Chapter 10: Chapter Ten

The needle breaking her skin seemed to jolt her from whatever fog was making her cheeks blush and her teeth want to capture her bottom lip. She was inexperienced, he knew that much. It took far too little to make her eyes glaze over with lust. Then again… that was always something he loved about her. A simple look. A fleeting glance that would normally cause a sane woman to develop a sudden interest in her cuticles never stopped her from trying to disassemble his gaze. She never ran. She never balked. She never stopped igniting his own desire to figure out what it was that caused her to think there was more to him.

Those same eyes, fresh honey in a jar, slowly opened as the recognition of what he’d just done settled through her bones. Her eyes flicked down to the syringe still in her thigh. He pulled the needle out and held it up for her inspection. Her eyes rose just as he’d wanted to focus on the syringe in front of his face. He smirked. Her eyes zeroed in on the expression.

“What did you just dose me with?” she asked, calm, unshakeable. Fuck, if leading her through a wake of ruin and death hadn’t shaken her, he shouldn’t be surprised a little pin prick wouldn't do it.

“Consider it pay back,” he told her, throwing the spent needle into the trash bin.

“I dosed you with morphine when you were beaten to a pulp.”

“You dosed me with morphine to get me to stop asking questions you didn’t like the answer to,” he reminded her.

Her eyes went back to the tattoo he’d had permanently etched into his skin. Her tongue tracked over her bottom lip and he fought the urge to punish her for doing a job that should be his.

“What did you give me, Frankie?” she asked.

“Sodium Pentothal,” he told her, stepping back and crossing his arms while he waited for the drug to take effect.

Her mouth turned down further at the edges, the opposite of what he wanted. Now wasn’t the time to think of what he wanted. His need was far stronger.

“Truth serum? Really? You believe that works?” she asked, jumping down from the counter only to sway as the effects of the drug started to work through her blood stream. She put a hand to her head and she tilted dangerously. Frankie caught her by the arms before she could tumble. “Was this really necessary?” she asked between clenched teeth.

Necessary? Usually not. Frankie prided himself in being able to know a person through nothing more than a calculative gaze. People were more open than they gave themselves credit for. They try so hard to hide who they truly are that they give themselves away. A narrow of an eye as they fight a smile. The twitch of a finger when they don’t get what they want. The lingering of a fingertip as they push away when what they really want is for you to never let them go. People were easy. Gloria? She was an enigma. One he truly loved to poke and prod until her carefully constructed facade would crack and a light of who she truly could be would spark before she could suture it back in place.

She made him work for it. Hard. But he was tired. He was off his game. He wanted answers and she was impossibly more difficult to decipher than usual.

Frankie shrugged as she waited for his response. “I’ll admit waging war singlehandedly appears to have drained me. I appreciate any help I can get.”

“I would have told you the truth!” she growled as she pressed her forehead into his chest while fighting the nausea that came along with the serum.

“Is that so Lilah?” he asked. Her body stiffened. “How was your twenty-fifth birthday yesterday?”

“That’s completely different.”

“Why? Because your life depended on it?”

“Exactly.”

“Unforutantely, I have some very bad news for you,” he told her, gripping the back of her neck until her head fell back and her defiant gaze was set on his. “It’s not so different after all.”

“What do you want?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“I’m still figuring that out.”

“What do you want to know, Frankie?” she asked, desperately while trying to get him to loosen his hold on her nape.

“What’s your name?” he asked, keeping his hold firm. The tactic was dual-purpose: not only did it keep her still, he could feel her pulse beneath his fingertips, a secondary way to differentiate between truth and lie.

“Gloria Rubanov.”

“Good. Your fiance?”

“Sergei Vasiliev.”

“Right again. You want to fuck me, don’t you?”

She sneered but her pulse spiked. “No.”

“Hm, truth serum still has a ways to go. We’ll start out with the easier questions then. “Did you tell Vasiliev where my safehouse was?”

Her eyes narrowed and her pulse remained steady. “No.”

“Did you watch them kill my brother?”

“No.”

“Did you help?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you run?”

Her pulse quickened under his fingers, but not in a way that told him she was about to lie. It was fear. Palpable enough to transfer from her being into his. The fear licked up through his fingertips, wrapped around his wrist and circled his arm, threatening to force him to release the grip on her neck. She swallowed and blinked back unshed tears.

“Sergei is much younger and stronger than my father,” she answered cryptically.

“And?”

“If he can catch me and bring me to an inch of my life, Sergei could push me over the edge much easier,” she explained.

Frankie tightened his grip and pulled her flush against him, forcing her head back in an unnatural position. She let him take her. She didn’t fight. She’d accepted her fate as she had done countless times in her life. He hated that he had become who they always warned her he was. He didn’t want to be that person to her. But his brother was dead. And he needed the fucking truth of it all before he could pass judgement for or against her.

“Did Sergei hurt you?”

“No,” she said. Her pulse spiked and her teeth ground together.

“Did Sergei hurt you?” he repeated in a growl.

“What the hell do you want me to say? That he was gentle? He carried me into the bedroom that was my prison and brushed my hair until I fell asleep? He didn’t make me pay?” she asked, her pulse pounding but rhythmic. “I’m sorry, Frankie. I’m sorry about what happened to Stephen. If I could go back and make myself leave that apartment five minutes earlier so that I wouldn’t have run into you… so that you wouldn’t have stopped me from running… I’d do it. You’re not the only one who’s lost, though. You’re not the only one.”

Her lids were becoming heavy over her eyes. Her limbs were limp and the only thing keeping her standing was his hold on her.

“Do you want to fuck me?” he asked again, his voice low, understanding, forgiving.

She blinked slowly several times as her honey eyes traced over his face, stopping at his lips. She took her own lip between her teeth and nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Good, now we can get to the important question,” he whispered, his mouth mere inches from hers. “I want you to tell me, Vixen. Tell me what you were thinking of that night.”

Her pupils widened in the narrow slits left visible from her drooping lids. A blush coated her cheeks, a sight she rarely displayed. Her breath was short but it lengthened in depth as she drew in air to answer him. “I…”

Gloria’s body succumbed to the ordeal she’d faced. The drugs finally brought her down… at the worst point imaginable. Just his luck. He held her there in his arms for a moment, observing her serene face. He bent and scooped her up under her knees. He carried her back into the bedroom she’d picked out for herself. Shifting her weight onto one arm, he pulled back the covers of the bed using the other. He gently laid her down and picked up the t-shirt he’d left for her at the foot of the bed. Careful to not glimpse anything too scandalous, he shimmied the shirt over her head and removed the towel tied tightly against her torso. He brought the blankets up to her neck. She didn’t burrow, turn or snuggle into the sheets. She merely laid there as he’d left her, completely still. He ran his hand over her chestnut hair filled with as many colors as could adorn a human head. His fingers caught in a tangle and he clicked his tongue.

Frankie walked back into the bathroom and rummaged through the drawers until he found what he needed. He stalked back into the bedroom and maneuvered her body until her head was in his lap. As he started to stroke the brush through her hair, he thought again of how close he’d been to an answer. An answer he so desperately needed.