Dare Me (Take Me 2)

One of the night staff arrived with all of the bags. “Would you like me to unpack, Mr. Castillo?”

“No, thank you, John. We’ll take care of it.”

“Very good. Anything else you require?”

His gaze drifted to Nikki. Who said, “You still have my laptop strapped to you. That’s all I care about.”

The butler’s assistant didn’t get it, so Damen said, “No worries. We’re fine, thank you. That’ll be all.”

The wet bar was always stocked, along with a mini-fridge. Lamont would have seen to it that there was fresh ice and sparkling and still water at the ready. And Damen had requested he draw a bath when they were just a few minutes out, so he directed Nikki to the master en suite.

“Jesus, Damen,” she said on a gasp as she entered that room. “The Plaza Hotel called. They’d like their entire residential floor back.”

He snickered. “If you want a bath, take a bath. If you want to fall into bed and make love, we’ll make love. If you just want to sleep, we’ll sleep.”

Over her shoulder, she asked, “What is the point of all this space?”

“I like to spread out.”

“How often are you here?” she countered. “To spread out?”

“Every now and then. Mads goes to a private boarding school. My mother spends the majority of her time volunteering or in group therapy.”

He crossed to where she stood and asked, “By the way, how are you coping with being shot at?”

17

The question took her aback.

Or, rather, the fact that Damen had posed it was what caught her off guard.

“You don’t get to psychoanalyze me,” she said.

“I’m not psychoanalyzing you. I’m asking a question. We were under attack. Are you all right?”

“I don’t like hotel stairwells,” she reiterated, squaring her shoulders. “I like guns pointed in my direction even less. And I’m certainly not a fan of bullets flying dangerously close to my body. And other peoples’ bodies.”

“Duly noted,” he commented. “That doesn’t really answer my question, though. Are you all right?” he repeated.

Nikki turned and faced him. She said, “I’m trained to work in disaster zones, to be prepared for any inevitability.”

“Except a loaded gun at your head, yes?”

They stared at each other.

She took a moment to consider what she wanted to say on the subject. Eventually, she told him, “In training, they use a lot of scare-tactics. They force you into impossible-to-escape situations and terrify you so much, you literally want to wet your pants. In the back of your mind, however… You know that if they pulled the trigger, they’d be shooting blanks.”

“Not so in my world,” he quietly said.

“Definitely not so in your world.”

His hand cupped the side of her face. “I’m sorry you were frightened.”

“I was,” she confessed. And swallowed down a lump of emotion.

“Nik—”

“Yet… I wasn’t locked in that fear, thinking all was lost. Damen,” she said as she stared intently at him. “I trusted you. I knew from the second that device went off to the moment we exchanged cars and came here that I was in very, very capable hands. Your hands.”