Page 83 of The Vigilante's Lover
15: Mia
No sooner has the scream escaped my lips when I force it to stop.
Don’t be a ninny, Mia, I tell myself. Be brave. Face this.
The man stands at the end of my bed, but he’s not Jax. He’s fair skinned and not quite as tall. He smokes his cigarette. I can only see him when he inhales from it.
“Who are you?” I finally ask.
He leans forward, the cigarette trapped between his lips. His face is eerily red from the faint light.
He takes the cigarette from his mouth and disappears into the dark again. I follow his hand where the only light is now, by the banister in the corner. He hasn’t tied my feet or body, only my wrists.
But it’s dark. He can’t see me. He’s not wearing a night-vision monocle like Jax did that first night.
I think about the ties, touching the turns with my fingertips. Slipknots. Standard issue. My hands are separated, so I can’t use the opposite fingers to untie one like I did in the barn. But I remember what Jax said. “Work with the knots.”
A slipknot is meant to slide before it locks into place. I just have to move opposite the direction of the turn.
“You didn’t answer me,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. I roll my fingers in as far as they will go, trying to pluck at the cross bend in the knot.
“I don’t plan to,” he says.
His accent is German. Could this be Klaus? The dead Klaus?
Or not-so-dead?
But Klaus was Jax’s friend. He wouldn’t act like this. I go back to concentrating on my knots.
“What does Jax want with a civilian like you?” he asks.
“What does Jax usually want a woman for?” I fire back.
The man chuckles. “True enough.”
Despite my focus on the knot, my belly burns at how everyone assumes I’m some plaything for Jax. I refuse to believe it. Maybe everything I know about dalliances comes from novels, but I’m pretty sure the way we feel is what stories are told about. Not the stuff of beer ads and condom commercials.
I’ve loosened the knot.
I pause to rest my arm just for a moment. My eyes are starting to adjust to the low light. The man’s cigarette drops ash on my bed.
“You’re going to start a fire on my grandma’s quilt,” I say bitterly.
He shakes his head as he takes another drag. His hair is light colored and shaggy.
I start working on the other knot. I can’t pull free just yet. This man can’t know I can get out of his pathetic ties.
“What did he find so interesting about you?” he asks. The cigarette comes around to the side of the bed and the mattress dips as he sits next to me.
My skin crawls, but I realize that this is my opportunity to get the upper hand. “Why don’t you come find out?” I say, hoping I sound suggestive. I’m not good at this.
The hand with the cigarette stays by his knee, but another one touches my shoulder. I try not to flinch. The other knot is loose enoughfor me to go free. I can’t risk that he’ll see me if I let my arm down, so I leave it high.
His hand moves down, tracing the curve of my breast. I steel myself from concerning myself with that and wait for the proper moment.
“Very nice,” he says. “Maybe we need a little illumination so I can see what got Jax so distracted that he made mistakes.”
My throat tightens. What mistakes? Was he caught again?
