Page 11 of Glorious Sinner

The sound of locks sliding came through the heavy wooden barrier, and the door opened. A man with gray hair and weathered skin, dressed in red and blue checked pajamas, brown leather slippers, and a navy-blue robe stood there blinking at me.

I looked beyond him to the grand-looking foyer behind him, then back. “I…I think I have the wrong house.”

He smiled gently and opened the door wider. “You’re at the right place,” he said. “Please, come in.”

I followed him inside. The entryway was big, open, with black and white tiles on the floor. There wasn’t much else filling the space besides several paintings on the walls and a black lacquer side table just inside the door with some kind of figuring sitting on it.

He motioned toward a door to the left, dark and glossy. “You can wait in here while I get Mr. Mendoza for you—”

“No need,” a rough voice said.

I spun around in time to see Tomas descend a curving staircase, and froze in place.

He was wearing a pair of black cotton pajama bottoms, low on his hips, and nothing else. His feet and everything from the waist up were bare.

My gaze moved over his incredibly ripped upper body, hard and sculpted, abs like I’d never seen before, and nearly all of it—what I could see anyway—was covered in ink. My gaze traveled to the tattoos on his chest and arms and on one side of his stomach, following it down to the deep V that disappeared below those PJ bottoms.

“Stephanie?” he said again in that rough, no-nonsense voice, so deep and gritty I felt it vibrate through me.

The gray-haired man seemed to vanish without a word, leaving Tomas and I alone, and suddenly I felt tongue-tied. I didn’t know what to say, where to start. Humiliation burned my cheeks.

Tomas had seen me at my lowest. He knew Ryan had hurt me, and that I’d stayed until the day he’d almost killed me. How could he not see me as some…some pathetic creature?

Especially, when that was how I saw myself.

Now I was there asking for his help again, exposing the most vulnerable parts of myself.

I couldn’t meet his eyes.

He moved closer, coming to a stop in front of me.

I still hadn’t answered and kept my eyes downcast—my stomach roiled—just like I used to with Ryan. I wasn’t afraid of Tomas, though, I was ashamed. Ashamed of the woman I’d been, of the woman I apparently still was.

God, I thought she was gone. Now Tomas was seeing her all over again.

Rough-skinned fingers gently, so gently, slid under my chin, tilting my head back. I still couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Talk to me,” he said, voice even rougher, deeper.

For a moment, time flashed back to that night, me sitting in Tomas’s car the first time he’d rescued me from Ryan, and dammit, I wished that I could go back, that I could change everything, that I’d never gotten out of his car when he took me home.

I blinked and a tear streaked down my cheek.

“Fuck, Stephanie, what’s going on?” he said more urgently.

I could feel his gaze, those intense, almost black eyes searching my face, searching for answers. “Christ, Angel, fucking look at me.”

Angel.

My eyes shot to his, the endearment striking something deep in the heart of me, something untapped, something hidden.

He flinched at whatever he saw in my eyes. “Tell me,” he rasped.

I blinked again and another tear burned a path down my cheeks. “He’s back, Tomas.”

His jaw hardened. “Who? Who’s back?”

He knew who I was talking about. He had to. He was asking me to confirm it.