When the Dark Wins

Lights flickered...on.

By the door, a hand showed on the wall, fingers leaving the switch.

A dark-haired man appeared, gun high, sweeping the room. He saw me and my mouth twitched.

Bye, asshole.

I was outside the railing, balancing, ready to...

What?

Fall and die? Four stories down, unless I accurately judged the swing to land on the balcony below.

To die... Not yet. Please.

He walked into my room. Though briefly eclipsed by the man with the wavy, black hair, I knew him.

Isak.

Blond hair cinched at the back. Tall. Broader of shoulder, heavier of build, than I recalled. The shirt he wore was red – burgundy red. Good for masking blood.

His thought or mine?

My lips parted, skin peeling from skin.

His collar was precisely folded.

His pants, sinfully dark, were rich of color and cut.

He’d dwarf the sun with his brilliance, let alone the fluorescents of my room.

His thoughts locked, snicker-snack, onto mine and froze me; my fingers clutched the wrought-iron, mock arrowheads.

Who the fuck decorated a railing with arrowheads?

Go! A whisper, a suggestion.

Fingers uncurled. My fingers.

Mine.

Horrified, I was unsure who was making my hands do what they did. Would he make me suicide? I watched them as they unlocked from the metal, felt my weight shift, and I fell, outward into space, pivoting on my feet where they rested on the edge of the concrete of the balcony.

My last link with the solid world.

I fell.

Strong hands caught my wrists and I jarred to a halt, gasping. Those hands hauled me inward, winching me to their owner. The circle of man flesh about my wrists was potent and promising.

“Hello.”

My stomach kissed the railings and I dared raise my head, dared meet the stark blue eyes of my possessor.

“Tell me, Red. Were you planning to shoot me?” That Scandinavian accent. In any other man, at any other time, I’d find it desirable.

Red? My mouth slackened, my tongue thought of lying. But, I couldn’t lie in the face of this man, never had been able to during the days with him in Cuba.

Those days. Three. Fucking. Days.