Before I could get angry at the callousness of his statement, he spoke.
“I lost my mother, so I know what it’s like to lose a parent.”
“You did?”
He nodded. “A bullet killed her straight to the forehead.”
“Did you catch the person responsible?”
His gaze slid away from mine. “The monster is still out here, walking around. The point is, I know what it is like to be alone in this world, my littlemalishka.But we don’t have tochooseto be lonely. You got me?”
I nodded, allowing myself to get lost in his haunted gaze. It mimicked the torment in my soul. His open wounds gaped just like mine. We were the same.
It felt like something had shifted in our relationship. A magnitude of emotions that flooded my body beyond the carnal.
A knock on the dining room entryway drew our eyes away from each other and the connection was broken. A woman in a white coat stood with a black briefcase, looking scared stiff.
“Come in. Come in,” Alexie welcomed her jovially. “You are just in time. We were finishing up.”
“Sloane, this is Dr. Amarillo. She’s going to give you a full body checkup. You are to be good for her, understand?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You will now be staying in my room.”
I was leaving the room with a cage under the bed?
“I thought I was in your bedroom. You had clothes and stuff on the dresser…”
“It is, but I’m taking you to my personal room.”
An unfamiliar feeling burned in my gut and my eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t say anything. I was too choked up. This man really wanted to care for me, and for once, I was going to let him. I would stop fighting him at every turn.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He rose, kissed the top of my head in response, then helped me to my feet. God, I loved that. Maybe it was my daddy issues, but there was something comforting about being kissed on the head like that.
We got to his room, and I gasped. It was all decked out in red and black. Just as opulent as my last, but so dark and dreary, if not vampiric. I hadn’t expected to see rainbows and puppies painted on the ceiling, but surely a man like Alexie knew that there were other colors in the wheel to use. He needed more color in his life.
I now understood what he meant by personal. The other bedroom was like a hotel room—it contained what he needed. But this room reflected his essence. There were swords and knives on the walls. His cologne sat on the dresser next to an open velvet lined tray that had his wallet and watch. There was a tall gun cabinet that contained a small arsenal.
He laid me on the bed and spoke to the doctor in low tones while I tuned them out. If Alexie wanted me to know, he would tell me. I was too overwhelmed to care anyway.
Alexie left the room, and the doctor began her exam. She touched me from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. She took my temperature and blood pressure.
“When was your last period?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a month or two or three?”
Dr. Amarillo frowned and scribbled in her notebook.
“Could you be pregnant?” she asked.
“No. God, no.”
Alexie strode in, a scowl on his face. Had he been listening?
“Did you get her blood test yet?” he sniped.