Lying and Kissing(28)

Luka marched over to the woman on the floor. She was still half-dazed from the throw but, when she saw who it was, she tried to scramble backward away from him. He looked between me and her and the look on his face was one of raw protective fury. He reached down and grabbed the woman by the front of her sparkling top, lifting her easily into the air until her head almost brushed the ceiling. “This woman hurt you?” he asked. Emotion made his accent thick and heavy.

I nodded. And then my stomach lurched because his expression went from angry to murderous. He was going to kill her, for touching me. His bodyguard was by his side in an instant, ready to help.

“Wait!” I croaked. “Don’t—don’t hurt her!”

Luka glanced at me, but didn’t release his grip.

“I don’t need you to,” I said.

He looked back to the woman. He was going to do it. This is the only way he knows.

“I don’t want you to!” I blurted.

Nothing happened for a second. Then he turned his head slowly towards me, as if I’d said something absurd. He held my gaze for a moment and, just for the briefest second, I saw that flicker again, the hint of something underneath. Something—someone—who needed me.

He suddenly tossed the woman away like a bag of garbage. She yelped with pain as she hit the floor and quickly crawled away from him, terrified but alive.

Luka strode over to me and crouched, then scooped me up into his arms. I wanted to run away and hide, humiliated by the way I looked and still shaking from the sudden violence. I twisted my head away from him.

But he put his hand on my cheek and coaxed me to look at him, as gentle as he had been brutal a moment before. He was frowning at me. “You don’t ever have to hide yourself from me,” he admonished, his voice heavy with emotion again. He jerked his head at the bodyguard and the man nodded and ran off ahead of him. To ready the car, I realized.#p#分页标题#e#

“Where are we going?” I rasped, my throat raw from crying.

“To my apartment,” he told me. “You can shower, and wash that bitch’s touch off you.”

His apartment. And after I’d cleaned myself up...sex?! I was still reeling from the suddenness and brutality of the attack. I was having a hard time getting my mind back onto the date...and the mission. I just nodded. Then, as he carried me to the door, I glanced back at the groaning woman on the floor. “How did your bodyguard know?” I whispered. “How did he know there was something wrong?”

“Yuri sees everything,” said Luka with a sort of grim pride.

Yuri. The man with the scar now had a name.

Outside the bathroom, a crowd had gathered to see what the commotion was all about. When they saw Luka stride out with me in his arms, they parted like the Red Sea. Through the open door behind us, the blonde woman was visible, still lying on the floor. I saw a couple of women look from her to me to Luka, their expressions incredulous. Then one of them muttered something to the other. “Tupa Karova!” Stupid cow! About the blonde, not me.

The next comment made me freeze inside...yet, worryingly, my heart gave a flutter. “What was she thinking? Couldn’t she see the American girl’s his?”



 



I looked at the flawless, pale leather as I climbed into the car and thought about how many ways I was about to ruin it. But Luka didn’t seem to care about the toilet water in my hair or the mascara running down my face. He just set me carefully down on the back seat and climbed in beside me. I was starting to breathe again, but I was still lost. I could taste blood in my mouth and my head was ringing. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. For a moment, as his strong arms released me and he brushed a strand of wet hair off my forehead, I just allowed myself to...be. I let myself sink into the soft leather and enjoyed the stillness, forgetting where I was.

With me, that’s an incredibly dangerous thing to do.

As we started to move, Luka leaned across me and did up my seat belt. The metallic click resonated through my entire body.

That was all it took.

It all came together: the car; the feeling of a man doing up my seat belt, just as my dad had done for me that day; the snow whipping past the windows.

I was too wiped out to use my translating trick to distract me and my emotional defenses had been shattered. I could feel my sense of time and place sliding as I was ripped away into the past.





Part of me wants to say that I was normal. The sort of girl who went to crazy parties and had a million friends, as if I was perfect before it all went wrong. But the truth is that, even back then, I probably hit the books a little too hard and played it a little too safe.