Page 49 of Sigma

“If you’ve finished with Kai, you can leave his body somewhere there along Flottenstrasse. I’ll have someone collect him and return him to his widow.”

Click.

Shit.

He knows exactly where I am.

9

Stockholm Syndrome

Apollo is in the bed with me. He’s turned away, broad shoulders a tall cliff of male muscle rising and falling with each breath, his spine rounding slightly as he breathes. He’s shirtless. His skin is naturally a deep copper tone bronzed further by the sun. He has scars on his back, thin lines in a maze of crosshatching. Strange.

The comforter is low over his hips—is he…naked?

I’m tempted to lift the blanket and look. But I don’t.

I can’t go back to sleep, though. I’m consumed by confusion and conflict—why am I not cowering away from him? Why is my skin not crawling?

There must be something wrong with me.

Stockholm syndrome? Is that the one where a kidnap victim develops a bond with their captor?

I don’t have abondwith him. I don’t like him. I’m scared of him. He’s just…freaking gorgeous. The most beautiful male I’ve ever seen in my life, anywhere, whether online or on TV or in person.

He’s just perfect.

Which isn’t fair, at all. He’s violent, and unpredictable, and arrogant, and…a litany of things, none of them good.

My brain knows this.

My body doesn’t care.

The problem, my body doesn’t know shit.

I’m startled when he rolls over, eyes hooded with sleep, and looks at me. I’ve never been in a bed with a man. I’ve shared a bed with Bryn, of course, any number of times. But that’s different. We’re twenty-year-old girls raised as sisters and thus comfortable with each other.

As seems to be usual for him, he just looks at me for a moment or two before speaking. “You snore.”

I can’t help a shocked laugh. “I do not.”

“You do.” The slightest hint of a smirk touches one corner of his mouth. “Just a quiet little…” and he imitates the sound he claims I make, a softsnurk…sigh.“Like that.”

“Well, you’re the one who locked me in a tower with one bed. I didn’t sleep on the way here, seeing as, oh, I don’t know, I waslocked in a dark cell on a boat. Weird, I know.”

He arches his eyebrow, a facial version of a shrug. “It amused me.” That ghost of a smirk again. “The snoring.”

“This feels oddly domestic, Apollo, you and me sharing a bed.”

“You were in my bed. I was ready to sleep.” A quirk of his shoulders. “I did not bother you.”

Q.E.D.,his tone suggests.

I have no response for that. I pluck at the polo shirt of his which I’m still wearing. “Do I get real clothes, or are you going to just torture me with near-nudity?”

“Near-nudity tortures you?” he says. “You seem rather confident in yourself.”

I hold his gaze. “What do you gain by keeping me from having real clothes?” I’m tempting the tiger to eat its meal with this question, perhaps. “You’ve gotten your look at me naked. But you don’t seem inclined to…” I swallow hard, force it out. “Rape me. Or anything. So…what’s your plan?”