by Brooks, Anna
I grin at how adorable she is, and instead of waiting for her to come out and find me, which will freak her out, I go to her. I don’t want to scare her any more than she’s going to be when she realizes there’s a strange man in her house, but really… I don’t want to wait another moment before I can see her again, which almost halts me in my tracks.
No emotion. I can’t have any, I never have, and she’s not going to be the first one. All she’s getting from me is whatever it is that will protect her since I fucked up and put her in danger, so whatever emotion I need to convince her to let me get close to her fast is what she’ll get.
She’s got her back to me and has just pulled her tight tank top from her body. Her jeans are in a pile next to her feet, and I suck in a breath at her tight, round ass in a white thong. She spins around and screeches, holding her shirt to her chest. “Ahh!”
“Relax, Madeline.”
“Who the fuck are you? What are you doing in my apartment? Get out!” She reaches for a book on her nightstand and throws it at me.
I duck out of the way and hold my arms open, showing her I’m not a threat.
“Get out!” A bottle of water comes at me next, followed by a marble coaster. “Get out!”
After catching the coaster in my hand, I tell her, “Sweetheart, you brought me here last night.”
She swallows and takes a step back, glancing at the empty space in her bed next to where she slept that’s still completely intact. I drop my gaze, giving her some privacy. “I’ll be in the living room. I just didn’t want you coming out there and freakin’ when you saw me.”
“Too late for that.”
I chuckle.
“You need to leave.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“I’ll call the cops.”
I bring my eyes up to hers again. “And say what?” She opens her mouth, but I don’t let her answer. “The guy I brought back to my apartment to fuck last night carried me up to bed after I passed out and slept on my couch to make sure I was good, and he’s in my kitchen right now, drinking orange juice from the jug?” The confusion on her face would be cute if she wasn’t so scared. “Get dressed and do whatever else you’ve gotta do. I’ll be out there.”
I walk away and close her door behind me, and when I reach the kitchen, I take a swig of orange juice from the carton and grab a bottle of water for her. Then I rummage through her cupboards and find some ibuprofen because she’s gonna have a headache after how much she drank last night. I’m shaking a couple of tablets into my hand when she walks in hesitantly. I lift my head, and the breath gets taken out of my lungs.
I don’t know how, in the three minutes since I saw her in a sexy pair of underwear and nothing else, she got even hotter. Hair in a rat’s nest on the top of her head, she’s wearing tight black yoga pants and a white sweater that hangs off one shoulder, exposing a pink bra. Her face looks like it’s been cleaned of most makeup, though she has some smudges of black around her eyes still. She’s clutching her cell to her chest, and her other hand is behind her back, my guess is it’s armed with the bottle of pepper spray she keeps in her nightstand. At least she thought of that. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember anything from last night. Who are you, and why the hell are you still here?”
“God, you’re pretty.” I shouldn’t say it out loud, but I can’t help it. Prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. No question about it. Dammit. That has nothing to do with why I’m here. I need to get my shit right before I fuck this up.
The guard she was holding up drops just a little at the unexpected compliment. “Thanks. But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“Told you last night, I’m Q.”
“Why are you still here?”
I shrug, setting the pills on her table. “Pretty girl wanted to take me home yesterday but passed out before we got to the good stuff. I figure we could revisit that before I took off.”
“I’m not having sex with you!”
“Then why’d you bring me home?” I ask, condescendingly.
“I… I was drunk.” She shifts on her feet.
I nod, then set the water down, and she takes a step back. “Ah, the alcohol excuse. I see.”
“Yeah. I was, I am normally more responsible than that. It was a mistake, one I’m not proud of, and as much as I appreciate you… you staying around to make sure I was good…” She air quotes the word, and it makes her even fuckin’ cuter. “As you can see, I’m great, so you can leave now.”
I run my tongue over my teeth and drop my ear to my shoulder. She shifts on her feet. “And what if I don’t want to leave? What if I want to take what you were going to give and refuse to leave until I get it?”
She moves away from me with a large step. Her back collides with the wall, causing her to wince and fear making her lips tremble. Good. She should be scared. “I… You need to leave. Now.”
I straighten to my full height and shake my head. “No.”
“Please.”
It only takes three strides for me to have a hand over her mouth and my thigh wedged between her legs. Her liquid silver eyes bug out of her head, and she tries to hit me, but her phone falls to the ground with a clatter. When she raises her other arm and I see a bright pink bottle of pepper spray fused to her shaky fingers, I rip it out, toss it across the room, then grab her wrist and raise her arm above her head, rendering her immobile. “See how easy it is, Madeline? How fast I could fuck you up if I wanted to? Christ, what the hell were you thinking bringing some strange guy home?” I drop my hands and step back far enough to give her space but close enough that I can grab her if she tries to get away. I run my fingers through my hair and then cross my arms. “Well?”
She sucks in a breath and sniffles as tears fall down her cheeks, and she scoots away from me even farther, practically melting into the wall.
I make a point to lower my voice. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I swear I never would, but let this be a lesson to you; there are lots of guys out there who aren’t so nice. You need to take better care of yourself, sweetheart.”
“Y-you need to leave.”
“I already told you I’m not gonna do that. You might have been wasted last night, but I wasn’t. Before you got plastered, you couldn’t stop staring at me, and in doing that, you caught my eye. I wanted to see what it would be like with you and seeing you this morning didn’t change that. It only made me want to dig deeper ’cause, honey, no offense but you need a man.”
“I do not,” she snaps.
Ah… there’s the independence kicking in, and I’m back on track.
I sigh. “You do.” She needs me more than she knows.
“That’s… that’s ridiculous.”
“You went to a club, got wasted, walked willingly out the door and climbed into a car with a strange guy, then passed out, got carried to your bed, and woke up with him in your apartment. I coulda fucked you up so bad if I wanted to. Ruined your life, broken your spirit, and violated every single part of you. I’m gonna see to it that nobody ever gets the chance to do that, but while I’m doing that, I want to get to know you.”
Her mouth falls open in disbelief. “Oh my God, what are you talking about? Why are you even talking in the first place? You think I need someone to take care of me? Listen to me, honey…” Perfect reaction. “I’ve been taking care of myself for my entire life. And as you can see, I’m still here.” She holds her arms out and spins in a circle and then bends down to grab her phone. “I’m still alive and still breathing. I don’t need you or anyone else to… to do whatever the fuck it is you think you’re going to do. So get out before I call the cops.”
I drop my arms and slowly make my way to her again. Knowing I’m not going to hurt her, she squares her shoulders because of her pride. When I lift my hand, she flinches but doesn’t make a move to call the police. “Don’t be scared of me, Madeline.” I cup her jaw when she doesn’t cower anymore. “My bad if that was extreme, but it kind of pisses me off when I think
about what could have happened to you if I hadn’t been the one who took you home. I like you enough to want to get to know you more. I can’t very well do that if you’re dead in a ditch somewhere because some psycho took advantage of you.”
“You don’t know enough about me to say you want to know more.”
“I can.” I know everything there is to know about her down to the brand of shampoo she uses and the credit card she has on file with Amazon. Shifting on my feet, I bring my other hand up and run my fingers down the back of her neck, gently squeezing. “I like the way you throw your head back when you laugh. I like how you bite your nail when you’re nervous.” Her hand falls, and I smile. “I liked the way you danced and want to see you move your body like that for me… naked. I really like how you put your hand in mine and trusted me to take care of you, and I want to prove to you that you were right to do that. And I like how, even in your sleep, you’re the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen in my life, and straight up, I want to see how much more beautiful you can be when I’m movin’ inside you.”
She shakes her head and tries to hide how the rough movement makes her head hurt, but after the amount she drank last night, it’s obvious she has a hangover. “That’s not me.” Her tongue darts out to moisten her lips, and my dick twitches despite how professional I’m trying to be.
“What’s not you?”
“What I did last night. I… I’ve never done that, and I don’t know why I did. I can’t thank you enough for not being one of those psychos who would take advantage of me and leave me dead in a ditch. But I don’t want what you do. It was a mistake. I don’t know you, and honestly, I don’t want to.”
That, I wasn’t expecting. And I won’t accept it. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why don’t you want to know me?”
“You scare the shit out of me.” Her laughter holds no humor, and a small part of me feels like shit that I’m the one who’s making her fearful. If she only knew I was the one keeping her safe.
I tip my head down. “Sweetheart, I think I just proved to you that you don’t have to fear me.”
She swallows and pulls away from me, shaking her head as she walks around and grabs the water off the counter, then takes a huge drink. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. I just want you to go.”
“You don’t need to explain yourself. You’re right. But you do want to get to know me better. You’re just afraid.”
“You’re right,” she whispers and wipes beneath her eyes, removing a small smear of black eyeliner.
I sigh, defeated and pissed at myself that I fucked this up so badly. “I get it, but I swear I’d never hurt you.”
“I don’t know you enough to trust you.”
“I hear you, but all I ask is for you to give me a chance.” I hold my hand out to the side, opening myself to her and conveying again that I’m not a threat. “Will you give me a chance to build that trust or at least try to?”
“Why?”
I drop my chin at the same time I do my arms. “Already told you that, sweetheart.”
She doesn’t even contemplate it. “This is crazy. Listen, I really want you to leave. I’m uncomfortable, and you’re freaking me out, and if you want me to even try to begin to think about giving you a sliver of a chance, you’ll leave. Please. Just go.”
Fuck. I backed myself into that corner, so I nod. I’m not going to get anywhere else with her right now. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
“I do.”
I grab an envelope and a pen off her counter and write my number on it without saying a word. She knows what it is. Giving her what she wants—so in the very near future I can give her what she needs even though she doesn’t know she needs it yet—I turn around and head for the door. “Lock this behind me.”
Chapter 2
Maddy
As soon as the door closes, I rush to it and slide the chain and flick the deadbolt at the same time. I lower myself to the floor and grab my hair on either side of my head. “Idiot.” Then I bang the back of it on the door, which only worsens my headache. “So stupid. So, so stupid.”
God, what was I thinking? I never drink as much as I did last night, and now I know exactly why I don’t do things that allow me to lose control. Bringing a random guy home… what on earth? That’s not like me. I am not that girl. I’ve worked so, so hard to be the exact opposite of that girl.
Even though I got dressed up last night and did my makeup and wore heels, all I wanted to do was have fun with my friends. I didn’t intend to go home with a guy. But I did. Or more accurately, I invited him to my home.
And it could have gone bad. Really bad. Like the worst kind of bad, and I know that. But this guy, Q… he scared the shit out of me, but his points were valid, and I believe his intentions were good. If they weren’t, he would have taken advantage of the many times he could have hurt me last night and this morning.
I have to admit that he’s right and I hate that. It was stupid. And he’s also right about me wanting to get to know him, because one thing he got wrong was his assumption that I didn’t remember him from last night. I woke up in my bed, not exactly sure how I got there, but I did remember him, or at least things about him. How I spotted him across the room almost the second I walked in, which wasn’t hard to do, seeing as he’s tall and hot, and his sharp jawline is something people have plastic surgery to mimic.
I remember the first time our eyes caught and how my entire body flushed from one glance, something that’s never happened to me before with anyone. The way he was watching me at the club and how it made my stomach flutter. His confidence when he approached me. How his hand engulfed mine and, in the few minutes I remember being with him, how I felt safe. And I haven’t felt that in a really long time.
Yes, he scares me, but not in the sense that he’d physically hurt me. He scares me because I know that he could potentially ruin me. Break me more than I’m already broken. And frankly, I’m leery of any man in general, but especially one who acts so interested that quickly.
I don’t need someone to take care of me. He was also wrong about that even though the thought of it is kind of nice. I don’t like having to go to the oil change place because I always feel like I’m being taken advantage of since I’m a woman and don’t know anything about cars. To have Q do that for me would be great. Having him help me with my dead battery earlier in the week would have been awesome.
Without fail, I always mess up the clocks on daylight savings time. My landlord keeps putting off fixing the leaky pipe in the kitchen, and I bet if I had Q, he’d either fix the pipe himself or he’d deal with the landlord so I wouldn’t have to.
Sure, it’d be great to have someone check the door locks before bed, but I’ve done it for so long it’s just habit, so as nice as it would be, it’s not a necessity.
I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but the ultimate goal in life is to fall in love and live happily ever after, so sometimes those fairy-tale dreams can overshadow reality, and I’m afraid that with him, I’m allowing the way he makes me feel to do just that.
If I could dream up a perfect man—confident, strong, and sexy—it’d be him. One who has good intentions even though doing things like scaring the shit out of me by physically demonstrating how easily someone could hurt me may not have been the best way to go about it. He still got his point across, and even though it terrified me for a whole two seconds, he was not wrong to do that. I was the one who was wrong by going home wasted with a stranger.
I push myself to standing, hydrate more, and take some ibuprofen, and then go to the bathroom to turn the shower on, needing to put last night and this morning behind me. As I’m waiting for the water to warm, I stare at my reflection in the mirror. And I hate that I see her looking back at me. I hate that my mother gave me her best features. That her silver, almost purple eyes were passed down to me. That her high cheekbones and button nose are almost ident
ical to mine. That my petite figure and large breasts were handed down from her, too.
My hair is naturally blond like hers, but I dye it violet-red. I never want someone to recognize me as her daughter. Ever. But it happens all the time, and I’m sure it will for the rest of my life.
And what I did last night is something she would have done, which is part of why I’m so ashamed of my actions. I don’t know what got into me. Maybe seeing him there all night, knowing he was checking me out, and because I was checking him out, I lost my inhibitions. I mean, the guy is gorgeous. His jaw is just the icing on the cake, but the rest of his body—the muscles, the flat stomach, and the thick brows—that’s the delicious center.
It doesn’t take long for me to shower and get ready for the day, and I snatch up my purse and jog down the steps to my car only about an hour after I woke up, thankful I took a cab to the bar so I didn’t have to go back this morning to get it. I click the button on my key fob, get in, slam the door, and then start the ignition. As I pull away, I wait for my phone to sync to my Bluetooth and command for it to call Sadie.
She picks up after two rings, and asks, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You went home with that guy.”
As much as I want to be pissed at her for allowing me to do so, I’m not her responsibility. Although if the roles were reversed, I never would have let her go home wasted with a random stranger. Then again, if it would have been my responsibility last night, I would have failed supremely because the alcohol affected me more than I thought it would have so I don’t have a leg to stand on. “I passed out, and he slept on the couch.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He said he wanted to make sure I was okay, then lectured me this morning on how he could have done whatever he wanted to me last night and how I need to be more careful.” I omit the part where he disarmed me of my phone and pepper spray and had me pinned to the wall with his hand covering my mouth in less than five seconds.