Five Weeks (Seven Series #3)(47)

Until he grabbed my arm and spun me around, cuffing my wrists behind my back.
“Think I don’t know what’s going through your mind? You’re transparent.”
“You can’t stay in hiding forever,” I said. “What happens when you want to go gambling or out to grab some tacos?”
He tried to wrap the cord around my neck, and I ducked to the right.
“Come on, girl. Let’s go for a walk.”
Hell’s bells, Evil Izzy was about to show her face and this was not the time. I bit down on my contempt for him and kept a level head. “I’ll walk on my own.”
“Then walk.”
I compliantly moved past him into the bedroom and had difficulty getting on the bed. When I crawled on my knees, it tugged my nightgown and I fell on my right side.
“Maybe you can just cuff one arm to the bed. That way I can at least move around,” I suggested. “Maybe if you show me you can be nice, I’ll be nice back.”
Without a word, he unlocked the cuffs and pulled my left wrist to the post. The rails on either side were wrought iron, and he cuffed me below the horizontal bar so I couldn’t escape.
“Where are your parents?” I asked. “Do you have any family? I don’t remember you talking about them.”
“Now you’re interested?”
I shrugged. “I have no secrets to hide. You’re the one who’s been evasive about his past. I’ve told you all about my family.”
“Oh yeah. The family you bailed on. You seem to like running out on your problems. You’ve spent years running from city to city, constantly searching for something better.”
“Movement is life. You should be flexible to the ebb and flow of change.”
Hawk chuckled. “Izzy Monroe, always the philosophical one.”
“It’s what attracted you to me, remember? I gave you a little food for thought, comparing laundry with life.”
“Your ass and red hair attracted me to you. I don’t remember what the hell you said to me in the Laundromat. I just noticed your basket of sexy panties and knew you’d be hot in the sack. I was right,” he said, inching closer to the bed. Then he got that lustful look in his eyes.
“I think I want waffles,” I quickly said. “Do you have any of those frozen ones? Also, a glass of milk with a little chocolate sauce would be great. Low-fat milk. But if you don’t have any of that, then maybe some grapefruit juice. But only the kind in those little cans; you know I don’t like the cocktail juice. What kind of cereal do you have?”
He waved his hand and left the room. I always knew the one way to turn that man off was to start running my mouth. Hawk wasn’t a big talker. Even in the bedroom, the only sounds he made were a few grunts. He’d never been an aggressive lover, but now that I was tied up, I began to notice a change in his personality. He leered more, seemingly aroused by his new dominant role.
I squeezed my fingers together and tried twisting my hand in different ways to pull it through the cuff. He had tightened the link, and with my swollen wrists, it was a waste of time. I sat on the edge of the bed and quietly opened the drawer on the bedside table.
He hadn’t cleared everything out of the bedroom. I noticed a ballpoint pen and a few notepads. I tried squatting on the floor to look beneath the bed, but I couldn’t. So I extended my left leg underneath and slowly ran it to the right, trying to feel around. My toe touched a cord, but I couldn’t get a grip with the nightstand in my way. I also felt a lightweight box, but my mind focused on the cord. He might have a phone hidden under there, which would have made him a certifiable idiot, but that’s what I was counting on.
I stood up and rubbed my good eye, looking around. A picture hung on the wall above the bed, secured by a nail. Could I use a nail as a weapon?
So I had a nail, a pen, a lamp, and notepads to take down a man who weighed twice as much as me. I also possibly had a phone, or at the very least, a cord.
“Hell’s bells, Izzy. What have you gotten yourself into now?” I whispered.
Discouraged, I sat on the edge of the bed and thought about Jericho. After all these years, he could still merely breathe on my skin and make me squirm like a virgin. Sometimes a woman has experienced too much life to have any blush left in her cheeks, but the man who puts it there is someone not easily forgotten.
Second chances. There was that phrase again. I’d been so eager to give that opportunity to Hawk, but unwilling to give it to the one person who really meant something to me. I knew why. Hawk was safe and easy. If it didn’t work out, no tears on my pillow. But Jericho still held a piece of my heart. The last piece. The one that wasn’t broken. If I took the chance of letting him back in, only to be cast aside again, I’d have no heart left to give.