Page 82 of My Unhinged Alphas
I lift the blindfold. She doesn’t step back, but her shoulders go tight enough to crack.
For one second I consider not doing it. Then I remember exactly where I’m taking her from and how much it matters if she starts talking to the wrong person about this place.
“Close your eyes,” I tell her.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m getting there.”
“Cute.”
She does close them. I tie the blindfold gently, more carefully than she probably expects from me. My knuckles brush her hair, the shell of her ear, the soft skin behind it. She shivers the instant I touch her.
That gets my attention.
So does the way her breathing changes.
When I finish, she lifts a hand like she’s going to rip the cloth right back off. I catch her wrist before she can.
She tenses.
I lean in, mouth close to her ear. “Relax,” I murmur.
That word goes through her like a current. I feel it in the way she stills, in the tiny breath she draws in, in the involuntary shiver that runs down her body. God, she’s responsive.
I let go of her wrist and guide her forward with a hand at her lower back.
Outside, the morning air is cooler than it was earlier. The complex sits far enough from the city to feel like its own private country: concrete walls, wire fencing, cameras nested in the corners, long gravel drives, low industrial buildings giving way to stretches of scrub and open land. Not pretty, exactly. Useful. Hidden. Expensive in the way secrecy always is.
She can’t see any of it.
Probably for the best.
My car waits near the side lot, black paint eating the light, windows dark, engine already warm. She slows the moment her shoes leave the concrete and hit gravel, careful now, listening to the sound of space around her.
“We’re outside?” she asks.
“No, this is a very breezy hallway.”
“Asshole.”
I open the passenger door and help her in. She stiffens when my hands land on her waist, then settles once she’s in the seat.Relief hits her the second the door shuts and the car encloses us. Funny thing, that. She feels safer in a locked vehicle with me than standing inside the place where she was supposed to be protected.
I round the hood, get in, and close my own door. The second we’re moving through the outer gate, I nod toward the blindfold. “You can take it off.”
She rips it down immediately. The look on her face when she sees the car is almost worth the entire argument with Knox.
Relief. Real relief.
Because it’s a car. Because it’s daylight. Because for one split second this looks almost normal, and normal is the one thing she’s been starving for since the harbor.
She glances out the window, expecting buildings. Gets open land instead.
Her relief falters. “Where the hell am I?”
“Not the city.”
