Meiling pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I should have dropped everything I was doing and just gone right then. I know how she is when she doesn’t get her way. I was in the middle of doing some work I had promised for someone. I didn’t want to go clubbing in Colombia. I told her to be cautious, to check her drinks. To watch out for who she picked up, all the standard warnings. I told her I’d fly out in a few days, but she was angry with me for not coming right away. Then she went silent. That wasn’t entirely unusual with her when she was angry with me, but it persisted long past the time she normally would have answered. I have contacts in Colombia, friends who know those scenes, and they tried to help me track her, but it was like she just vanished. There wasn’t even evidence of her at the hotel she’d been staying in. That told me she was in real trouble. Whoever took her had real clout.”
All the while she spilled the details of her last failure with her cousin, Gedeon continued to rinse out her hair and then massaged conditioner into it.
“You do know your cousin chose her own path, Lotus. You can’t take what happened to her on your shoulders. She had choices, many of them, and she went down that road all on her own. Even had you been the catalyst because she was angry with you, that was still a choice. I very much doubt you were the reason she went out that night. She was going whether she had the conversation with you or not.”
Meiling knelt on the floor of the shower, staring down at the gray and blue stone tiles, watching as the water hit like teardrops and ran toward the drain. She didn’t even know how she came to be in this place with this man. These were her choices, her path she’d taken. This was a man who killed easily and often. He might solve problems, but his solutions were more often than not permanent.
“Would you have killed me because I saw you shift, or because I witnessed you killing all those men?”
He rinsed the conditioner from her hair, his hands shielding her face from the water. “I’m not going to kill you. I told you that.”
“I’m aware. That wasn’t the question.”
He began combing out tangles, careful to prevent pulling on her scalp. “Both. I can’t leave witnesses to anything I’ve done. It’s a law in the shifter world, to protect all shifters, that no outsider can know of us. I suspect you’ve known of us long before you witnessed me shifting.”
She nodded. “That’s true.”
His hand came down on her shoulder, his fingers lingering on her skin. One long finger found the deep groove that slid down her back. She stiffened. Before he could tighten his grip on her to keep her in place, she scrambled away from him on all fours. Her heart went into overdrive She didn’t care if he heard.
“Thanks for talking to me and doing my hair. I can take it from here. If you need the shower, it’s all yours. I don’t know how you managed to stay so quiet with your leg in such bad shape.” She was babbling, talking too fast, one word stumbling against the next, but she was out of his reach. Safe.
She caught up a towel and wrapped it around her hair like a turban. All the while she dried herself off, she watched him leerily as he slowly shampooed his hair, staying right where he was.
“I called Rene Guidry. He’ll arrange for groceries. Text him whatever you want to add to the list. I’ll give you his number. He’s calling the eye doc and also arranging for a doctor to come in and X-ray my leg. Not that I think the doctor who gave me the once-over wasn’t competent; he was. I just want to heal as fast as possible and would feel better with a second opinion. Rene takes care of things for me when I need them done quickly.”
She shrugged. “I think that’s a great idea.” She folded her arms across the towel to hold it in place and walked back into the master bathroom. The cupboards yielded a jar of her favorite face cream, and it had never been used. “How many women do you let stay here?”
There was a small silence. She glanced over her shoulder to see him draped casually against the wall just inside the room. It was disconcerting that even blind, he could walk so silently. She heard everything. Everyone. Just not, apparently, him. She made herself laugh softly, acting like it didn’t matter. It shouldn’t. She wasn’t holding on to any girlish fantasies about Gedeon Volkov. He was leopard. Right there that meant he was ruthless and dangerous, and that was without knowing who he was. Then there was the high sex drive. Gedeon’s reputation for one-night stands and casual sex was legendary. She wasn’t about to be one of his many conquests.