Page 2 of Unbound
“I doubt that whoever did this is hanging around, not with the noise the breaking window made.” I relaxed a bit, but his next words stiffened me back up. “But I have to go make sure everything is clear. You know that.”
Yes, I knew that. At least, my brain did. My emotions? They were a big, giant mess, but they agreed on one thing: staying here alone was not an option.
“I want to come.” I tugged the severed straps of my dress behind my neck and tied them in a hasty knot. Not pretty, but it would hold it up. “Please.”
“No.” Jasper pulled the gun back out of his waistband, and I knew I’d been dismissed. “You’re staying here, where it’s safe.”
“No.” I didn’t want to admit the truth, not even to myself, but I had no choice. “I don’t want to be alone.”
When Jasper looked at me, I saw a bit more of that softness he’d already shown me. To my horror, I felt the back of my nose start to tickle, wetness gathering in my eyes.
I didn’t think that someone was out to kill me or anything, not really. To scare me? Absolutely. What sliced at my soul was that someone hated me this much.
It didn’t set right, especially with my emotions still flying from the super-intense intimacy with Jasper, and the fact that being left alone was my biggest fear.
“Cari.” His hands went to his belt, which was still unbuckled. I tilted my head, puzzled—surely he wasn’t going to try to have sex with me right now?
He pulled the length of leather from his pants and closed the space between us. I understood what he was about to do seconds before he grabbed my wrists, pulling my hands behind my back.
“Get your hands off me!” I hissed as he used his body to herd me against the slender support beam that stood in the middle of the room. My hands were trapped behind my back where he’d twisted them, and I thrashed as he wrapped the belt around my upper arms and torso then around to the back of the column. “Jasper. You’re not seriously doing this.”
“My priority, above all else, is making sure that you stay safe.” Buckling the belt and pulling it tight, he leaned back to look me in the eye. My teeth started chattering when I realized that he was really, actually planning to leave me here. “I promise that you will be safe here. I just need ten minutes, okay? Ten minutes during which I know where you are.”
I shook my head, a chill settling over my body. It was completely irrational, and I knew it, but it didn’t stop the feeling. “I hate you.”
He didn’t even flinch. Instead, he slid a finger between the belt and my skin, testing its tightness. “You can hate me all you want, as long as you’re safe.”
I bucked against the restraint as he slid his gun from his waistband again. “Jasper. Please.”
He paused at the door, looking quickly back over his shoulder. It was infuriating to find no regret in those eyes, no sense that he was doing anything wrong. “Ten minutes. I promise.”
And then he was gone.
I stopped trying to free myself the second he was out the door. This was Jasper, after all—if he wanted me to stay put, he would have bound me up well enough that I wouldn’t be able to get free, no matter what.
The anger helped to cover the fear, so I clung to that.
What kind of person abandoned another when they knew they were scared? Seriously?
It didn’t matter what kind of connection was between us—he was never touching me again.
The minutes ticked by—literally, because I could see the alarm clock on the bedside table. I tried closing my eyes, willing the time to go faster, but kept peeking, so instead I focused on various things around the room. The pale green wallpaper with the faded pattern, the worn carpet beneath the soles of my shoes. The stack of jeans and T-shirts that Jasper had unpacked, and beside it a well-worn paperback and a glossy magazine.
Both of the latter surprised me—first, he seemed more the type to go hit things than to kick back and read. Also, the book was a copy of Foundation by Isaac Asimov, and the magazine was something called SciFi Now.
My big, hulking bodyguard was a geek.
At the nine-minute mark Jasper pushed back into the room, gun again tucked into his pants, eyes finding me immediately.
“Whoever threw the rock is long gone.” He wasn’t surprised, and the set of his body told me that I wasn’t in any danger anymore, either, at least not right this moment. “The police are knocking on doors to talk to people, but I don’t think they’re going to turn anything up.”
“You knew that before you tied me to a fucking pole,” I spat out, wriggling against my bonds again now that I had an audience. “It would have been safe for me to go with you. You didn’t have to leave me here alone.”
“I suspected,” he corrected me, approaching slowly. “I didn’t know. And because I didn’t know, I made the best choice to keep you safe.”
“You left me here alone!” To my absolute dismay, my voice cracked. I wasn’t a big crier—I preferred to get out my frustrations physically, which was why I’d taken up Krav Maga.
Ever since I’d met Jasper Benjamin, I’d been a mess. All the more reason to hate him. Even if that book and that magazine had given me a tiny peek into the man behind the muscles, making him more of a real person and less of someone representing my lack of safety.
