“Unfasten her hand.”
Alvin doesn’t move at first. Tommy points with the gun. “Unfasten her. Now.”
Slowly, glaring, Alvin walks around the bed and frees me from the restraints.
The second he’s done, Tommy stalks over to the bed, picks Alvin up by the throat, and slams him into a wall.
The first pistol-whip is lightning fast, and the second follows almost immediately. Alvin slides down the wall, groaning. Blood pours from a cut in his lips and from his smashed nose. He’s not even defending himself, not that he could anymore. Because now Tomas has his ass on the ground and is beating him senseless.
And there’s screaming.
It’s me doing the screaming, I realize. I’m naked and screaming.
I spring off the bed and grab Tommy’s arm. My breath is short and sharp. Every thought I’ve ever had is scattered in the room and I close my eyes so I don’t have to see them or feel the muscles of his arm under my palm.
I cannot possibly be in a room with Tomas Dubrovsky.
I pull with every ounce of strength I have. “Tomas! Get off him! What are you doing?”
By now, Alvin’s face is a mask of blood. The wall is spattered with it on both sides of him. Certainly, someone’s going to complain about the noise and come to investigate.
Tomas jerks free and looks at his hand. The knuckles are split open, just like they used to be all the time when he got into fights back in high school.
I kneel beside Alvin. “God, Alvin. Are you …”
Okay is definitely the wrong word and ‘Are you going to live?’ might send the wrong message. I don’t know what to say, really. He certainly deserved to be picked on by someone his own size after what he tried to do to me. But this seems like several steps too far.
I feel like I’m spiraling. This is a weird, terrible dream, right? It has to be. It cannot possibly be reality.
But then Tomas’s voice cuts through my daze and I remember how freaking mad I am at him.
“You married Alvin Hogan?” Tomas is wide-eyed and angry, but smiling—smirking rather. “Isn’t he the kid who used to make fart noises at you back in high school?”
“And aren’t you the asshat who walked out on me and never came back?” My voice is laced with fury, but I note internally that I sound pretty cocky for a naked chick who was almost forced to have violent BDSM sex with the guy who, as Tomas correctly remembered, used to make fart noises at her in high school.
I’ve spent years thinking about what I would say if I ever saw Tomas again. Asshat wasn’t one of the words I generally chose.
“Best thing I ever did. For both of us.”
Before I realize what I’m doing, God help me, I swing. I want to hurt him. I’m smart enough to know one slap wouldn’t do it, but I need to do something. Anything. Because this is …
The front door to the room jostles. I look at Tomas, who has caught my slap effortlessly and is still holding my wrist in his hand.
He doesn’t hesitate; he starts dragging me to the closet. “Tom—”
He clamps his hand over my mouth. I want to bite him until he turns me to face him and shushes me. I can feel his breath on my skin. But he has somehow managed to slip out of his jacket and pull it on me. I feel his arms brush against my shoulders as he pulls it on, which is torturous for a million reasons I’ve spent years trying to forget. But it beats suffering a naked death by whoever has now barged into the suite and is enthusiastically wreaking havoc in the seating area.
The coat smells like Tomas—citrus and spice and man musk. My body feels an instinctive tug toward him that my head isn’t having any part of.
I close my eyes and focus on the day I found out he was gone. Just like that, the rage settles back into its familiar place in my heart.
Works every time.
“Where is it?” someone snarls. The voice is close, right outside the closet in the bedroom.
I clamp my lips shut. There will be no whimpering. Not without a fight, anyway. But I’m losing and my breaths are shallower, my heart pounding against my sternum. Tomas runs his hands down my shoulders and arms. It helps calm me, but I’m keeping it to myself. Tomas is on a need-to-know basis. And he doesn’t need to know what his touch still does to me.
I focus on the argument outside. “I don’t fuckin’ know,” a second voice responds. Their voices are deep and foreign. “Gio said the cash is here. Presidential suite #1409.”
The other guy chuckles. “Hey, Joe. Check this out. Gio’s into some freaky shit.”
Tomas shakes his head and I turn around to face the door again. Now, I can see through a small opening. A Rocky Balboa dead ringer and a man who looks like Joey Tribbiani from Friends are going through our stuff. The Friends lookalike walks around the bed. He’s coming to the closet, but thank God, he looks right first and sees Alvin, slumped and bleeding. “Oh shit! Rocco, you need to see this.”
He takes a handful of Alvin’s hair and lifts his head as Rocco walks around. “Well, who the fuck is that?”
Alvin’s chin smacks limply into his chest when Joe lets go. Alvin would probably cuss at him, but his jaw’s hanging crooked and broken.
Instead, he lifts a hand and curls his fingers into Joe’s pant leg, tugs twice—and points to the closet.
Right at us.
Shit. That rat bastard sadist. Figures that he’d sell us out.
Tomas turns us sideways, then moves me behind him. Oh, God. This is going to be bad and I know it’s wrong to want them—all of them, maybe even Alvin—dead, but I do.
Three.
Two.
One—
The guy slides the door open. Tomas shoots him in the chest then shoves him backwards. He falls next to Alvin, who shuffles to the side and curls into a ball.
Tomas springs out of the door just as the other guy lunges, a knife he pulled from his boot slashing through the air as he attacks. He’s big and bulky, too slow to do any real damage. Or so I think.
But when he knocks the gun from Tomas’ hand, I gasp. Tomas hits him in the head with the bedside lamp and he staggers. Then it’s a punch-for-punch battle until Tomas knocks him through the bathroom door.
There’s a shatter, then a pained oomph, and I don’t know who’s coming back into the bedroom, but I’d like to at least have pants on. Which means sprinting across to my suitcase and praying there’s a pair on top.
There is, thank the heavens, and I trade the jacket for a T-shirt, then hurry to the bed to yank on the pants. But there’s a dead man sprawled on the floor, along with Alvin, who didn’t waste a single second selling me out.
I’m standing in the center of the bed and am still yanking on my jeans when Tomas comes out of the bathroom, using a hotel towel to wipe the blood from his hands.
“What the hell are you doing up there?”
“Reverse striptease.” Apparently, my impulse for sarcasm is not affected by—well, whatever you’d call all of this.
“Up there?”
I shrug because I don’t have words to explain that part. In the moment, getting up on the bed made sense. It gave me a vantage point and momentum if I had to jump on someone. Though I do suppose it looks a little silly now.
He holds out his hand as if I need help, but I ignore him as I step down. I don’t need anything from him. Not now, not ever.