Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 463

He did not answer. He just got out of the van and offered me his hand, and I took it, because my shoulder was beginning to throb.

The flight back to the city was long and quiet. I pressed my forehead to the window and watched the green unspool beneath us, and Sparrow sat across from me with his eyes closed, and I caught myself wondering what moved through a man's head after he had emptied a building of people and then flown home like it was a commute. I decided I did not want to know.

The first thing he did when we landed was take me shopping.

He pushed open the door of a boutique that smelled like expensive soap and steered me inside with a hand at the small of my back. "You cannot walk into the house looking like you wrestled a hillside. Tasha will take one look at you and start asking questions."

"Exactly." I grabbed the nearest rack and began pulling out the same black pants I had been wearing, the same blue shirt in the same shade. "Which is why I'm buying the exact same outfit I came in with."

He looked at the pile in my arms, then at me. "You're going to replace what you ruined with a copy."

"It's called strategy."

"It's called paranoia."

"Same thing, different font." I pushed past him toward the changing room. "Wait for me."

I changed quickly, wincing when the fabric grazed the scrapes on my shoulder, and when I came out he was already at the counter with his wallet out. He paid before I could argue, which I should have expected, and then I found the section I actually cared about and told Sparrow I was getting a few things for Tasha.

I ended up getting a lot of things among which were, a soft green dress that would bring out the warmth in Tasha's eyes. A pair of pearl earrings small enough for a girl who had never owned anything delicate. A box of the chocolates she told me she had loved since she was a child. I carried the pile to the counter and set it down with the satisfied feeling of a day not entirely wasted. Then I paid for them.

"Danger from what?"

"From me." He slid behind the wheel and pulled into traffic, and his voice dropped into that low register that did unreasonable things to my spine. "I will still find my moments with you, Scarlett. Do not let a kidnapping convince you otherwise."

I stared at him, and then I laughed, because it was the only sane response available. He had seen me after I took down five men, but was talking about me like I was a meal he was saving for later. I turned my face to the window so he would not see the way the laugh had caught in my chest.

I had not expected the afternoon to hand me a chance to stretch my muscles again. It had been a while since I had truly fought, except for that night at Julian's, and these five men had given me an opportunity on a plate, even if they turned out to be disappointingly weak.

They were softer than the men Julian hired, which was saying something. If I had known how easy they were, I would have handled them inside the van and saved myself the trouble of being driven somewhere unfamiliar. But they were lucky, in the end. They got to wake up. The men who had stayed in that building with Sparrow had not.