CHAPTER EIGHT

I bolted upright, chased into reality by nightmares of bloody stumps and bullet holes. The gasp in my throat wheezed out jagged and sharp, but it echoed with all the desperation locked up in my chest. My heart hammered, a deafening crack of panic that reverberated through my skull, agitating the sharp spears of pain cobwebbing across my crown.

I moaned, hand flying up to touch the goose egg protruding from the back of my skull.

"Easy, love," came the deep, guttural growl from the shadows. "You hit your head pretty hard."

My gaze jumped to the blurry outline of a giant folded into a chair near the foot of my bed. "Where am I?" My fingers twisted into the sheets puddled in my lap. "Who are you?"

"I think you know."

Taylen's butchered and lifeless body popped into my head, unwarranted and brutal. "You killed Taylen."

"I did," said the shadow, with a hint of an accent I hadn't picked up before.

I dampened my lips with an equally dry tongue. "Why?"

"I have a low tolerance for cowards who put their hands on a woman."

I blinked. "You killed him for me?"

"No, darling, I took his hand for touching you. I killed him because he came onto my property and I'm possessive of what's mine."

My cotton mouth increased, even as I swallowed sharply. "Are you going to kill me, too?"

"I haven't decided."

It probably wasn't the wisest decision to take my eyes off the very large, very dangerous threat only mere feet away, but I found my attention drifting to the sturdy four poster bed with heavy, velvet drapes and the patchwork of navy and black shadows concealing everything past the bed. The only light came from the ornate lamp on my right. A blessing.

"I'm sorry for..." my apology faltered when I glanced down at the black t-shirt draped over me like a tent soaked in the musky scent of wilderness, spices, and leather. "Where are my clothes?"

"They were wet."

That made sense. I remembered the cutting drizzle of rain and ice plastering the fabric to my skin.

"Did you take them off me?" I asked tentatively, mortified by the mere thought of a perfect stranger undressing me.

I could have sworn I heard a chuckle from my companion. "Well, I wasn't about to let anyone else do it."

The skin on my cheeks warmed even as I slowly drew the sheets higher to my chest. It was pointless, I knew. He'd already seen ... everything. Hiding now was redundant.

"I was a gentleman," he said as if reading my thoughts.

Meaning that he hadn't looked? Hadn't touched? I couldn't bring myself to ask.

"What's your name?"

My hesitation was long even to my own ears. Twenty years of being Naya Blackwell only to have all that thrown into the trash with a new name was going to take a lot of getting used to, but Malcolm had been clear not to tell anyone who I was. This mountain of a man may have saved me from Taylen, but I didn't know him.

"Did you forget?" he teased.

I snaked a tongue over my lips nervously; it would be the first time I would be saying my new name out loud. I wasn't ready.

"Katie Smith."

A long stretch of silence followed where my lie hung in the still night like a beacon.

"Katie Smith," my companion repeated slowly. Weighing the syllables as if testing their merit. "Where are you from, Katie Smith?"

The way he said it, I had a feeling he didn't believe me, but was waiting to see how long I would keep up the pretenses.

I had a bigger problem.

I hadn't read beyond my new name on the file, and I didn't know how to answer the rest of his questions.

"Never let them see your true face,"Mother's caution filtered through the white noise of panic building in my throat.

I doubted she had this exact situation in mind, but it would have to apply. I couldn't let the giant see me falter. I had to play the unfamiliar role until I knew what I was dealing with. If I slipped, he could kill me or he could know Jarrett. The Brixton's owned half the diamond empire in the world. If my host didn't know Jarrett in person, he would know the name and he could take me back in exchange for whatever he wanted. That was one of the lessons of marrying into a family like Jarrett's; people will use you, but I couldn't go back to him.

The decision was clear — I had to become Katie Smith, whoever she was. I had to keep my head down and my eyes open for the first chance at escape.

"May I use your washroom?"

The wood beneath him creaked with the shift of his weight. One arm extended in the direction of the wall on the far right, cloaked in darkness.

Carefully, I nudged back the sheets with a tremor in my fingers and slid my bare legs over the side of the mattress. I was painfully aware of the eyes watching me plant my feet to the cool hardwood and brush the hem of what I guessed was his top down around my knees. I padded quietly across the unfamiliar space to the thick, black void at the center and reached in to pat the inner wall.

The man behind me said nothing as I searched. He'd all but become a ghost lost somewhere behind me.

I didn't glance back to check as I located the switch and quickly slipped inside.

The lock cracked.

It defied the laws of sound. It altered everyone within a thousand miles radius that I was locking myself in the bathroom to avoid facing the man waiting for me on the other side.

A much calmer part of me was certain I was over thinking the noise. Plus, who wouldn't lock the door when using the bathroom in a strange place? It was normal, yet I knew deep in my core that he knew I was hiding.

"Oh God," I whimpered under my breath as I turned to survey my new surroundings. And froze.

Rich, dark mahogany unfolded in a tapestry of beauty, unlike anything I had ever looked upon. Columns of handcrafted carvings extended from walls lined with shelves and glass surrounding a stunning, marble counter and sink in glossy black. An ornate mirror was mounted over a claw foot tub made entirely of black ceramic and trimmed with gold. The floors were checkered titles that reflected a ceiling I immediately gasped at the sight of.

Icicles of clear crystal danced from a wrought iron chandelier, casting a cool halo of light across the domed glass cut into the ceiling, overlooking an endless night sky.

The entire room was something out of a book. I could have stayed there for the rest of my life and marveled at its sheer magnificence if there wasn't a strange man in the next room, expecting me to return.

Shaking myself, I hurried to the wide windows overlooking a ... a sudden and painful drop to my death. I couldn't even see the ground or where the ledge ended, and night began. Escaping through the window was not an option.

Desperate and choking back my fears, I shut the glass and took a step back.

"Stay calm. Remember you are a Blackwell. You will figure this out," I reminded myself with far more resolve than I felt as I turned to the room once more.

I caught sight of my reflection in the broad mirror over the sink and escape took a momentary backseat.

I was a thing of nightmares. Pale strands hung in wild tangles around a stark face streaked with jagged lines of mascara and twin haloes of black. I resembled a corpse.

Horrified, I rushed to the sink and snapped on the faucet. Using the hand soap in the black, marble pump and the tips of eight fingers, I scrubbed and rinsed, and repeated the process until the water ran clear and my skin felt raw. I was sure to break out in the morning and without moisturizer, there was sure to be dry patches, but it couldn't be helped; I had none of my things and I wasn't going to sit around with eyeliner running down my face.

With damp fingers, I combed through the unbound coils someone had freed from the hundreds of pins Porsha had expertly fastened into place. I guessed it was my host, but I couldn't imagine a man that size taking the time to pluck out thin slivers of metal from an unconscious woman's hair. Granted, he had undressed me. Maybe it wasn't such a stretch.

With nowhere to escape and having already spent far too long hiding, I succumbed to my fate and left the washroom.

There was light.

It shone from an intricate knot of twisted metal and dripping crystal. A sister to the washroom, the carved wood ran over moldings and encompassed the edges of the bed's four posters. The headboard was an overwhelming chunk of mahogany with a built-in mirror and matching end tables.

But it was the walls.

The craftsmanship of the moldings, the bookshelves build directly into two entire sections.

I was enthralled.

Entranced.

I almost forgot about the figure until he peeled away from the creases where the lights didn't touch and nearly scared me out of my skin.

"Goodness!" I gasped, hand snapping to my startled heart.

I'd seen him earlier in that garden with the silver roses and when he'd shot Taylen. I had an idea of how he looked in the dark with murder in his eyes, but in the soft light of twilight clad in a matching top to mine, his hair a dark wave around a deep, rugged face marred by scars, he was ... something. I couldn't be sure what because I'd never seen anyone who looked like him. I'd seen boyish and good-looking. I knew what classically handsome was and charming, even pretty. I had seen all manner of men throughout my life in varying ages and positions, but this man was nothing like them.

I just didn't have a word for him yet.

"Welcome back," he murmured, and I flushed.

"Your home is ... beautiful, from what I've seen," I murmured, catching myself staring and quickly looking away.

"I'll give you a tour."

My fingers twisted into the hem of my ... his top, unsure of what else to do with them.

"I should go. I've already taken up so much of your time."

Because that was the sane thing to do. I had Jarrett to still worry about and Malcolm was expecting me to be on schedule, and I didn't even have the bag. What was I supposed to do without it? How was I supposed to get to the airport without my paperwork?

A new swell of panic rose up in my chest, hot and desperate. The kind that made the whole world seem infinite and enormous, so I felt like I was being swallowed up. But no matter what, I had to stay calm. I had to treat this man the way I would Mother when she was angry.

Quiet.

Obedient.

As careful as if approaching an angry, venomous snake.

Malcolm wasn't there to protect me, so I had to be smart.

Plus, this guy shot and killed a man. That wasn't normal behavior. He was clearly dangerous. Putting distance between us was the best course of action. Except...

"I'm afraid I can't allow that, sweetheart."