Free Deep by Skye Warren - Deep Page B

and the cops reluctantly moved to make way for us.
    The hallway was so narrow that I could reach out and touch one of them. I expected them to make a move for the gun, to get me to safety, but they didn’t. I couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed by that, even if they didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt; I just wanted someone to care about me, someone besides Philip. And that summed up my entire existence.
    Philip pressed the button to go down, and there was a tense silence while we waited for the elevator, in a stalemate with the cops.
    The door opened, revealing Sloan inside.
    His eyes widened when he saw me. “ Ella. Oh God.”
    “Move,” Philip said, his voice like granite.
    Sloan scrambled out of the elevator, and before I could even think of what to tell him— help or please don’t help, you’ll only get yourself hurt —Philip had moved us into the elevator and the doors were sliding shut.
    And then it was only Philip and me, alone in the elevator, heading down.
    My room was on floor twenty-four. The display flickered to twenty-three. Twenty-two.
    He still held the gun, but at least it wasn’t pointed at my head anymore. I jammed my elbow into his stomach, and he grunted. I moved to the other side of the elevator, clinging to the cold metal bar.
    “I hope that opens up your injury,” I said.
    His expression was taut with pain—but a faint smile flickered over his lips. “That’s right, kitten. Give me hell.”
    I crossed my arms over my chest, confused and upset. Why did he have to change the game?
    I had known he was a dangerous man, but I had always sort of trusted him. After all, he had saved me when I was at my weakest. But then, maybe he had only done it for Shelly. They were having sex at the time— fucking was the word she would have used—and I had suspected he was in love with her.
    She had ended up marrying someone else—a cop, no less. So maybe being nice to me, or at least not killing me, was off the table now. Maybe it didn’t matter what happened to me with Shelly out of the picture. Something cold settled into my stomach. My breath came a little faster, the air thin and stale in this elevator.
    “What the hell?” I asked, my voice small. I hated how hurt I sounded.
    I hated that I let him hurt me. Floor fifteen. Fourteen.
    He didn’t even look at me, his gaze on the gun as he flicked some small lever. Then he held it up for me to see, sideways. “Turning the safety back off.”
    Realization flooded through me. The safety had been on while it had been pointed at my head. At least, if I believed him. I didn’t know enough about guns to know if he was telling the truth. “It was still dangerous,” I said. “The cops could have shot me.”
    “They wouldn’t have done that,” he scoffed.
    Horribly, tears sprang to my eyes. I fought them. “That’s not the point. Anything could have happened. There were guns everywhere, and you put me in the middle of it.”
    He sobered. “I’ll always protect you, Ella. That’s a promise.”
    The words filled a space inside me that had been hollow for too long. And I couldn’t regret that he had held a gun to my head, if that meant surviving. Couldn’t regret that he had come to me in a moment of weakness. He’d been in a vulnerable state—a rare moment for a man like him. And he’d trusted me with it. There was a kind of power in that.
    A dark kind of hope.
    We were on floor five now. Almost to the bottom.
    “So what’s next?” I asked, a hitch in my chest. “Am I still your hostage?”
    “I thought I’d told you, kitten. You’re with me now, for better or for worse.”
    With those disturbing words, the elevator dinged its arrival. The doors slid open.

Chapter Fifteen
    W E MADE IT through the lobby without any threats at gunpoint.
    We did earn a lot of stares, however.
    The lobby of the dorm had seen many wild things, drunken antics and one notorious whipped-cream dunking booth. There had never been a