“I’m sorry.” She frowned at her hands in her lap. Her towel had parted above her knee, along her thigh. Her cheeks flushed with earnestness. “You have to believe me.
I didn’t think . . . I thought they would help you. I wanted to help.”
He wanted to believe her.
“Prove it,” he said. “Help me now.”
Her fingers twisted together. “I can’t. I’ve been forbidden to see you. To speak with you. To have any contact with you at al .”
“What are they going to do, give you detention?”
“You don’t understand. I am sworn to obedience.”
She sounded like a cop. Or a nun.
“Shut up and do as you’re told?” he drawled.
8 8
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
Her eyes darkened.
“Then come with me,” he said, surprising himself.
Until the words came out of his mouth, he had no idea he was going to say them. He wasn’t looking to get tangled up in a relationship. No ties, no strings. But there was something between them. A connection. He didn’t understand it, but there it was. He didn’t like the thought of leaving her here with psycho Axton and his hex-happy henchman.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t leave Rockhaven.”
He should be relieved. He couldn’t rescue her if she didn’t want rescue. But . . . “They’re not keeping you here, are they? Against your wil ?”
She shook her head. “This is my home. I am bound here by the Rule.”
“Rules are made to be broken.”
“Not this Rule.” Her voice was earnest. “It’s our way of thinking. Our way of life. It’s what sets us apart from the rest of the world and binds us together as a community.
Without it, we cannot attain perfection.”
Some perfection. It sounded like a cult to him.
“You don’t belong here,” he said. “You’re not like the rest of them.”
“I am,” she insisted. “I’m with my own kind here. My family.”
He didn’t know enough about families to argue with her.
“Al I need is a ride,” he said. “I’d cal a cab, but I don’t know where the hel we are.”
Or where he was going. North, maybe.
“Pennsylvania. Bucks County,” she said.
He didn’t know Bucks County, Pennsylvania, from Bumfuck, USA, but he had a working sailor’s knowledge of the East Coast. “How far from the Port Authority?
F o r g o t t e n s e a 89
Newark,” he added when she just blinked those lovely eyes at him.
“I don’t . . . Two hours?”
“That’s good.” Damn good. “I can go anywhere in the world from there.”
North, he thought again. He was almost sure of it.
“You’l be home before breakfast,” he said.
“Fine.” She stood.
He should have been happy with his victory. He was getting the hel out of here. He watched her cross to the dresser and open a drawer. Unease tickled his spine. “You can come back, right? They won’t kick you out for giving me a ride?”
“Oh, yes.” He tried not to be distracted by the tumble of her hair, the curve of her butt. “They’l take me back.” Her tone was flat.
“But . . .”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “There are always consequences for disobedience.”
“Right.” His mind weighed, calculated, decided. “Then you can’t come with me.”
“But you just said . . .” She turned, scowling, her clothes clutched to her chest. “You need me.”
“I should have said, you can’t come with me wil ingly.
You can’t help me without getting into trouble.”
“So?”
He grinned, suddenly cheerful despite his splitting head.
“So I’l have to kidnap you.”
*
*
*
Lara’s breath huffed out. “Be serious.” “I’m dead serious,” Justin said, and despite his smile, she almost believed him. “I don’t want to see you hurt. Tel Axton I forced you. He can’t blame you then.”
9 0
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
Memory uncoiled inside her, dark and insidious as smoke.
No, Simon would not blame her if she were forced.
She shuddered, her hands closing convulsively on her clothes. “What if he cal s the police?”
“You real y think your buddy Axton wants the cops on his turf?”
“Probably not,” she admitted. Rockhaven was its own community under the Rule, school and glassworks forming an isolated enclave in the rol ing countryside. Simon would not seek help or accept interference from their neighbors.
“But if he thinks I’ve been abducted . . .”
“You’l be home before he has time to file a report.”
“He’l stil have questions.”
“So tel him the truth. I broke into your room. I had a knife.”
Justin’s lips curved upward, teasing, daring. “You couldn’t resist me.”
She stuck out her chin, uncomfortably aware of her nakedness under the towel. “I’m not a victim.”
She would not be a victim ever again.
“You think you should struggle?” He cocked his head, as if considering. “Right now, you could probably take me.
But if you want it to look good, we could knock over the lamp or something. Rumple the sheets.”
She flushed. Her awareness of him lay on her like a second skin, twitching with his very pulse, his every breath.
