Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem) (16 page)

Wow.  Didn’t I feel special all of a sudden?   If being there was such a problem for him, I’d be happy to have him drop me off at the nearest airport.  I hadn’t asked for his ‘help’ and I really didn’t want it.

He glanced toward the bathroom door and went so still I thought he had turned to stone.  Knowing I was busted, I threw the door open and leaned my hip against the doorframe, trying to keep my eyes off the cell phone pressed to his ear.

 “That won’t be necessary,” Nathan finally said, his voice so low and cold that it was almost like being blasted by a winter wind in the heat of June.  I swear, I think I saw my breath come out in a cloud of vapor there for a second.  “I have it under control, Oh Great One.  Then we’re even and I’m gone.”

I saw a pained look cross his features and immediately felt a tightness fill my chest in response to it.  Whatever was hurting him, I wanted to make it stop.  But, no, wait!  I didn’t want to make him
feel better
!  I wanted to stake his ass and run for the nearest police station...

Didn’t I? 

“I will never forgive you for this,” Nathan whispered, trapping my gaze.  As I watched, the faint angry glow faded from his eyes, and the haunted look that replaced it touched me to my very core.  “Never.”

He hung up and we looked at each other, both of us fighting battles of our own, and both of us losing the fight.  The longer the silence went on, the more I
felt
him.  It was like he was touching me, like he was crawling under my skin and making himself a permanent home.  And there was part of me that was reaching out to him, too, a part I knew I would never get back if I was ever stupid enough to let him have it.

“That was kind of rude,” I said finally, referring to the fact that he had just hung up on whoever he’d been complaining about me to.  “Care to let me in on the finer points of that little chat?” I gestured toward the phone still clenched in his hand. 

The phone that I would be using as soon as he was asleep to call 911.  Sweet freedom!  I could almost
taste
it.

I realized about two heartbeats too late that I had messed up—again.  Nathan’s eyes narrowed on mine, and I knew he’d just seen the visions of him in a nice jail cell in my head.  He held up the phone between us, almost like he was going to offer it to me.  Then, as I watched in horrified silence, he literally crushed the phone in his hand, obliterating my last chance at freedom to the tune of the sickening tinkle of broken electronics.

 “You should learn to protect your thoughts,” he said, grinning at my livid expression. 

“You
suck—
literally
and
figuratively, in your case!” I hissed as he brushed the remains of my last hope off his lap.  Blinking back frustrated tears and more than a little peeved that he was messing up all my plans, I marched out of the bathroom and directly over to the bed. 

The
one
king-sized bed.

The bed Nathan was already sitting on, his back propped against the headboard. 

His eyes swept from my damp curls all the way down to my purple-painted toenails and back up again.  The more of me he took in, the warmer his gaze got until I felt like I could actually feel the heat of it radiating across the space between us.

“I’d like to go to bed now,” I said stiffly, determined to ignore the way that look made me feel.  He wasn’t worth it.

“By all means.”  He waved grandly at the empty space on the bed next to him with a charming smile.

“And where will
you
be sleeping?”

“I’m pretty comfy right here,” he said, fluffing up the pillow behind him.

Was he
crazy
?  I wasn’t going to sleep in the same bed with
him
.  He must have read the thoughts crossing my mind, because he grinned at me and winked.

 “I am
not
sleeping with you,” I bit out through clenched teeth.

 “There’s always the floor,” he suggested.  I grimaced at the centimeter thick industrial carpet and felt my skin start to itch just thinking about sleeping on it. 

But that didn’t mean
he
couldn’t…

“Good idea,” I told him, smiling sweetly.  “I’m sure you’ll sleep like the dead there—a fitting description in your case.”

“Ember, get in the bed,” he said, laughing.

“No.” 

“Yes.”

“I’m going to say this one more time for the hearing impaired,” I huffed, irritated.  “I’m not sleeping…”

I never got to finish my sentence.  One second I was standing there, glaring at him, and the next I found myself on the bed, my head resting on the pillow and Nathan hovering over me, still smiling. 

I immediately shoved at his shoulders to get him off of me, my heart thundering in my chest as I realized how weak my position had just become.  God!  Why couldn’t I meet a guy who knew what the word ‘no’ meant?  Seriously, what part of it weren’t they understanding?  The ‘N’?  Or the ‘O’?

“Are you always angry?” he asked softly, giving me this really amazing, tender look that had my heart racing for a completely different reason. 

Very slowly, he reached up and brushed a damp curl from my cheek, letting his fingertips linger against my cheekbone as it started to warm up.  Part of me was dying to kiss him, just to see what would happen.  But the other part of me, the part that was still shriveled up in a humiliated little ball thanks to him, was smart enough to stop me.

“What can I say?  Being kidnapped tends to kind of piss me off,” I snapped, pushing at his shoulders again. 

Nathan must have seen the return of sanity in my eyes.  He looked down at me for another second, like he was trying to figure me out.  And then, surprising me so much I didn’t even think to push him away, he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead before whispering, “Sweet dreams, Ember.”

Before I could respond, he turned over and cut off the lamp, hitting the power button on the remote in his hand at the same time and plunging the room into darkness.  Feeling suddenly very alone, even though he was only a few inches away, I turned on my side, away from him, and curled up under the scratchy hotel blanket. 

Two hours later, I was asking myself why I had made such a big deal over the sleeping arrangements.  Between the stupid vampire in the bed beside me and the smoky smell of the room that was giving my nerves road rash, I didn’t see sleep in my near future.  That being the case, I could have just curled up in one of the stiff-looking chairs and stared out the window.  Hell, I could have actually been constructive while the big oaf next to me slept and painted ‘Help!  I’ve been kidnapped!  Call 911!’ on the window with soap.

And that’s when it hit me.  I was just lying there like a good little victim, in the same bed with my kidnapper, and I wasn’t doing a single damn thing to save myself.  When had I become so irritatingly weak and pathetic? 

Okay, so I couldn’t beat him up.  And, lamp-impaling fantasies aside, I was honest enough to admit that I really didn’t want to kill him—most of the time.  He’d also proven I couldn’t outrun him.  But, he had told me himself that he was tired. 

And he couldn’t chase me if he was asleep.

The Price of Flight

I actually had to give myself a pep talk before I attempted what I was contemplating.  Trust me, that threat he had made hadn’t fallen on deaf ears.  What really decided it for me, though, was the memory of Tyler’s probably permanently disfigured face.  Tyler was a guy, and not a small one.  If Nathan could do that to him, what could he do to me if he was pissed off enough?

I wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

Holding my breath, I rolled over on my stomach and turned my head in his direction.  His eyes were closed and he was breathing in a slow, even rhythm that I thought looked about right for someone who was sleeping.  I held my own breath for a few more seconds, waiting for him to open his eyes and blow my hopes out of the water—again—but they stayed closed and his expression remained relaxed and peaceful.

It looked like I was going to get lucky, after all.

Inch by agonizing inch, I slowly slid my legs off the bed, letting the rest of me slither off after them.  I knelt next to the bed for a second, peering at Nathan over the edge.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to jump up at any second and grab me, but he didn’t so much as twitch.  Forcing myself to my feet, I crept around the end of the bed on tiptoe. 

I grimaced down at the t-shirt swirling around my knees as I passed the bathroom door, but I couldn’t risk trying to get my clothes.  I only had once chance to get away.  If I had to do it barefoot and dressed in Bigfoot’s t-shirt, so be it.

 With my hand on the doorknob, I turned to check on Nathan one more time and found myself frowning.  It was too easy.  He was playing with me.  He had to be.  No kidnapper in their right mind would just go to sleep and give their victim a chance to escape.  But he
looked
like he was sleeping soundly, the only change in his expression the slight smile that had tugged up the corners his lips. 

I hoped he was having some really sweet dreams, because as soon as I found a phone his ass was toast. 

The click of the door opening made me wince.  Tensing, I looked back at Nathan again, fully expecting him to be on his feet, probably right behind me, a single brow lifted in patronizing amusement as he waited for me to continue the farce.  But he was sleeping like a baby.  Somehow, his creepy vampire senses hadn’t tipped him off to the fact that his walking juice box was about to make a run for the border, nor to the hordes of SWAT that were about to show up the moment I made it to somebody with a cell phone. 

In a rush of triumph, I gave up the stealth and ran, leaving the door open behind me.  If I could just make it to the lobby, I could ask the desk clerk to use his phone.  The cops could have the hotel surrounded before Nathan ever even knew what had hit him.

Yep, dumbest kidnapper in history,
I thought, almost giddy with relief as I ran down the stairs two at a time.  I nearly slipped on the freshly waxed floor at the bottom and had to grab hold of the handrail to keep from breaking my neck.  I didn’t even pause, just kept running. 

The front desk area was empty, and I knew better than to yell because then Nathan would hear me.  The counter was too high for me to jump over it, but I could see light coming from a doorway down a dark side hall that probably led to an office.  Hoping that the desk clerk wasn’t napping again, I took off in that direction.

I was so close to freedom.  As I ran toward that door, I could see the clerk at the desk with his feet up, eating chips and playing Solitaire on the office computer.  I could even see that he had two more moves and the game was over. 

But I never made it to him.  I got close.  Like, really close.  Like,
standing in the doorwa
y close.  Just as he started to turn his head to look at me, though, a steel band of an arm wrapped around my waist and a meaty hand slapped over my mouth, pulling me out of the light spilling into the hallway so fast that it felt like I was flying. 

“Don’t you dare scream,” Nathan hissed in my ear, pulling me into the dark room next to the office.  The fury I could hear in his voice caused my heart to thud to a stop long enough to make me dizzy.  “Just be very still and
very
quiet, Ember.”

I tried to nod, but the hold he had on my mouth didn’t allow a lot of room for moving my head, period.  I felt him tense behind me and move us farther into the darkness of the windowless little cubicle of a room as the desk clerk stalked past us, looking kind of freaked out.

I guess he would, since he probably thought he’d just seen a ghost.  Come to that, I was probably about to
become
a ghost. 

“Are you trying
to make me kill somebody?” Nathan whispered against my ear, sending a chill down my spine that had my whole body quivering in about a millisecond.  I tried to shake my head, but I still couldn’t move thanks to his big, meaty paw covering my mouth. 

“You’ve tried my patience for the last time, Ember,” he continued, his voice no more than a breath in the dark corner he’d tucked us into.  “I’ve been very gentle with you so far.  I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and compelled you, but I didn’t.  I could have tied you up, but I didn’t.

“It’s time you understood who’s in charge here.  I’m bigger than you, faster, stronger, and a hell of a lot more determined.  I am also angry, exhausted, and pretty damn thirsty, and you smell like heaven right now.”

He moved his head to the side as he spoke, and I pretty much felt my blood freeze in my veins when I felt two very sharp T-Rex teeth graze the side of my neck, almost like he was trying to decide where the juiciest place would be to bite down.  At that moment, I was sure he was going to kill me.  He was going to kill me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop him.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he whispered against my throat as my eyes filled with tears that I couldn’t blink away.  The cold hiss of his voice and the unspoken “yet” I heard in it was enough to make me want to flinch away from him.  Something I couldn’t do since he still had me in a vice-like hold I couldn’t have gotten out of without the Jaws of Life.   “I warned you, love.  I told you what would happen if you ran from me again.  You’ve left me no other choice…”