Marco's Redemption (10 page)

She flew to the door and unlocked it, preparing to leave the room for the relative safety of the living room.

Marco stood in the entrance of her bedroom, and the forward motion of her body propelled her torso within inches of clashing with his. She came to a skidding halt. Had he been standing there the whole time? Both fear and anger dominated her emotions. "You tricked me. You don't have a key." She began to push past him.

"Asshole? You called me asshole?" he hissed, as a vein on the side of his neck twitched, hostility seething from his body as he blocked her attempt to move past him.

Chapter Five

A chill hung in the air at his words and Natalie's features hardened in response, both from his anger and from the fear trickling through her veins that she was determined to control. "You lied to me. There's no key."

She moved to brush past him again and he continued to block her retreat with his body. "I have a key." His voice was dangerously contemptuous as he lifted the key in front of her face and then quickly pocketed it before his hands fell to her shoulders, holding her firmly in place.

"It's not really my room if you have a key to it," she snapped, attempting to move back from his touch, but his fingers bit into her shoulders harder, holding her in place.

"It's
not
your room. It's where I allow you to sleep." His voice was an angry sneer, the words gritted through bared teeth.

"Let me go," she said shakily, attempting to move away from him.

"Be still," he hissed. There was a threat in his voice and it effectively stilled her movements, but she glared at him before her eyes dropped away from his.

"Don't threaten me," she said in an angry whisper. "I swear--I'll call 911." She felt his touch stiffen on her shoulders and then he lifted one hand from her and slowly put it in his pocket.

"You'll need your phone for that." His words carried a hint of sarcasm as he pulled her phone from his pocket where he must have picked it up after she left it in the kitchen. He tossed it a few feet and it landed on her bed.

His hand moved back to her shoulder and Natalie went completely silent as she shut her eyes.

They stood like that for a few seconds, and she tried her best not to tremble, but it was impossible. He was too close, his skin was too warm, and she knew he could feel the shaky movements of her body.

He placed a single finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. Her eyes remained mutinously closed. "Open your eyes," he demanded.

It was only a small measure of defiance, but Natalie waited a few seconds before she slowly lifted her lids and found him staring down at her, way too close for her comfort. His eyes, although bloodshot, were a deep, chocolate brown, and as they bore into hers, it was with an effort that Natalie kept her gaze on him.

"I don't need the kind of shit you just pulled." His finger and thumb bit into her chin. "There are a couple of things you need to learn about me, and quickly. I don't respond well to threats or temper tantrums. Tears don't affect me--ever." His eyes searched hers and then he finished through gritted teeth, "I never apologize."

He continued to study her face and the emotional upheaval suddenly took a toll on Natalie and her will to continue fighting him disappeared. Her body trembled and her torso bent, her pelvis finding purchase against his thighs as she gave up and let her weight fall against him. His eyes flared in response, and he moved his hands from her shoulders, sliding one arm around her waist to bear the brunt of her weight, and the other sliding over her cheek, into her hair where he gripped her scalp, lifting her face to his.

The difference in their height was disparate and Natalie felt completely eclipsed by his sheer size and the steely muscles surrounding her. Against her will, the sexual aura he possessed, and that she always tried to ignore, enveloped her senses. As his hand tightened in her hair and his scent washed over her, her heart jolted and a dizzying current of electricity washed over her. Suddenly, she understood exactly how vulnerable she was to him.

He studied her for a moment before he began speaking. "I had a bad night--I'm having a bad morning." His voice turned deeper and lost much of the anger. "I don't usually drink so much--my head is killing me. Tanya's a bitch--that's over and I don't want to think about her." His hand around her waist began caressing her and he leaned down and put his lips on her forehead.

He maintained that position for a moment while Natalie's heart continued beating furiously in her chest. His lips moved slowly back and forth across her forehead, and it felt as if he were breathing in her scent. Shock and a tiny river of delight stealthily made their way through her veins.

"I shouldn't have snapped at you," he said against her skin. "I know you were only trying to help me."

Natalie's breath hitched and a whirling began in her head as she tried to make sense of what he was saying.
He never apologized?
Granted, the words 'I'm sorry,' or 'I apologize,' never came from his lips, but everything else he was saying sounded amazingly contrite and it confused her even more.

Before she could think too much about it, he lifted his head and met her gaze once again. "I need to get to the bank--I'm late already." His hand untangled from her hair and his knuckles grazed her cheek. "Will you be okay?"

"Yes." Her voice was little more than a whisper.

"Will you be here when I get back?"

The slight trace of vulnerability was so well hidden that Natalie almost missed it, but she knew by the sound of his voice the answer he wanted and she hesitated only momentarily before giving it to him. "Yes."

"I'll be home for supper," he added.

"Okay."

His eyes swallowed her whole for few seconds as his gaze searched hers. Something intense flared between them and the tingling in the pit of her stomach slid downward and landed is a rush of heat between her thighs. "You're so sweet," his voice sounded agonized, but Natalie lost the ability to think completely when his mouth landed on hers and she experienced his kiss for the first time. It lasted only a second and his lips remained closed on hers, much as a parent's would on a child. But the kiss didn't feel parental in any way and it sent a cascade of new tremors down her spine.

Her eyes were still closed when she felt him release her and walk away, allowing her to begin breathing again.

****

Thirty minutes or so after he left, Natalie was still a bit dazed from the events of the morning. She walked around the penthouse aimlessly, and then wandered back to her bedroom where her eyes fell on the phone he had tossed on her bed earlier.

Her mind running a mile a minute, she picked up both the phone and her purse, and stepped inside her bathroom. She sat down at the small vanity, and removed from her purse the pay-as-you-go phone that she had been using before she met him.

She studied the two phones carefully while her mind raced. Marco was doing crazy things to her equilibrium, and there was absolutely no denying that he was gorgeous and made her heart race.

And now he'd broken up with Tanya.

Before this went even a day longer, she needed to know if she could trust him enough to stay here. She was already in danger of falling under his spell.

She needed to know what technology he had monitoring her. She didn't even know for sure if he was tracking her. The day he came to her rescue, could have been, as he claimed, a coincidence. But she damn sure didn't think so. If it was just the GPS locator in her phone, she was going to write it off as him being careful with his investments, as he had intimated she was to him. After all, she did owe him a lot of money.

But if the guy had cameras on her, or was monitoring her on the computer, then she was out of here.

She looked around the small room. Surely, if he actually did have cameras around the apartment, then he wouldn't have them in her bathroom. If he did, he was lower than low. She was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least for now.

The question was, how did she find out what he might have done? How did she find out if she couldn't use her own computer to do a search on the subject? She needed to get to a public library, where she knew she could use the computers with privacy. But she didn't particularly want him to find out she had left the apartment, at least not while she was gone. Afterward--maybe it wouldn't matter.

What she knew about technology wasn't anything to write home about. She knew nothing about computers or the intricacies of how they worked. All she knew were the basics, things she had learned in high school such as PowerPoint and Excel.

But she did know several things about cell phones. Probably only enough to get her into trouble, but the small amount of knowledge she had was all she had to work with at the moment.

Obviously, she knew the smart phone he'd given her had Internet access. She knew that when it was in the apartment, it picked up the wifi in the building. When she took it outside, it picked up the signal from the cellular carrier. And damn lucky for her, it was the same cellular carrier where she'd purchased her pay-as-you-go phone.

She was positive there was a SIM card in her old phone because she'd taken it out once when she thought her phone had gotten damp. She was fairly certain that most smart phones came with SIM cards--but not all of them. She knew that the smart phone itself was the little computer that allowed access to the Internet, much as a Tablet did but on a tinier scale. The SIM card was the little doohickey that allowed the phone to make calls.

So what she was planning was simple in theory, but dangerous because that's where her knowledge became completely sketchy. She thought that if there was a SIM card in the smart phone, she could just switch them, and then carry her original phone with her when she left the building--thereby, leaving his tracking device in her bedroom. That way, if he phoned or sent her a text, she could answer and respond--and he'd never know she wasn't in the penthouse.

What she wasn't sure of were a couple of things. Well, many things but she didn't need to borrow more trouble. She had no idea what kind of application or software Marco was using to track her. She couldn't see an icon on the smart phone that indicated a simple application to track a missing phone. But that made sense, because if he was tracking her on the down-low, he wouldn't want it to be openly visible to her. So, she had no idea what kind of system he was using, and even if she had known, that's where her knowledge dried up.

So that came to the other big problem. If she managed to switch the SIM cards, would the missing component disable the tracking device and thereby alert him to a problem immediately? Or would it, as she was hoping, continue tracking the phone at the apartment, never knowing the phone had been separated from the SIM card?

She'd probably never know the answers without asking Marco, which obviously, she wasn't prepared to do. At least not yet. And none of this would even be possible if she hadn't watched her cousin 'jailbreak' a smart phone about a year ago so he could use the phone on a different carrier. He had assured her it was perfectly legal, as he'd bought the wildly popular phone for full price at the cellular store.
Yeah. If only he
'
d bought liability insurance instead.

She steadied her nerves and took out a nail file and paperclip from her purse and set them aside.

She got everything else ready to leave the apartment, herself included, because if she was successful, the very second she had the SIM cards switched, she was walking out the door.

Ten minutes later, she had the answer she'd hoped for about the SIM card in the smart phone and she had the SIM cards switched. Of course, she still didn't know if he would or wouldn't know she'd left the building, but she was willing to take that chance.

She already debated the best place to leave her smart phone and her first inclination was to hide it--but then she immediately blew off that idea because if it was being tracked, he'd know where to find it anyway. And if he did come home and come in search of her, her story would be she'd forgotten it. Of course that would only work if he hadn't tried to contact her while she was out. Either way, she was going to have to take a chance. She walked from the bathroom, and as she didn't know if she was being watched, she casually walked to her bed and began fluffing the pillows and putting the magazine on the bedside table. She dropped the phone back on the bed where he had originally thrown it and then headed out to find the public library.