Love the Way You Lie (Stripped 1)

I know that from experience.

“Candy.” This time it’s a whisper. I know she won’t answer. Whether she’s high or just gone, she’s beyond my reach.

Silly to think I could help her, when I can’t even help myself.

I climb over the men on the stairs, hopeless and distracted. I almost don’t notice the man who holds the door open for me. In fact I’m already turning toward the sidewalk outside Candy’s apartment when I feel the prickle on the back of my neck. The same one I felt the first night he showed up at the strip club.

I freeze. Every muscle in my body locks tight.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” comes a masculine murmur behind me. A familiar male voice.

My heart pounds. My hands clench around the handle of the duffel bag.

“Honey,” he says softly. And there’s none of the mocking this time, even though the name is fake. He sounds mostly concerned.

Oh God, it’s him. I’d hoped I was wrong. He may say he’s not going to hurt me, but no man shows up uninvited to a stripper’s room with good intentions. I don’t turn, don’t face him. I speak to the empty sidewalk instead. “What are you doing here?”

“I followed you.” He pauses. “It’s not safe here.”

A chill runs over my skin. How did I miss him? And what else have I missed? Time on the run has given me certain skills, but I’m not a spy. I’m an heiress. A principessa. At least that’s what I was trained to be. I can host a dinner party for the most wealthy, lethal men in the country, but I don’t know how to spot a tail. I don’t know how to fight one.

I swallow hard. “What do you want from me?”

A blowjob? A fuck? These are the only things I have to give.

His sigh caresses my temple, gently ruffling my hair. “I just want to talk.”

That makes me scoff. He may stalk me, and I may fuck him, but at least we can be honest about it. “Then why are you in my space?”

Politeness is a ten-dollar bill tossed onto the stage. But for this, stalking and holding open the door in a parody of gentlemanly manners, he can get out of my personal space. He can stop making my heart beat too fast and my skin feel clammy and hot.

After a pause, he steps back. Not far, but enough that I can breathe again. I turn to face him—and again I’m struck with that sense of déjà vu, of recognition. Have I met him before? I would remember that face, the hardness of his features, the hint of vulnerability in his dark eyes, but all I have is a strange feeling, like I trust him even though he’s a stranger.

Obviously it’s a feeling I can’t trust.

I consider running for it, as useless as that would be. He’s too fast for me. And I don’t want to see what he’s like when he gets rough. And besides, I’d run the risk of leading him to the motel room—and to Clara.

It’s not like I could call the cops on him—at least not without answering a lot of other uncomfortable questions. Instead I let him ease the duffel bag away from me when he moves to take it from me. Without asking, of course. He slings it over his shoulder in a dark parallel to chivalry. He’ll let me go when he’s ready to.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” His gaze remains on me as we stand in front of Candy’s shit-hole apartment building. This building, this ground had seen violence before. I can feel it vibrate through the concrete. And it probably will again—I just hope it won’t be today.

I press my hands together, hating how helpless I feel. “Then let’s walk. In public.”

When he doesn’t answer, I head back toward the club. He falls in step beside me.

Public is a generous term for the street. No one would come running to help if I screamed. But it’s better than letting him follow me home. A whole lot better.

“Relax,” he says, somewhat dry and almost sad. “If I wanted to fuck you, I’d have met you in the club.”

And if he’d wanted to kill me, he could have done it a hundred times by now. He’d followed me here. I’m still alive. But I can’t relax. Not while I’m wondering whether he followed me any other night and what he saw. Who he saw. “Plenty of guys would like a freebie.”

Has he followed me home? I have to assume he hasn’t. I have to believe she’s safe, otherwise there’s no point to any of this.

“I’ll always pay,” he says, and I know he’s teasing a little. But a little bit not. “Cross my heart.”

It’s more than money now. It’s also distance. He’s drawing a line in the sand. He’s telling me he needs that line just as much as I do. “And tip,” I add. Because I can tease too.

His smile always dawns like the morning, slow and warm, wiping away the night’s chill. “Not just the tip, though.”