There was something seriously wrong with me.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he informed me. “Not alone.”
I stared at him, my heart echoing through my ears. “Excuse me?”
“I need you to get the location of our friends. Bring them in. I’ll be back in the morning to deal with them,” Hades instructed, again staring at me while speaking to Swiss.
Swiss nodded then winked at me. “Good luck, darlin’. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”
He left on that statement, one that sounded like an omen, a threat and a double entendre all in one.
“He touch you?”
My eyes darted back to Hades, whose eyes were running over the length of my body as if he was looking for a gunshot wound I’d failed to mention.
I opened my mouth to tell him no, I hadn’t been touched. Then I remembered that grip on my hip. The way it had gone from borderline painful to suggestive of something else entirely.
It hadn’t gone further than that, but it could’ve. He was capable of doing that to me. Confident in using the fear of rape to render me powerless.
I’d thought that Hades couldn’t descend any further into a murderous glower. I was wrong. The atmosphere changed with my silence. With what he took from it.
“He fucking touched you?” he murmured, barely a whisper. But every word was pointed, every letter a dagger.
“No,” I responded quickly. “Or not really. I just, he just...” I swallowed. “I’m sure my hip won’t even bruise, but he made it clear that he was more than willing to do ... more,” I said lamely, embarrassed by the way my voice sounded weak and full of holes.
The fury in Hades’s irises was unyielding, deep enough to drown in. His entire body was held so taut, he was almost shaking.
“He won’t touch you. Ever,” Hades replied. Another oath. One that had goosebumps erupting on my forearms, on my insides. “No one will.”
I didn’t have time to unpack that statement and all of the undertones it contained because Hades spoke again.
“I’ll follow you home.”
I stared at him. “Follow me home?”
He nodded once, the simple gesture somehow violent. “You think I’m lettin’ you go home alone after this? The only other option is you staying here.”
My eyes went around the room. There was nothing wrong with it. In fact, it was actually much nicer than I’d expected it to be. I hadn’t had a chance to properly catalog the interior. You walked right into the living area, with couches scattered in the middle of the room in varying shades of dark brown and in surprisingly good condition. I remembered that almost the entire club had been murdered a year or two ago. They would’ve been new, the sofas, since this place was the sight of a massacre.
Dread flooded through me at that thought.
Someone had gone to great lengths to erase that past. The sofas were cluttered with pillows, not overly masculine, all in shades of brown and black with geometric designs on them. There were even a couple of chunky throws arranged over the back of the sofa. The coffee table had coasters stacked neatly, some paperbacks and even a candle. Over in the corner, there was a pool table, a small stage and a stripper pole. There was a bar at the back of the room, the wooden countertop gleaming, various bottles arranged on the shelves behind it. To the right was another room, double doors closed with a wooden placard with the word ‘Church’ carved in it.
The place was very clean, almost stylish, definitely masculine, and even a little endearing to me, but the thought of staying somewhere this foreign was terrifying. Something horrible had happened to me tonight, leaving me feeling uneven and a little sick. I needed to be around familiar things, in the place I’d turned into a home. I wanted my dog. But I also did not want to be alone.
Hades was solving that problem.
Maybe I should’ve asked more questions. Maybe I should’ve fought this. No matter what kind of physical safety he offered, I knew on some level, this man was my destruction. I sensed that letting him come home with me, allowing him to fill the role of scary protector guy, was going to do something, change something that could never be undone.
“No, home,” I whispered. “I want to go home.”
He nodded once then stepped aside for me to walk out the door. I did. Then he followed me out.
Chapter Four
Hades helped me with my groceries. Well, actually, he refused to let me carry a single one, somehow performing the act of bundling them all in his strong and capable arms before depositing them on my kitchen counter. This was done after he’d had me unlock the house so he could do a ‘walk through’, whatever that was. I was ordered to stay outside while he did that. Because I rarely did as I was ordered, I followed him. As did Sirius.