never trade on my body again. The problem with that? The fact that despite everything, I still wanted him back.
That was the most messed-up part of all of this.
Chapter 5
Tyler
I woke to broad daylight and a knife-wielding woman. Slowly, I pushed up on my elbows, my gaze never leaving Dixie. At the end of the sofa where I’d slept, she stood with her arms folded, my kitchen knife in her grip, a flash of steel in the late morning light.
“Did ye stand over me all night deciding how best to kill me?”
