Page 9 of Too Cursed To Kiss
CHAPTER SIX
Iwoke up in a bed with a skull-splitting headache. Cracking my eyes to scan the room, I was startled by my reflection in the mirrors on the ceiling. Hell-not-warmed-over stared back. Where the hell was I? Thank God, I was fully clothed except for my jacket. Mr. Clove-smoke had said I’d been poisoned. Did I feel poisoned?
Every muscle screaming with the effort, I rolled toward the edge of the bed with cold sweat dripping down my back. Yup, I felt poisoned. Holy crap, was I dying?
I looked around through slitted eyes. The room wasn’t much bigger than the bed and minimally furnished in light-colored wood. One matching chair had my jacket on it. There were no paintings, TV, or knickknacks. Only the mirrored ceiling made any statement at all. The place was clean. Not a dive but certainly not a hospital.
I’d read about kidnapping, serial killers, and crazy rapists that kept people alive for years. Blood thumped in my ears as I listened for voices.
Nothing.
I sat up, smothering a moan and closing my eyes in a futile attempt to seize mental control of the situation. I had to pull it together if I was going to get out of here alive.
My chest tightened at the clunk of boots on a wooden floor. I sucked in a breath as the door swung open. Mr. Clove-smoke crossed the threshold but didn’t advance farther into the room. His presence filled the space like he owned the room, which he might. Broad shoulders tapered to a trim waist. He was still wearing the goddamn sunglasses. Relief was a ridiculous feeling under the circumstances, but at least my captor wasn’t a total stranger. Well, he was, but you know what I mean.
“Where the hell are we?” I yelled, launching off the bed. The room spun, and I fell back, brushing the hair out of my face.
“Spokane,” he said, leaning against the wall. What might have been a smile flickered over his lush pink lips.
“Spoke—the hell—no. You did not drive me across state borders while I was passed out. Take me back to Portland.”
He crossed his arms, and the asshole grinned while he shook his head side to side. That weird, musky scent was thick in the air.
My normal reaction to fear was outrage, but I should still be more scared of him. “Are you listening to me?” My shout sent crippling pains through my skull. Waiting for the throbbing to dissipate, I ran through what I’d remembered, jumping to the hopeful conclusion that rape wasn’t on the menu, or we’d have dealt with that. Still, he’d abducted me, so I couldn’t discount it completely. The experts tell you to keep talking, to humanize your relationship with your abductor. For me, that shouldn’t be hard. I was going to beat the shit out of him—when I could stand.
I sighed and raised my chin. “I will count to five, andthen I will begin to scream and not stop until you take me back to Portland.” Inside, I was solid ice. No one even knew where I was.
He cocked his head, considering me. I swear he smothered a smile. “Go ahead. There’s no point. No one will hear you. The perimeter of the house is soundproof. Besides, I have every intention of taking you back to your home when you are healed.”
“When in the nine hells will that be?” I whispered. The “when you are healed” part lingered.
“In about twenty minutes, when the medicine takes effect.” He hadn’t moved.
“Medicine?” I squeaked out. “What medicine?” My head spun around the word. The bastard had drugged me? Was that why I felt like crap?
“You were poisoned. The first treatment I gave you did not work. I brought you here to give you the antivenin.”
“Snake bite?” I scanned my bare arms. The telltale red prick was inside my elbow. The bastard had shot me up with something while I was passed out. Why was I even trusting what he said was true? My baseline was to give no one trust because they rarely deserved it.
“Not a snake. It treats a toxin or poison,” he said, adjusting his glasses.
“How do you know it’s poison?” The only thing I’d had at the club was the beer. Could it have been on the bottle? Jules? Who would want to poison me?
“The pen you took from Gentry’s house.”
“What? How would you know…?” If he knew that, he had something to do with Gentry’s death. Oh my God. The feeling of being watched had been real. “Did you kill Gentry?” The horror caught inmy throat.
He straightened up. “No. We can leave when I can touch you again. Twenty minutes more.” He opened the door.
I blinked twice, processing. The door closed before I could even get an answer out.
What was weirder than all this? The wordstouch youcrawled down my spine like I was hot for him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Come back here!” I whipped a pillow at the door. The footsteps stopped and then started to thud toward me, every footstep reducing the tension in my shoulders. It made no sense that I was happy he was coming back. He’d said he hadn’t killed Gentry, but I bet he knew who did.
“Yes?” he asked, cracking the door open but staying on the threshold. His pants hugged his body, and his black shirt was opened one button too low. With the leather jacket thrown over a shoulder and his hair hanging to his shoulders, he had the kind of build that if you take their shirt off you pass out from their sheer beauty. Yeah, he looked good. Not the Tyre kind of bulk, but the sleek muscular form that sent tingles where no sensible woman should be getting them in my current situation. Rockstar muscled leanness with a strength and danger that undulated without being showy. Then there was his voice. Why the hell was I thinking these things when I should be thinking about how to convince him to take me home?
